A DOD director finds good in date code crisis
VAIL, Colo.--Army officials need a broader perspective on information technology, speakers said last week at the Small Computer Program's Spring Program Status Review here. "We, in some cases, are not the right people to be managing PCs" because of the difficulty of maintaining technical expertise, said Col. Dean R. Ertwine, deputy for systems acquisition at the Communications-Electronics Command Management Center at Fort Monmouth, N.J.
They're mad about MiniCAD
Several federal building designers have found a computer-aided design package that matches their Macintosh operating systems for ease of use--once they get past the user manual. Two federal users of MiniCAD 7.0 from Diehl Graphsoft Inc. of Columbia, Md., said they design visitor centers for their agencies. "I'm looking for tools to manipulate forms," said Steven Ferretti, exhibit design manager at the Agriculture Department's Office of Communications. "The more I use [MiniCAD], the more flexible
8(a) vendors' share of the IT pie is shrinking
Federal agencies are buying fewer systems products and services these days from minority-owned and small businesses in the 8(a) program, according to Federal Procurement Data Center figures. Companies in the Small Business Administration's 8(a) program won about $2.1 billion worth of prime systems contracts during fiscal 1995, according to FPDC figures reported by Eagle Eye Publishers Inc. of Vienna, Va.
Transportation sets high-tech road map
More public-works funding is on the way for the Transportation Department's federal and state projects, and that means more money for information technology, according to the acting director of the statistical bureau that analyzes U.S. transportation systems. There will be a lot of incentive to spend more on systems as state transportation departments lose staff and as highway building and repair costs remain stable, said Robert A. Knisely, acting director of the department's Bureau of
Guard relies on smart net staff
To Maj. Bruce D. Babcock, deciding whether to use Microsoft Exchange 5.0 or 5.5 or to deploy Windows NT 4.0 Enterprise Edition is easy. Taking care of his 1,300 users is a far more complicated and crucial matter. Babcock is chief of the metropolitan area network for the Air National Guard Communications and Information Branch. The National Guard Bureau, a joint staff for the Air and Army National Guards, has 800 users at Andrews Air
GSA seeks FAST streamlining, savings
Can FAST grow faster and bigger and become more efficient? That's the objective for the General Services Administration's Kansas City, Mo., Federal Acquisition Services for Technology office, which acts as a personal shopper for agencies. The organization's new director, Wayne Cooper, said he hopes to rein in operating expenses and raise revenues above last year's $470 million.
Agency buyers find they're shelling out far less for PCs
Agencies have paid 20 percent less for desktop PCs in the past 12 months than they had previously, government vendors said, and feds will be able to buy monitorless systems for as little as $500 before the year is out. "If you're talking about a 233- or 266-MHz PC, the price points are outrageous," said Chris Zukowski, a systems analyst in the Corporate Information Office at the Army's Aberdeen Proving Grounds, Md. "We're seeing prices
NIH opens a bandwidth closet
In new buildings on the National Institutes of Health campus, Michael Stoos and other network support personnel can now colocate telephone and LAN cables in wiring closets. But support issues are still tangled. Stoos and officemate Mike Griffin each have three desktop computers: a PC, an Apple Macintosh and a Sun Microsystems Inc. workstation. Many NIH employees use Macs and Unix machines, although the agency has set a goal of standardizing on one operating system.
180-MHz PCs for IWS/LAN? If price is right
Sure, the Social Security Administration would take the latest PCs for its Intelligent Workstation/LAN contract--if Unisys Corp. would sell them to the agency at the contract's specified Year 2 price. D. Dean Mesterharm, deputy commissioner for systems, said SSA would accept PCs that are faster than the 100-MHz Pentiums Unisys is installing for ISW/LAN.
NIH agency applies First Aid
Timothy Barnes bought First Aid for home use last year and liked it so much that he volunteered to beta-test a network version of the PC repair package. Barnes, chief of the Intramural Technical Systems Branch at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, last fall began testing the CyberMedia Support Server (CSS) Repair Engine for Workgroups 1.0 from CyberMedia Inc. of Santa Monica, Calif.
