Vendors are unnerved by GSA's price-pushing
The pressure has gotten so intense that Cisco Systems Inc., the leading networking vendor, reportedly considered withdrawing from Multiple-Award Schedule contracts in favor of selling through other contract vehicles such as NASA's Scientific and Engineering Workstation Procurement II and the National Institutes of Health Electronic Computer Store II. But a Cisco manager denied the company would abandon the FSS program. "We're moving in the opposite direction," said Paul Cantwell, federal channel director for Cisco of
Common patient data is key to VA, DOD project
The four partners will participate in the Government Computer-based Patient Record (GCPR) project that VA and DOD began earlier in the winter. The team plans to release a final statement of objectives this summer after receiving vendor comments, said Lt. Col. Rosemary Nelson, deputy program manager for the Composite Health Care System II.
This help desk rescues FEMA
"Information systems are expected to work all the time," said Clay Hollister, FEMA's chief information officer. "When they fail, because we all depend on them, we have a crisis. Some crises are bigger than others, but for the customer, the fix can never be too fast." Trouble calls come from users who installed unauthorized software but want immediate support, officials under congressional pressure to produce last-minute reports, and travelers who need to download e-mail remotely
Navy site tries to make history
United States forces had launched Tomahawk missiles into Iraq, and the president would hold a 9 a.m. press conference to announce the strike. Goldstein hung up the phone, scrambled out of bed and hurried to his Pentagon office to post photos and text on the Navy's World Wide Web site at http://www.navy.mil so the public could view them by 9 a.m.
Census counts on doc system
"With all the documents that Census has converted into electronic form, there's a strong need for such systems," said Janette Mon, a project manager at the Economic Planning and Coordination Division in Suitland, Md. The division conducts an economic census every five years and compiles monthly, quarterly and annual updates on business activity in the construction, manufacturing, minerals, retail, service and wholesale industries.
Agencies push IMPAC IT buys to new heights
Charges on the popular federal Visa card grew to more than $4.8 billion from $2.9 billion in fiscal 1996, and transactions rose to 11.5 million from 7.3 million in 1996, according to the U.S. Bank of Minneapolis. The bank's subsidiary, Rocky Mountain Bank Card System, issues the cards through a General Services Administration program.
Remedy your ticket troubles
The Mountain View, Calif., company's flagship product, Action Request System, extends online help throughout an enterprise via unlimited read licenses. Users can submit requests and query the system for answers or status updates. One feature in the Action Request System is Remedy Help Desk. It automates problem management, resolution, reporting and measurement. The ARWeb component helps users help themselves by submitting requests and updating database information through their World Wide Web browsers. It dynamically translates
Geiger: Civilians add continuity to Navy
Continuous Acquisition and Lifecycle Support practices have transformed naval logistics in only a few years, according to Cliff Geiger, the service's chief logistician. The outgoing assistant deputy chief of naval operations for logistics spent more than 25 years in the Navy before his Nov. 6 retirement. He reported to Vice Adm. William Hancock and helped oversee an OPNAV staff of 160 with a budget of $10 billion a year.
PCs let crew of USS Yorktown run a tight ship
The Yorktown, part of the Atlantic Fleet's Naval Surface Force, has 30 dual 200-MHz Pentium Pros from Intergraph Corp. of Huntsville, Ala., that run the bridge and monitor damage control, engineering and maintenance. The ruggedized PCs run Microsoft Windows NT Workstation 4.0 in 256M of RAM and have 4G hard drives. They link to a fiber-optic Windows NT 4.0 LAN with an Intergraph Pentium Pro server.
VirusWall comes to the rescue
When Meat Grinder came to town, Tim Crosier was ready for the bout. Meat Grinder isn't the name of a professional wrestler. It's a highly infectious macro virus that does minor damage to systems after entering through mailed attachments to Microsoft Word documents. Meat Grinder started showing up at the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Port Hueneme, Calif., in early 1997.
