FCW @ 30
Since 1987, FCW has covered it all -- the major contracts, the disruptive technologies, the picayune scandals and the many, many people who make federal IT function. Here's a look back at six of the most significant stories.
The Commerce Department's Dave Ward checks the alignment of the GPS receiver atop the Washington Monument.
Chronicling 30 years of anything is no small accomplishment. And when the subject is something as big and utterly transformed as federal IT, the scope of three decades of coverage can boggle the mind.
Yet since 1986, FCW has covered it all -- the major contracts, the disruptive technologies, the picayune scandals, the policy changes and the many, many people who truly make federal IT function.
And although some stories have a short shelf life, others have remarkable staying power. They become reference points for major shifts in the way the government works, and they shape subsequent changes that happen years or even decades later.
So to mark FCW's 30 years, we dug into the archives to revisit six seminal moments in federal IT and asked Paul McCloskey -- a former FCW editor-in-chief who was there at the beginning -- to track how those stories continue to resonate today.
Click on the links below for for on these watershed stories in federal IT:
- June 1988: IRS promises nationwide electronic filing
- July 1994: Hackers storm DOD networks
- February 1996: Clinger-Cohen and the end of the Brooks Act
- May 2000: The opening up of GPS
- November 2002: The creation of DHS
- March 2013: CIA commits to the cloud