3,000 State PCs get BIOS fix for date code error
State is one of the first agencies to tackle PC readiness aggressively, halting shipments under its flagship SII PC/LAN buy for the last four months. "We've solved 99 percent of the problem," said Ronne Rogin, a contracting officer in State's Logistics Management Office. When 133-MHz Pentiums from BTG Inc. of Fairfax, Va., failed State's year 2000 tests last November, the department halted further PC and server shipments from the company, Rogin said.
SSA chief says 100-MHz systems can handle job
The Social Security Administration commissioner insists that PCs with 100-MHz processors will meet the agency's requirements into the next century. "It would be a waste of taxpayers' money to go with more expensive computers," SSA Commissioner Kenneth S. Apfel said in response to a question from Rep. Kenny C. Hulshof (R-Mo.) at a joint hearing this month of the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Human Resources and its Subcommittee on Social Security.
NASA's site carries star data
How do you serve up a terabyte of data that gets downloaded from the World Wide Web at a rate of 1.7 million files per month? The High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., relies on a 333-MHz Digital Equipment Corp. AlphaStation 600 Hypertext Transfer Protocol server with 384M of RAM and nine Web addresses.
Help desk gets closer to users
Some National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration employees now report system troubles through a World Wide Web browser instead of making a telephone call. The Systems Support Branch in NOAA's Office of Finance and Administration assists about 650 users at four Washington locations handling finance, payroll, personnel and procurement, branch chief William Ross said.
Oops--there's no tech refresh for IWS/LAN
Social Security Administration officials face a dilemma: kill a seven-year, $280 million contract with Unisys Corp. or risk protests by upgrading the contract's PCs without a technical refreshment clause. At issue is the Intelligent Workstation/LAN contract, an indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity buy in its second year. Industry sources said if SSA were to let Unisys substitute faster PCs, IWS/LAN would turn into a sole-source acquisition.
SSA faces a training challenge
Almost 10 years after the advent of Microsoft Windows, Social Security Administration employees are getting client PCs with graphical user interfaces. The agency has installed more than a third of the 1,742 LANs running Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 through the Intelligent Workstation/LAN contract with Unisys Corp., said Tony Urreta, vice president of operations for Social Security programs at Unisys' Federal Systems Division.
GSA figures show Dell as MAS sales leader
So far this fiscal year, Dell Computer Corp. has a $100 million lead on its closest competitor, Gateway 2000 Inc., in sales through Multiple-Award Schedule contracts. Citing long-standing questions about the accuracy of MAS sales figures tallied by the General Services Administration, industry analysts questioned the figures that GSA released this month. But GSA officials stand by the numbers.
GIS packages come to rescue
After a January storm left three inches of ice on parts of New England, New York and Quebec, two geographic information system packages helped federal and New York state officials organize rescue operations. The Federal Emergency Management Agency, Army National Guard and five New York state departments cooperated using software from Environmental Systems Research Institute Inc. of Redlands, Calif., and MapInfo Corp. of Troy, N.Y., said Dan O'Brien, program manager at New York's Emergency Management
Education limits PC buys to Dell, Compaq brands
Although the Education Department is limiting PC and server buys to Compaq Computer Corp. and Dell Computer Corp. brands, it has drawn no flak about whether it's restricting competition, Education officials said. In an August letter, chief information officer Don Rappaport announced a decision by the department's Information Technology Investment Review Board to adopt what he termed a standards approach.
HHS' flood of paper subsides
"We've cut costs by 50 percent from paper storage," said Linda A. Gibson, section chief of the Electronic Document Services Section at HHS in Rockville, Md. "A form is a form. Once you start automating, you need to review them and in some cases combine" or eliminate them. The department and its Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Food and Drug Administration, and National Institutes of Health all use forms to document internal actions and
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