As the business of government, like that of the rest of the world, increasingly is done digitally, managing official records becomes more important. It isn't only the volume of information that's changing; oversight required to manage electronic records also is also increasing.
For several years now, wireless LANs have proved viable for consumer use as a cheap and easy way to set up a home network or to get on the Web at a public hot spot.
Government performance initiatives, including such measures as the President's Management Agenda, in recent years have focused on IT both as a means to an end and as a cost center that must be brought under control.
To believe a certain series of television commercials designed to promote a "videoconference phone," setting up a full-blown videoconference is about as easy as planning a trip to Neptune.
The past year has seen unprecedented consolidation in the IT security field, especially in the antivirus business, where big companies have gobbled up innovative small companies.
Printers have come a long way since the days when lumbering impact printers attached to mainframes, and non-networked PCs pumped out ASCII text symbols on reams of paper that jammed almost as often as not.
While Web-based applications solved the problem of how to get applications to users and centrally maintain them, they presented new technical challenges for the rapid application development tools needed to build and deploy them.
Desktop and server operating systems always have been the black holes of the software world. They tend to absorb useful utilities, technologies and practical applications of day-to-day computing.
Since the first President George Bush signed the Americans with Disabilities Act, agencies and businesses have been under pressure and progressively tighter regulations to make goods, employment and services available to the disabled.
