June 2009

Legislation to require federal highway construction to include conduits and fiber was introduced in the Senate Monday by Sens Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Mark Warner (D-VA). The Broadband Conduit Deployment Act of 2009 joins a similar House bill introduced last month by Rep Anna Eshoo (D-CA). The bill is almost identical to H.R. 2428, which amends the Federal Highway Act to require new construction using federal funding to employ "industry best practices" in placing "an appropriate number of broadband conduits" to accommodate multiple broadband providers. The Secretary of Transportation would be responsible for determining the number and placement of such conduits. The bill is largely based on the work of the New America Foundation, which released a paper on building "a 21st Century Broadband Superhighway" in January.

Today, a Health IT Policy Committee work group released its initial recommendations for defining "meaningful use" of electronic health records (EHRs). Although the work group's recommendations do not include a formal definition of meaningful use, they offer 22 objectives for EHRs by 2011. The objectives call for qualified EHRs to: 1) Allow patients to access clinical information; 2) Comply with state and federal privacy, security and data sharing regulations; 3) Document patient progress and provide clinical summaries; 4) Exchange critical information with other care providers; 5) Implement drug interaction safeguards; 6) Send patient reminders about follow-up and preventive care; 7) Submit immunization and laboratory data to relevant public health registries; and 8) Use computerized physician order entry systems to transmit prescriptions. In addition, the group released an "achievable vision," which calls for EHR systems to help reduce cardiac arrest, medical errors and preventable hospitalizations by 2015.

[Commentary] This week the Senate Commerce Committee is looking at the wireless marketplace from the consumer's perspective. There are now 270 million cell phone subscribers in America, and 18 percent of households rely solely on wireless phones to communicate. That number's growing, and it doesn't take a big leap to understand that the future of telephony in this country is traveling through the airwaves, not buried in the ground. We need to be focused on ensuring that the wireless marketplace remains competitive, and that consumers have access to innovative technologies whether they live in a densely populated city or a sparsely populated small town. Here's the issue I think we need to wrestle with: wireless service providers are largely deciding what phone you can use. We don't see that happening in similar markets. Your broadband provider doesn't decide what kind of computer you can connect to at the end of your DSL or cable wire. And forty years ago, the FCC ruled in the historic Carterfone decision that AT&T couldn't pick and choose which phones can and can't connect to its network. Is the status quo the right model for maximizing innovation, competition and consumer choice? Or do we need a change?

Vivek Kundra, the nation's new chief information officer, will manage $76 billion in spending to maintain 10,000 government systems as well as 800 active projects to build major new systems (those costing $50 million or more). And dashboards are a critical tool. By the end of June, CIO Kundra hopes to start yet another federal Web site that will give officials and the public a window into all of the active government technology projects. For each project, it will show the purpose, schedule and budget. It will show the name and photo of the federal official responsible and the names of which contractors are working on the project, a fact that CIO Kundra says oddly has not been made public before. Most important, it will keep track of what Kundra believes are leading indicators that a project is going awry.