Digital Government

IT services firm acquires Vanstar

Vanstar Corp., a newcomer to the federal market last year through its acquisition of Sysorex Information Systems Inc., does not plan to change its position in the federal market after its merger with Inacom Corp., officials with both firms said. Inacom and Vanstar earlier this month announced plans

Digital Government

Lee champions e-commerce

The frustrations of an Army master sergeant in Saudi Arabia trying to buy information technology equipment and the introduction of Mosaic, the first World Wide Web browser, combined to give John Lee an opportunity that changed his life. The sergeant, coping with time differences and geographical ch

Digital Government

BTG goes back to its roots with Stac

BTG Inc.'s plan to buy Stac Inc. in a $6.9 million deal marks the company's first acquisition since selling off its reseller business last winter and represents a renewed bid to strengthen its core technical capabilities. BTG last month said it would purchase all the common stock of Stac, an employ

Digital Government

GPO bill on deck in Senate

The Senate could vote as early as this week on a bill to reform the Government Printing Office despite strong objections from many federal information technology vendors. The Wendell H. Ford Government Publications Reform Act of 1998 was approved by the Senate Rules Committee in a voice vote during

Digital Government

Kerrey to seek IT security lab, panel

Sen. Bob Kerrey (DNeb.) plans to introduce a bill next year that would set up an information technology laboratory to help defend against threats to the nation's IT infrastructure and to ensure an exchange between government and industry about security threats. Kerrey, the ranking minority member

Digital Government

GAO: Public info open to hackers

Hackers can gain access to sensitive medical and financial information on nearly every American because of widespread security weaknesses in agency computer systems, officials told the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee last week. The General Accounting Office told the committee that significant

Digital Government

Widespread security flaws expose sensitive public info

Hackers can access sensitive medical and financial information on individuals because of widespread security weaknesses in agency computer systems, officials told the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee today.

Digital Government

Father of ASCII tackles Y2K

A new company, BigiSoft Inc., is marketing a tool that attacks Year 2000 problems at the level of ones and zeros, rather than in source code, and plans to bring this tool to the federal market. Vertex 2000, created by Bob Bemer, who is known as the father of ASCII, is a departure from source code s

Digital Government

Senate to OK GPO bill; House wary

With the clock running out on legislation that would reform how the government maintains public access to its print and electronic documents, feverish negotiations by a Senate committee appear to have mollified many opponents who had been working to delay and effectively kill the bill. However, opp

Digital Government

Interagency project measures impact of Hurricane Bonnie

Three federal agencies are collaborating on a coastline mapping project used this month to help determine Hurricane Bonnie's impact on North Carolina's dunes and other coastal structures. NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the U.S. Geological Survey have teamed up to col

Digital Government

CDSI continues post-merger metamorphosis

In a few weeks, Computer Data Systems Inc. will change its name to ACS Government Solutions Group, but the new moniker tells only part of the story of the developments of the past two years at the Rockville, Md.based federal systems integrator. The name change caps a merger announced last year whe

Digital Government

BMC offers flexible plan for licensing agreements

Application management vendor BMC Software Inc. has introduced a price structure that simplifies the buying process for customers who manage distributed systems and have to plan their expenditures over the long term, company officials said. BMC still allows customers to pay for products based on pr

Digital Government

OFPP's Lee sets reform agenda

On the job only three weeks and still awaiting essentials like business cards, Deidre 'Dee' Lee, the new director of the Office of Management and Budget's Office of Federal Procurement Policy, wants to spend her 28month term locking procurement reform firmly into place. But Lee, whose appointment

Digital Government

CyberSign pens signature tech

CyberSign Inc., San Jose, Calif., has developed a biometric signature product that the U.S. Postal Service is testing to speed up bulk mail delivery by making it possible for the agency to authenticate and validate orders from mailers who sign their names on a digital pad and pass the captured data

Digital Government

SSDS secures schedule, hires fed sales force

Systems integrator SSDS Inc. has signaled a change in its federal marketing strategy by obtaining its first General Services Administration schedule contract and hiring a federal sales force. The Englewood, Colo.based company plans to use the schedule to sell network services, consulting, systems

Digital Government

Air Force's CAESAR finds the perfect fit

The Air Force has embarked on a project to collect detailed data on human body measurements using a fullcolor, 3D laser scanner that leaves the traditional tape measure in the dust. The Air Force hopes the Civilian American and European Surface Anthropometry Resource (CAESAR) project improves th

Digital Government

SRA nabs $42M Fedsim task order for IT at GAO

SRA International Inc. this month was awarded a $42 million task order through the General Services Administration's Federal Systems Integration and Management Center (Fedsim) program to provide information technology services at the General Accounting Office. The task order was competed among cont

Digital Government

'Plain language' effort spawns online resource

Americans should be able to understand government documents the first time they read them. This reasonable expectation should go without saying, but the fact is the text of many government documents is confusing, full of legalese and wordy phrases that end up causing more problems than they set out

Digital Government

NCR teams with Acton Burnell for data warehousing solutions

NCR Corp.'s Government Systems Group and consulting firm Acton Burnell have formed a partnership to promote and sell data warehousing solutions to federal agencies. Data warehousing solutions are widely used by companies, particularly retailers, that want to collect as much information about their

Digital Government

Scouting out Year 2000 solutions for the desktop

Many of the software products released in recent weeks to make Year 2000 fixes easier are aimed squarely at the desktop, as vendors scramble to capture business in an area that is not as saturated with millennium bug products as the mainframe arena. According to Infoliant Corp., nearly every major