Digital Government

CIO review foreshadows widespread fed evaluations

In what could be a yardstick for the evaluation of new federal chief information officers the General Accounting Office has looked at the CIO experience within NASA and found it wanting. The authority bestowed on the space agency's CIO is not enough to bring about the level of improvements envision

Digital Government

Senior Executive openingsto be posted electronically

The Office of Personnel Management this week will begin posting Senior Executive Service job vacancies electronically abandoning its practice of issuing biweekly printed lists of the government's most prestigious jobs. Agencies are required by law to advertise an SES position for 14 days. Sending p

Digital Government

Commerce to probe dumping claims; NSF pact put on hold

The National Science Foundation stalled a $35 million supercomputer buy last week following the Commerce Department's decision to investigate allegations that Japan's NEC Corp. is dumping supercomputers in the United States. 'It would be inappropriate for NSF to approve this procurement until the d

Digital Government

R&D pacts to supportsearch andretrieval

The Patent and Trademark Office in conjunction with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) recently awarded its firstever research and development contracts to help administer the complex patent process. Under the agreements which total $11 million the University of Massachusetts a

Digital Government

GAO under the gun to deliver study on widespread contracts

Opening the General Services Administration's Federal Supply Service (FSS) contracts to state and local governments may not be as straightforward as it seems or at least so the General Accounting Office is finding. In eight short months as mandated under the Federal Acquisition Reform Act of 1996 G

Acquisition

Shifting landscape requires training

Forget everything you know about federal procurement. Years worth of knowledge and insights have little relevancy due to the wholesale overhaul of procurement regulations over the last two years. To compete in the new world order government and industry executives are finding the need to refresh th

Digital Government

NSF focuses on high-speed networking applications

A year after dismantling its flagship NSFnet the National Science Foundation announced that it will focus on the development of highspeed networking applications a move designed to relieve researchers fuming over congestion on the Internet. Specifically NSF is entering the second phase of develo

Digital Government

IBM, NCR win $218M USPS pact

IBM Corp. and NCR Corp. last week snared a $218 million U.S. Postal Service contract for pointofservice equipment. The dualaward pact sets the stage for a showdown between the vendors' retail product lines for a potential $1 billion in USPS business. The award of the POS ONE contracts follows a

Digital Government

Adaptive tech breaks auditory, visual and dexterity barriers

Mark Dubnick like millions of other people surfs the Internet and uses the latest technology to traipse through offerings on the World Wide Web. In his case however it's not the slick graphics that attract him. Because he's completely blind Dubnick doesn't get much out of the cybereffects that mos

Digital Government

GSA report ups ante in follow-on debate

Still more heat was introduced into the ongoing battle about the FTS 2000 followon procurement with the General Services Administration's annual report to Congress showing even more telecommunications savings for users compared with commercial rates. Rates for FTS 2000 business averaged 17.8 perce

Digital Government

Server sales surge throughout federal market

Sales are off the charts in the federal server market. At Zenith Data Systems, a company that entered the server market two years ago, sales have jumped from $2.5 million in 1994 to $11 million in 1995. 'In 1996, we are projecting that in our federal world, sales be well over $60 million,' said Ray

Digital Government

8(a)s Grapple With Political Battles, Procurement Reform

The 8(a) community this year finds itself beset by politics and marked by such emotionally charged issues as racial quotas and discrimination.

Digital Government

Software reuse faces barriers in government sector

At one time, the process of creating software was considered 'black magic." Today, through the discipline of reuse, software can be assembled from reusable components.

Digital Government

Dems wired for business

For their Los Angeles convention, Democrats have harnessed tech tools such as streaming video, smart cards and wireless applications