Digital Government

Eastman, Microsoft team on Exchange-based workflow

Eastman Software Inc. and Microsoft Corp. last week introduced a suite of workflow and document management tools designed to be used with Microsoft's Exchange email platform. The Work Management for Microsoft Exchange package marks Eastman's entry into the market for ''collaborative'' software use

Digital Government

Judge's ruling on storage of digital files expected this week

A federal judge may decide this week whether agencies have to evaluate all existing electronic files and decide how long they should be preserved. Despite efforts by the National Archives and Records Administration to craft a shortterm digital records policy, a top NARA official said it is not pra

Digital Government

Users await results of Tera road test

On the cutting edge of computing, where hardware designers think of their machines as race cars, a new highperformance engine is undergoing a test drive. The experimental computer architecture created by Tera Computer Co., Seattle, promises to solve the most daunting problem of supercomputing toda

Digital Government

Agencies start to wield past-performance club

Federal agencies have started to wield the pastperformance stick that Congress gave them in information technology reform legislation by using vendors' success rates on previous IT contracts to evaluate bids on pending pacts. One of the more strict pastperformance evaluations in government is the

Digital Government

Recruits use smart cards for supplies

Army recruits entering basic training at Fort Sill, Okla., this month received smart cards that store copies of their fingerprints to identify them whenever they spend more than $10 to purchase supplies on base. The pilot project, the last of three digitalcash applications being tested at Army bas

Digital Government

Group issues framework for storing electronic records

A working group examining options for managing federal electronic records late last week issued for public comment a framework for managing digital files over the next two years while the government develops more permanent electronic recordkeeping solutions.

Digital Government

NIH adds leasing to 3 pacts

The National Institutes of Health has entered the leasing market with plans to add clauses to contracts in its three multipleaward procurement programs that would allow customers to lease computer equipment. Vendors are requesting the clauses, and several vendors have been allowed to add the claus

Digital Government

NARA guides agencies in digital file disposal

The National Archives and Records Administration told agencies last week that they should make specific plans to preserve or dispose of important electronic records, but plaintiffs who are challenging federal recordkeeping practices in court said the new policy will not protect key digital files. A

Digital Government

FMS launches trial for digital checks

In a pilot that may help the government meet a mandate to electronically issue all federal payments by next year, the Financial Management Service plans to cut its first electronic check perhaps as early as this week. During the next 18 months, FMS expects to issue as many as 1,000 digital checks p

Digital Government

NASA, DOE help Ukraine avoid nuclear disaster

The Chornobyl (formerly spelled Chernobyl) nuclear power plant's concrete enclosure, which is the only barrier between Ukrainians and deadly nuclear radiation, is crumbling, and two U.S. federal agencies are involved in a project to build a stateoftheart information technology system to fix it.

Digital Government

Document management vendor officially enters federal market

Documentum Inc., a leading vendor of software for managing large repositories of electronic documents, formally entered the federal market last week. Based in Pleasanton, Calif., Documentum's offerings include the Enterprise Document Management System, which is designed to allow organizations to ma

Digital Government

NIH, Friendship Computer settle ECS II complaint

The National Institutes of Health gave Friendship Computer, Rockville, Md., a contract with its $2 billion Electronic Computer Store II program March 9, settling a protest against the agency in which the company charged it had been evaluated unfairly.

Digital Government

NARA releases interim records-management policy

With a critical court ruling still under review, the National Archives and Records Administration yesterday issued interim guidelines for how agencies should preserve electronic records.

Digital Government

Thousands of federal computers attacked

Tens of thousands of federal government machines fell victim to a nationwide denialofservice attack earlier this week on Microsoft Windows 95 and Windows NT computers, according to a government emergency response team member.

Digital Government

Administration revamping Access plan

The Clinton administration is overhauling its strategy for delivering federal services electronically, seeking closer cooperation among agencies, state and local governments and private entities that serve similar constituencies. The new strategy departs from the 'Access America' plan, which the Na

Digital Government

Court asked to save feds' digital files

Plaintiffs suing the government over its failure to preserve electronic records went back to court last week, charging that agencies have ignored a judge's ruling that they must save their digital files. In a motion filed Feb. 25 in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., the consumeradvocacy gro

Digital Government

EPA manager creates environment for data

BOSTON On an afternoon in January, Mike McDougall, information resources manager for the Environmental Protection Agency's New England office, glanced out his 10thfloor office window at the traffic streaming along Boston's elevated Central Artery below. Road crews working on the nation's biggGMT

Digital Government

Lawsuit challenges feds' right to put data on Web

In a case that could challenge the authority of federal agencies to publish data on the World Wide Web, a former top reviewer of federal regulations has sued the Environmental Protection Agency over its plans to enhance one of its most popular databases on the Internet. Jim Tozzi, a former Office o

Digital Government

Energy, IBM sign $85M pact for world's fastest computer

The Energy Department signed an $85 million contract with IBM Corp. Feb. 12 to build the fastest computer in the world within the next two years. The pact, under which IBM will produce a supercomputer capable of performing 10 trillion operations per second (10 teraflops), is the newest piece in DOE

Digital Government

Four vendors win DOE research pacts

Under $50 million in contracts awarded earlier this month by the Energy Department, four vendors will spend the next four years developing the technology to build supercomputers that are 100 times more powerful than any that exist today. As part of the DOE program, Digital Equipment Corp., IBM Corp