People

Benefits portal attracts new partners

The Labor Department’s <a href="http://GovBenefits.gov">GovBenefits.gov</a> portal next week will have 30 additional benefits programs, and more programs will join at a rate of 20 to 40 per month for the rest of the year, program manager George Wollner said yesterday.<@SM>

People

OPM gets early cooperation on clearance system initiative

The Office of Personnel Management team working on the E-Clearance project has been pleasantly surprised at the high-tech cooperation it is getting—so much so that OPM expects the e-government initiative to meet its next milestone early.

People

Search engine gives FirstGov edge

The new FirstGov search engine the General Services Administration revved up last month runs smoothly and needs only a few improvements to make FirstGov a best-of-breed Web portal.

People

Agriculture begins to issue digital certificates

Although a full-scale public-key infrastructure is not yet in place, the Agriculture Department has begun issuing its first 300 digital certificates for conducting online transactions with the department.

People

Federal Contract Law: Know what your software rights are—and are not

With government IT spending on the rise, it’s a good time to remind federal customers and vendors that, before signing development contracts, they should review the Federal Acquisition Regulation clauses that dictate the government’s rights in software—and follow them.

People

Major programs within OASIS

<b>Online Administrative Services Information System.</b> OASIS, the first countywide financial, human resources and payroll system, uses PeopleSoft Inc. software for enterprise resource planning.<@SM>

People

Databases tag along with XML

Extensible Markup Language has become the data format of choice for many emerging applications in e-commerce and e-government.

People

OMB promotes shared funding to build e-gov

By the end of the month, agency leaders of the Office of Management and Budget’s 24 e-government initiatives will know how much money they have in their wallets and how many skilled workers they’ll have on board.

People

GIS experts: Keep it simple

Three geography experts yesterday urged agencies to strive for simplicity and time-saving strategies in their geographical information systems.

People

New FirstGov engine will search agency databases

The General Services Administration is touting the new search engine for its <a href="http://FirstGov.gov"> FirstGov.gov</a> portal as the technology that will make it the Web site it was intended to be—a single place to look for virtually any information regarding the government.

People

OPM asks agencies to bid on payroll system

The Office of Personnel Management has begun a program to consolidate the government’s payroll systems from more than 18 to fewer than a handful.

People

OMB moves forward with e-gov architecture

The Office of Management and Budget by October expects to issue the first complete version of an enterprise architecture for its 24 e-government projects.

People

National Defense University creates an e-gov discipline

With the administration focusing on e-government, federal managers are going back to school.

People

E-authentication team takes inventory

As early as next week, the General Services Administration’s Office of Electronic Government will release a draft of its E-Authentication Inventory Template, a table that will list every federal agency's progress toward building a security architecture.

People

PTO selects five vendors to market e-filing services for patents

The Patent and Trademark Office last week signed contracts with five companies to sell electronic-filing services to patent applicants. <@SM>

People

Education continues its paperless chase with plans for a digital-signature system

The Education Department is making the final strides away from paper with the next phase of its electronic grants process.

People

Secure smart card can handle many e-gov apps

SchlumbergerSema, a division of the multinational Schlumberger Ltd., launched the ICitizen smart card for data and access security at the CardTech/SecurTech trade show in New Orleans in April.

People

Another View: Free e-filing is not a simple matter for IRS

All the brouhaha over homeland security overshadowed the fact that IRS recently got through another tax season, one in which 46 million taxpayers filed returns online. They got their refunds in half the time of paper filers. Indeed, IRS’ premier e-government offering, called E-file, earns ratings on the University of Michigan’s customer satisfaction index.

People

PTO awards electronic-filing contracts

The Patent and Trademark Office today negotiated zero-dollar contracts with five companies to sell electronic-filing services for patent applications.

People

OPM previews Recruitment One-Stop

The Office of Personnel Management this week gave a glimpse into the Recruitment One-Stop jobs portal, which is scheduled to open in January. OPM released a request for information outlining requirements for Recruitment One-Stop, one of the Office of Management and Budget’s 24 e-government initiatives.