Author Archive
Paul Constance
Digital Government
DOD Briefing Book
Air Force officials at the Standard Systems Group in Montgomery, Ala., are hoping to become the first alternative source of software components compatible with the Defense Information Infrastructure Common Operating Environment (DII COE). The Defense Information Systems Agency currently supplies portions of the COE for free to qualified developers. Now, under the Global Combat Support System-Air Force contract, contractor Lockheed Martin Corp. will be adapting its own version of the COE to the DISA standards.
Digital Government
Briefing Book
The Defense Information Systems Agency has again reshuffled its deck. William Curtis, formerly deputy director for command, control, communications, computers and intelligence programs (D2), is now deputy director for procurement and logistics (D4). The new D2 is Diann McCoy, who most recently was deputy commander of the Center for Computer Systems Engineering. Joanne Arnette, previously McCoy's deputy, has taken over in an acting capacity.
Digital Government
DOD Briefing Book
The Defense Information Systems Agency is still sending missionaries to find converts to its Common Operating Environment initiative. Now U.S. allies, ever eager to leverage the Pentagon's technology investments, clamor for the COE, too. Sources at DISA said two large allies have requested permission to use COE components for systems development.
Digital Government
DOD picks Pulsar for unclassified ATM net
Pulsar Data Systems is the unofficial winner of a contract to install a 10-node asynchronous transfer mode backbone that is supposed to speed traffic across the Defense Department's unclassified intranet. A Pulsar spokesman said the Lanham, Md., company has been notified verbally that it will receive the contract. The ATM equipment and transmission services will be supplied by Sprint Corp.'s Government Systems Division, a Pulsar subcontractor. Neither Pulsar nor the Defense Information Systems Agency would
Digital Government
In new enterprise license deal, DISA hands out IBM AntiVirus
The Defense Information Systems Agency is distributing IBM Corp.'s AntiVirus software free to users across the Defense Department, even though DISA has an enterprise license for similar software from Norman Data Defense Systems Inc. DISA licensed the IBM product in a June 13 deal with Indelible Blue Inc., a Raleigh, N.C., reseller on the General Services Administration's Multiple-Award Schedule. The one-year agreement, worth $200,000 to $500,000, allows DISA to distribute AntiVirus [GCN, Aug. 28, 1995,
Digital Government
DOD Briefing Book
Lockheed Martin Corp. has begun the functionality, security and performance (FSP) testing of the 19 commercial products that make up its Defense Message System package. Defense Department sources said the FSP testing, which follows individual product compliance tests by the product manufacturers, is the real furnace from which DMS must emerge.
Digital Government
Defense makes critical system switch to GCCS
The Pentagon held its breath last month and switched to the Global Command and Control System, ending one of the most sensitive system cutovers in Defense Department history. The 20 Honeywell mainframes that host GCCS' venerable predecessor, the Worldwide Military Command and Control System (WWMCCS), are still humming and will provide backup for an indefinite period.
Digital Government
Briefing Book
Air Force Maj. Gen. Ronald T. Kadish has been nominated for promotion to lieutenant general and named the new commander of the Electronic Systems Center at Hanscom Air Force Base, Mass. Kadish, the C-17 program manager at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, will succeed Lt. Gen. Charles E. Franklin, the man for whom the Electronic Systems Command staff dubbed a field lab Fort Franklin. The service uses the lab to test systems ruggedness and interoperability.
Digital Government
Compu-crime unit finds cyber evidence
Last year, in the court-martial of an Air Force captain accused of downloading child pornography from government computers at Kadena Air Base, Japan, prosecutors used a forensics expert to nail their case. Computer forensics, that is. Howard Schmidt, director of computer crime investigations at the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, flew to Japan to explain how investigators had undeleted files, found hidden date and time codes, and generally dissected the suspect's hard drive to
Digital Government
DOD Brief
The Major Automated Information System Review Council has given a green light to two Defense Commissary Agency programs. DeCA's Point of Sale (POS) Modernization Program can now spend up to $5 million on POS systems in preparation for its Milestone III MAISRC review. And the Defense Commissary Information System (DCIS) program has passed Milestone II, which will let DeCA begin further applications development.
