Digital Government

NASA to outsource all desktops

NASA officials have begun planning for a massive agencywide desktop procurement that would eventually encompass all of the agency's 50,000 PCs. Although NASA chief information officer Ron West said it is too early in the planning process of the desktop initiative to place a value on the contract, h

Digital Government

DOE spurns GSA cell pact

The Energy Department has issued a request for technical proposals for agencywide cellular service turning its back on a recently awarded General Services Administration wireless contract designed to cut most federal users' cellular bills by more than half.

Digital Government

Netscape to provide federal workers with Fortezza support

Pending final government approval Netscape Communications Corp. plans this week to begin allowing any federal government electronic mail user to download and test its Navigator browser that supports Fortezza cards. This initial evaluation will give any federal employee whose email address is denot

Digital Government

Scalable architectures give supercomputing new life

The end of the Cold War was seen by many as the beginning of the end of the supercomputer in the federal government but that has not been the case. Instead sparked by new challenges associated with the end of the nuclear arms race and increasingly complex military confrontations such as the Persian

People

Digital Market wins pact to fine-tune EC product

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency last month awarded a $3 million contract to Digital Market Inc. to advance the testing and development of the company's electronic commerce (EC) product to support electronic systems manufacturing. The contract which will be managed by WrightPatterson

People

Exhibitions and rules on the Web

For those who plan to leave the Washington metropolitan area during the holiday season but fear they will miss the area's rich cultural offerings check out the new World Wide Web site of the Smithsonian Institution's Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES).

Digital Government

Patriot offers NT-based product on GSA sked

Patriot Technologies Inc. has won an exclusive General Services Administration contract to offer one of the first Microsoft Corp. Windows NT firewalls that also includes ActiveX protection. Gaithersburg Md.based Patriot will provide Global Internet's Centri Firewall 3.1.1 a security product specif

Digital Government

Report blasts Mac replacement

The chief information officer at NASA's Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center did not follow agency policy and may have negatively affected space flight mission and safety when he issued an order to replace the center's Apple Computer Inc. Macintosh workstations with PCs that run Microsoft Corp.'s Windows

People

Guidelines seen as core to Web policy

The World Wide Web Federal Consortium has published a revised set of homepage guidelines that could make up the core of the eagerly anticipated agencywide Web policy being formulated by the Office of Management and Budget.

Acquisition

FBI buy may be bid to influence market

The FBI is negotiating with AT&T to purchase a security product that soon will have keyrecovery abilities sources said. Some observers consider the move an attempt to boost the market for encryption products that would make it easier for law enforcement agencies to access suspects' protected data.

People

HP offers servers covering Unix, NT

In a maneuver to tap the burgeoning Internet market HewlettPackard Co. last week announced Internet servers and software that cover Unix and Microsoft Corp.'s Windows NT platforms. HP unveiled the HP Domain Enterprise Server family and integrated HP Domain Business Suite software system Unixbas

Digital Government

NIST taps private sector for testing

The National Institute of Standards and Technology is preparing to release a request for information to expand privatesector participation in a pilot program testing methods to decode encrypted data. The Emergency Access Demonstration Project is testing socalled keyrecovery systems that make up

Digital Government

DES set for overhaul

The National Institute of Standards and Technology is preparing to change for the first time in almost 20 years the required federal standard for the protection of all encrypted government data characterized as sensitive but unclassified. NIST is preparing a Federal Register request for an algorith

Digital Government

Browsing the virtual bookshelf

Tired of accessing online publishers that tease with titillating titles but provide only a portion of a publication's text? Then point your browser to www.nap.edu for immediate access to more than 1 000 fulltext health science and technology publications housed at the new Web site of the National

People

Survey asks agencies to calculate costs

Spooked by the amount of money agencies may be spending on building and maintaining Internet systems Congress has ordered a governmentwide survey of such costs. The survey which the General Accounting Office sent to agencies Nov. 1 has sparked some fear of a future crackdown on Internet use. Congre

Digital Government

NASA official looks to the stars and back home again

Robert Price always had a keen interest in science but it was the ferocious late1950s space race between the United States and the Soviet Union that honed his path to what has become a 29year career at NASA. When Price was in high school the two superpowers were maneuvering to be the first to sen

Digital Government

Raptor captures its largest firewall deal

Raptor Systems Inc. has landed its largest federal deal ever a $1.7 million sale to the Air National Guard to install firewall systems at 96 sites nationwide. The Guard will use Raptor's Eagle 4.0 firewall to protect the internal networks of all of its flying units. The Guard purchased the firewall

People

U.S. sitting duck, DOD panel predicts

The dependence of the United States on computers and communications systems to run its critical power finance and transportation systems places the country at risk in the event of an information warfare (IW) attack according to a report prepared by a toplevel Defense Department advisory panel. Thi

Digital Government

Compaq, Unisys to offer Windows NT on SEWP II pact

The followon to NASA's popular Scientific and Engineering Workstation Procurement (SEWP) will offer government buyers more choices and could pit traditional Unix workstation offerings against Microsoft Corp. Windows NTbased workstations. Of the three vendors NASA selected in early October to prov

Digital Government

Intermetrics lands $33M IV&V pact

NASA awarded last month a $33 million pact to Intermetrics Inc. to conduct independent assessments of space program software. The contract requires Intermetrics Warminster Pa. to conduct independent validation and verification (IV&V) analyses of critical inflight and ground control software to ens