PC lifecycle plans arrive
Driven by federal legislation and the need to cut costs, agencies are designing lifecycle management plans for their desktop systems. The Information Technology Management Reform Act, which mandated that agencies demonstrate how technology investments help them achieve core missions, has affected agencies' fiscal 1998 budget requests, as has implementation of the 1993 Government Performance and Results Act.
Feds can't work by the book
Leigh Zarbough was unwittingly hindered in her work at the Census Bureau by a software licensing trend that limits access to instruction manuals. Zarbough, a statistical assistant in the bureau's Population Division in Suitland, Md., changed from MS-DOS 6.22 to Microsoft Windows 95 when the agency bought 166-MHz Gateway 2000 Inc. PCs late last year.
DOD's bugs get stuck on Web -
A Defense Department group that tracks disease-bearing insects and other pests across the globe has put indexing software on its World Wide Web server so users can trap bug information more easily. The Defense Pest Management Information Analysis Center used ZyImage Web Server to trace more than 160,000 text files from 200 scientific journals going back to the early 1900s, said Lt. Cmdr. Jeffrey A. Corneil, the deputy chief.
VA office takes surveys online
A Veterans Affairs Department office has responded to the National Performance Review's call for performance measurement systems by adopting electronic surveys to measure customer satisfaction. Charles "Dick" Potter, a management analyst in the Performance Analysis Service at VA's Budget Office, said he likes Raosoft 3.2 from Raosoft Inc. of Seattle because it can do things that would usually be done by hand, such as tabulating results of open-ended or narrative questions.
Los Alamos buys Web-style with AMS app
Lab users with Java browsers running under Microsoft Windows, Macintosh and Unix can send requisitions, receive approvals, obtain status reports and route requests using American Management Systems Inc.'s PDWeb. AMS of Fairfax, Va., built the PDWeb requisition and workflow module into its commercial Procurement Desktop application at Los Alamos' request.
Unix-like Linux OS has garnered good reputation and fed fans
The Unix-like operating system Linux, developed by Finnish programmer Linus Torvalds, has found its way into many agencies, including four NASA centers. It will run on a PC with as little as 4M of RAM. Despite a lack of commercial applications, the freeware Linux has millions of users, according to its proponents. Users can download it for free or buy a CD-ROM version with maintenance, priced as low as $50.
I Corps likes its laptops tough
It still works. Turner, an information systems procurement and standards officer with the Army's I Corps at Fort Lewis, Wash., paid $4,600 each for four of the portables from Panasonic Personal Computer Co. of Secaucus, N.J. He bought the notebooks through a Navy blanket purchasing agreement with General Services Administration schedule contractor Government Technology Services Inc. of Chantilly, Va.
As buying season nears end, it's a PC bargain bonanza
Desktop systems with 166-MHz Pentium MMX processors are in the clearance bin at just more than $1,000 each, including a monitor. Fast 233-MHz Pentium II PCs start at less than $2,000, in striking contrast with last fall's baseline $1,500 for a 133-MHz Pentium PC. Government buyers can choose from agency-specific contracts as well as governmentwide acquisitions such as the Air Force's Desktop V and the Veterans Affairs Department's Procurement of Computer Hardware and Software contracts
Army learns to drive on PCs
The Army Military District of Washington based its Defensive Driving Course-Personal Computer (DDC-PC) training on the National Safety Council's defensive driving workshop. Army personnel who drive General Services Administration-issued vehicles must take the training every four years. There are 35,000 active duty and civilian personnel in the district, said Cheryl A. Humbolt, safety and occupational health director at Fort McNair, and about 70 percent need training to drive nontactical military vehicles. More than 3,000 of
Foil thieves with CompuTrace
The General Services Administration regional office in Atlanta has bought 150 copies of CompuTrace, a theft prevention program from CompuTrace Inc. of Vancouver, British Columbia, for its notebook users. GSA paid less than $3,000 for the software through an IMPAC card purchase in June, said Noel Walton, a GSA contracting officer.
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