Digital Government
AF grounded when software shuts down without warning
Halfway through a huge training exercise in Florida last March, Air Force computer operators got a chilling preview of what the year 2000 date-code problem could do to military readiness. As part of Internal Look '96, a joint service exercise based on a hypothetical conflict in the Persian Gulf, the operators were rushing to complete an air tasking order early in the morning of March 21. Equivalent to the master plan for the air component
Featured eBooks
Digital Government
DISA buys 180,000 licenses for Navigator
The Defense Information Systems Agency has bought 180,000 licenses for the Netscape Navigator World Wide Web browser. With the purchase, DISA aims to encourage adoption of the Defense Information Infrastructure Common Operating Environment. Copies of the software will be available for free to program managers building systems designed for compliance with the DII COE, DISA said in a statement.
Digital Government
Six companies share $3 billion pot for DEIS II
It was deja vu last week for the Defense Enterprise Integration Services II buy. The Defense Information Systems Agency awarded five-year contracts jointly worth up to $3 billion to the six original DEIS contractors. The follow-on nearly triples the procurement authority of the original buy and vastly expands the range of engineering and technical services available.
Digital Government
DOD Brief
Lt. Gen. John S. Fairfield, Air Force deputy chief of staff for communications and information, thinks the security and authentication features of the Defense Message System won't be necessary for all users, all of the time. "We are mandating x.400 [and DMS security features] for official messaging," Fairfield recently told GCN, "but we are waiting to see if a certain percentage of unclassified traffic could remain on SMTP [Simple Message Transfer Protocol]. The Defense Department
Digital Government
Air Force buy will be first to include COE
The Air Force's Global Combat Support Systems program will be the first major systems procurement to use the Defense Department's Common Operating Environment from the get-go. Final price proposals for GCSS-AF, formerly known as the Base Level Systems Modernization II or BLSM, were filed with the Standard Systems Group in Montgomery, Ala., by at least six bidders late last month. A single award for the 10-year contract, said to be worth more than $400 million,
Digital Government
Lawmakers pump up DOD systems budgets
If the House and Senate Defense oversight committees have their way, the Army's information technology budget would get a $260 million boost next year. Lawmakers want to fatten Navy and Air Force IT budgets, too. In separate versions of the fiscal 1997 Defense authorization bill released early this month, the House National Security Committee and the Senate Armed Services Committee also recommended modest additions to the Navy and Air Force IT budgets.
Digital Government
Computer-simulated war games still can't replace the real thing
FORT BRAGG, N.C.--Why did the Pentagon host a training exercise last month that launched the largest military parachute assault since World War II? Simple, explained Lt. Gen. John M. Keane. "We can't do it all by simulation." The commander of the Army's XVIII Airborne Corps told reporters at Pope Air Force Base, just outside Fort Bragg, "We can't rely on computers to always tell us what to do. We have to practice our capabilities in
Digital Government
A workstation broadens the Desktop V mix
With the award this month of the Desktop V contracts to Hughes Data Systems Inc. and Zenith Data Systems, the Air Force appears to have succeeded in stretching the customary definition of the PC requirements buy. Hughes will supply a 64-bit reduced-instruction-set-computing workstation and not a PC for its high-end desktop system. E.O. Knowles, president of Hughes Data Systems, told GCN his company bid a 166-MHz AlphaStation 200 4/166 from Digital Equipment Corp. for advanced
Digital Government
Briefing Book
That is how Maj. Gen. David Richwine, the Marine Corps' chief information officer, says he feels at the end of many a workday. Without intelligent e-mail filters that perform the incoming message triage usually assigned to human staff, Richwine thinks we'll all end up buried in "administrivia." Somebody has to start thinking seriously about this problem, he said last month at the Defense Department's Software Technology Conference (STC) in Salt Lake City.
Digital Government