Digital Government

Novell preps Net-friendly release of NetWare

Novell Inc. next month will introduce the next version of its network operating system, due out later this year, as well as a new tool to centrally manage PCs on a network. NetWare 5 is Novell's first 'pure' Internet Protocol network operating system that is designed to connect networks directly to

Digital Government

Latest data refutes FAA claims on Year 2000

While the Federal Aviation Administration contends that it will meet its Year 2000 conversion deadline, the latest data the agency submitted to the Office of Management and Budget shows that it will have less than 40 percent of its systems operational by Jan. 1, 2000, a source familiar with the dat

Digital Government

WAAS costs still headed skyward

The Federal Aviation Administration, which has faced continually rising costs on its major satellitebased navigation system, says the system will cost hundreds of millions of dollars more over the life of the program. In a report the FAA submitted to Congress last week, the agency said the Wide Ar

Digital Government

GAO sides with Raytheon in Volpe protest

Computer Sciences Corp. late last week asked the General Accounting Office to reconsider its decision to uphold a protest against a $171.4 million Transportation Department support services contract awarded to CSC. In a Feb. 2 decision, GAO directed the Volpe National Transportation Systems Center

Digital Government

TRW wins $187M data center contract

With the 2000 census about two years away, the Census Bureau awarded late last month a $187 million services contract to TRW Inc. to build the centers and operate the equipment that will read more than 1 billion pages of census forms.

Digital Government

High-speed connectivity wares unveiled

Highspeed localarea networking technology took center stage at last week's ComNet '98 show, as vendors introduced new cabling systems, routers and switches. 3M Corp. unveiled a new fiberoptic cabling system that the company said will cut in half the cost of laying fiber to the desktop.

Digital Government

Army Reserve outsources CIO function to Unisys

In what may be a first in government, the Army Reserve last month outsourced its chief information officer function to private industry, hiring a Unisys Corp. executive to act as its interim CIO. Dennis Kelly, formerly Information Technology Omnibus Procurement (ITOP) deputy program manager at Unis

Digital Government

FAA launches $2.75 billion telecom system

The Federal Aviation Administration is set to launch an estimated $2.75 billion program that will revamp the agency's telecommunications infrastructure and prepare it for the next century. The FAA Integrated Communications Systems for the 21st century (FICS21) program, which was detailed last week

Digital Government

Pacific Ocean air traffic system fails

A newly installed Federal Aviation Administration air traffic control system that helps controllers track and separate planes flying over the Pacific Ocean went down for almost 16 hours earlier this month forcing controllers to rely on other techniques to track aircraft. The system that broke down

Digital Government

DLA updates online mall with new products ordering procedures

The Defense Logistics Agency is beefing up its Internetbased electronic mall which is already one of the largest in the government by adding new products as well as making it easier to place and track orders and pay for products. This month DLA's EMall will offer registration product ordering and

Digital Government

Software delays satellite navigation program

The Federal Aviation Administration announced today it will delay by more than a year the rollout of its major satellitebased navigation system.

Digital Government

FAA rolls out advanced radar system

The Federal Aviation Administration late last month began using a new surveillance radar system that will increase airport capacity by allowing planes to land simultaneously on closely spaced parallel runways. The Precision Runway Monitor (PRM) system developed by AlliedSignal and now in use at the

Digital Government

PRC lands $40 million PTO pact

The Patent and Trademark Office unseated incumbent contractor Science Applications International Corp. and awarded to Litton/PRC Inc. a contract valued at $40 million to provide the agency with engineering and support services. PRC won the fiveyear Systems Engineering/Technical Assistance (SETA) I

Digital Government

FAA awards $1B support services pact

The Federal Aviation Administration last month awarded to Lockheed Martin Corp. the National Airspace System Implementation Support ContractII one of the largest services contracts ever awarded by the agency. Under NISCII which is potentially worth more than $1 billion Lockheed Martin will provid

Digital Government

USPS tests smart cards

The U.S. Postal Service is participating in its first test to help evaluate whether the agency in the future should accept smart cards from customers to pay for services offered by post offices nationwide. During the pilot expected to last until April customers patronizing four post offices in New

Digital Government

Bill calls for strategic plan, accounting of transactions

Congress this month sent President Clinton a bill that would impose a new requirement on agencies to report progress in using electronic commerce for procurement. Nestled in the 1998 Defense authorization bill which eliminates mandatory use of the Federal Acquisition Computer Network (FACNET) and a

Digital Government

JetForm builds online fed forms warehouse

Workflow and forms software vendor JetForm Corp. plans to create an electronic forms warehouse on the Internet that would give agencies and the public a single point of access to government forms online. JetForm's announcement coincides with the introduction of legislation last week by Rep. Anna Es

Digital Government

FAA finds Year 2000 tools not up to snuff

The Federal Aviation Administration faced with a time and date software problem that threatened this month to bring down one of its air traffic management systems was forced to manually sift through more than a million lines of code after software tools designed to find code containing times and da

Digital Government

Lotus beckons network computer users to eSuite

Lotus Development Corp. has launched new software that should make network computers a more appealing choice for federal government users. Called eSuite the product family consists of Javabased business applications that will work on any client including a PC but their greatest initial appeal shou

Digital Government

Working toward better messaging systems

For years the government's use of electronic messaging technology has been marked by a scattershot approach with individual agencies setting up their own systems and giving little regard to larger issues of interagency interoperability. In part the problem has been that most agencies have procured