IRS equipment frees up hands
The Internal Revenue Service has purchased a versatile piece of mainframe software that is helping the agency cut operating costs without having to reprogram any of its taxpayer correspondence applications. The multipurpose software for IBM Corp. MVS, VSE and DOS/VSE operating systems lets IRS users modify mainframe print-formatted files before sending them to the printer. The software, developed by Harris Group Inc. of Baltimore, is called TransFormer.
Agencies milk the Web for help
Some agencies are turning to the World Wide Web for daily transactions such as issuing permits and accepting payments. "We're trying to discover how the Web can help us get our work done," said Chris Hopkins, senior technical specialist in the Bureau of Land Management's New Mexico office. Hopkins already has chosen the first transaction-based application he wants to get up and running on the Web. It will maintain lists of vendors that want to bid on
Beat the clock
The Defense Department is chock-full of systems software engineering expertise, and DOD's systems chief and comptroller intend to play hardball to make the military services apply that expertise to the year 2000 conversion. A memo signed by DOD systems chief Emmett Paige Jr. and chief financial officer John J. Hamre will carry the message to the troops that they either upload an inventory of their information systems and interfaces to DOD's repository or risk being
What to do first? Implement new policy or fix 2000 code News
Hard choices are confronting agencies on their urgent timetables for year 2000 code fixes. The Social Security Administration, for example, is working to implement new welfare legislation while finishing its year 2000 repairs. Because of the time crunch, new legislative requirements may not be fully implemented in software initially, said Kathleen Adams, SSA associate commissioner for systems design and development and head of the Year 2000 Interagency Committee.
Industry Exec of Year Phil White is betting on smart cards, not NC
Data mining and visualization tools will flourish as organizations stock their data warehouses for World Wide Web publication, predicted Phillip E. White of Informix Software Inc., GCN's 1996 Industry Executive of the Year. Digital content--text, audio, video and still images--"is going to be king," said the Informix chairman, president and chief executive officer, in Washington to accept his award at GCN's Awards Banquet.
Electronic data interchange hits a home run
Veterans Affairs and Treasury have come in ahead of the other civilian departments with an electronic data interchange system that pays VA vendors $4 billion a year through electronic funds transfer. The EDI payment interface between the two departments' financial systems took more than a year and a lot of teamwork to build. "We got in each other's backyard and played ball till we found out how they hit it," VA systems accountant Rick Stauffer
Net managers gain flexibility
The success of the World Wide Web browser interface is spilling over into enterprise management, as leading hardware and software companies collaborate on browser-based network and systems management products scheduled for 1997 delivery. Heading up the initiative are BMC Software Inc., Cisco Systems Inc., Compaq Computer Corp., Intel Corp. and Microsoft Corp.
At Army, AF Pxes, cleanup duty starts with data
The Army and Air Force Exchange Service (AAFES) is becoming a big data warehouser. That means big-scale house cleaning of the data up front. As AAFES officials put their retail point-of-sale data on line in a 400G data warehouse, they've learned first hand how small data-entry inconsistencies can distort their sales forecasts--an important part of the warehousing project.
Microsoft 2000 plan already nonstandard
Like other software vendors, Microsoft Corp. is reassuring users that its products are "Year 2000-ready," but the company so far is ignoring industry and government recommendations for standard date formats. In 1997, the software giant will update all its software products that use two-character date fields where the two absent characters are assumed to be 19, as in 1996.
A workstation broadens the Desktop V mix
With the award this month of the Desktop V contracts to Hughes Data Systems Inc. and Zenith Data Systems, the Air Force appears to have succeeded in stretching the customary definition of the PC requirements buy. Hughes will supply a 64-bit reduced-instruction-set-computing workstation and not a PC for its high-end desktop system. E.O. Knowles, president of Hughes Data Systems, told GCN his company bid a 166-MHz AlphaStation 200 4/166 from Digital Equipment Corp. for advanced
Their goal is to post spatial data for Web and Giles users
Doug Nebert and his staff at the U.S. Geological Survey want to make it easier to serve up spatial data on the World Wide Web. With agencies up to their elbows in Web construction projects, Nebert said, the ones that collect spatial data are wondering when they'll find time to provide Z39.50 servers, too.
Govt. urged to perform triage in two-digit date field repairs
NEW YORK--Year 2000 software glitches will halt systems in most agencies, experts are saying, because there won't be time or money to fix every two-digit date field lurking in billions of lines of computer code. Some experts are urging government officials to decide now which systems they can reasonably allow to fail.
Microsoft aims to fix up NT for buyers of Posix
SAN FRANCISCO--Microsoft Corp. has enlisted Softway Systems Inc. to make the Windows NT operating system comply with open systems mandates of the Air Force, NASA and other agencies. Softway Systems, of San Francisco, will deliver a Posix command shell and utilities for NT by April 3, when the Federal Information Processing Standard for Posix.2 takes full effect for federal procurements.
Building the network was the easy part
In late 1993, the Navy pulled a handful of aeronautical engineers from their aircraft projects to build a backbone network for the Naval Air Systems Command. They finished in about 18 months, but that was the easy part. Now some of the same "aeros" must figure out how to pay for the network's long-term upkeep and how to deal with the round-the-clock work style it encourages. And they cannot forget the Defense Department's approaching deadline
PC makers are quick to adopt Pentium Pro
Intel Corp.'s 150- to 200-MHz Pentium Pro processors roared off the runway this month in single, dual and quad formations that should make the ride rougher for Silicon Graphics Inc. Rx000 reduced-instruction-set-computing platforms. Leading computer makers are positioning their Pentium Pro boxes as enterprise servers, but they'll come workstation-style, too, with at least 16M RAM and Microsoft Windows NT 3.51 or Windows 95 preinstalled.
With smart cards, FMS moves $80 billion a month on its net
Treasury officials are trying to sort out their changing roles in a nation that depends more and more on non-paper money. Treasury Secretary Robert E. Rubin has appointed a task force to weigh the impact of electronic cash and 'smart" payment cards on Treasury as the sole producer of currency. "Every Treasury bureau has an interest in smart cards," said George Munoz, Treasury's chief financial officer. The credit card-size devices store data in protected memory on microchips.
The PC makers won't make you wait for Win95
The imminent release of Microsoft Windows 95 has PC manufacturers hustling to preload it with Windows 3.x, so that buyers can choose which one to install. A few PC makers, including Dell Computer Corp., plan to list Win95 PCs on their General Services Administration schedules by mid-September. Dell, Advanced Digital Systems Inc. and other makers with flexible, build-to-order manufacturing processes have begun accepting government orders for Win95 PCs.
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