"When people think of e-gov, they think of service to the citizen," said Tan Swee Hua, director of the electronic services division for Singapore's Infocomm Development Authority. "But e-gov is not just enhancing the delivery of government services. It is also about looking at the effect information technology has on governance."
Five years ago, when military pilots used the flight simulation software of Silicon Graphics Inc., Mountain View, Calif., to practice their flying skills, fog was always displayed outside the cockpit window alongside the flight path of their virtual jets. The haze was necessary, because even the fastest processors of the day weren't able to render details of the passing scenery, said Lang Craighill, senior director of federal operations for SGI Federal.
NetByTel Inc., Boca Raton, Fla., has introduced a telephone, voice-driven, self-service solution that can be used for e-gov applications for citizens without readily available Internet access.
Systems integrators could see a surge in outsourcing and large-scale information technology projects under proposed changes in how the states are allowed to spend federal funds earmarked for IT programs.
An Air Force medical clinic in Utah is testing more than just blood pressure and eyesight. The 75th Medical Group at Hill Air Force Base is trying out a centralized system of rack-mount blade PCs to see if they will save time and money compared with standard desktop clients.
Until recently, data security was provided as a function of system or network security. This reflected the traditional view of the server operating system as the center of an information technology universe.
Last month, staff members in the House Office of Legislative Counsel began signing on to their network by gazing into iris-recognition cameras atop their computers.
How would you like to be Dick Rowe? He's the Decca Records executive who in early 1962 turned down a chance to sign The Beatles, famously asserting that "groups with guitars are on their way out."
Technology, like pop music, changes rapidly. Both thrive from constant innovation and fickle audiences. In the government marketplace, it is often up to the systems integrator to divine the Next Big Thing, to look beyond staid thinking to new innovation.
When Electronic Data Systems Corp. needed customer relationship management software for a new Department of Agriculture system, the company bypassed established industry names to partner with a relative newcomer to the government CRM space, Art Technology Group Inc.
New techniques for indexing audio files that use the sound of words, or phonemes, rather than entire words, could provide a major breakthrough that will make the information in audio files easier to manipulate and exploit.
The federal government should develop more complex weather radar technologies, according to a report from the National Academy of Sciences. The primary weather radar system used by the government today is the WSR-88D, or Nexrad, comprised of about 150 radars worldwide. It supports the National Weather Service, the Federal Aviation Administration and the Defense Department. "Since the design of the Nexrad system, there have been important developments of new radar technologies and methods of designing and operating radar systems," the report said. It is available at <a href="http://www.nationalacademies.org/topnews/#0606">www.nationalacademies.org/topnews/#0606</a>.
In 2001, the Federal Computer Incident Response Center was notified of 6,683 attacks, ranging from defacing Web sites to break-ins of an agency's central "root" servers. In 2000, the agency was notified of only 586; in 1999, that number was 580. Industry and government officials are worried whether agencies have enough manpower to keep up with the increasing attacks on their computer systems. "Security must be considered a process rather than a single technology," said Jack Reis of NFR Security.
Siemens Enterprise Networks found a winning strategy when it blended voice-over-Internet telephone service with standard circuit-switched equipment to provide the town of Burlington, Mass., with an 800-phone network.
Datum Inc. is marketing its cesium atomic clock as an alternative to global positioning system-based solutions that telecommunications companies now rely on to synchronize time across voice and data networks.
In 2001, the Federal Computer Incident Response Center was notified of 6,683 attacks, ranging from defacing Web sites to break-ins of an agency's central "root" servers. In 2000, the agency that monitors malicious attacks on federal systems was notified of only 586; in 1999, that number was 580.
Although the term "information assurance" doesn't appear to drive many contracts coming from the federal government, it is on the minds of agency heads, who often request information assurance-related work in different pieces, such as contracts for security, disaster recovery or public key infrastructure. But what agencies need most, said industry officials, are integrators that can help them see the big picture, to see how the multitudinous aspects of protecting data fit together to create enterprisewide information assurance.
