September 2009

HHS Seeks Public Comment on HIT Standards Committee Recommendations

The Department of Health and Human Services is seeking public comment on the recommendations of the Health Information Technology Standards Committee. The recommendations focus on: 1) Clinical Quality, 2) Clinical Operations, and 3) Privacy and 4) Security. Individuals wishing to make comments on the Committee's August 20, 2009, recommendations may present oral comments at the Committee's next meeting on September 15, 2009, from approximately 1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m./Eastern Time, at the Omni Shoreham Hotel, 2500 Calvert Street, NW, Washington, DC, 20008. Comments will be limited to two (2) minutes per person. A separate notice announcing this meeting has been published in the Federal Register and provides additional information.

1) The Clinical Quality recommendations pertain to the appropriate standardized performance measures that correspond to the HIT Policy Committee's 2011 Meaningful Use Measures. The recommendations include 30 quality performance measures and the data types required for each, of which National Quality Forum (NQF)-endorsed measures can either be retooled for use in an Electronic Health Record (EHR) or will require attestation for the foreseeable future.

2) The Clinical Operations recommendations focus on standards for 2011 Meaningful Use, including quality data reporting, messaging formats, and all the vocabularies necessary for semantic interoperability.

3) The Privacy and Security recommendations focus on authentication, authorization, auditing and secure data transmission standards as well as Meaningful Use measures related to HIPAA compliance.

NAB Urges FCC To Reject Radio Complaint

The National Association of Broadcasters on Tuesday filed comments with the Federal Communications Commission dismissing a complaint filed by music industry stakeholders as nothing more than a "carefully crafted public relations document" that runs counter to the First Amendment, the Communications Act, and precedent set by both the Supreme Court and the FCC. As such, the MusicFirst Coalition's argument that AM and FM stations are threatening and intimidating artists while rejecting the group's ad dollars, should be rejected, NAB said.

Viacom-CBS 10 Years Later

It was 10 years ago that Sumner Redstone and Mel Karmazin unveiled the $36-billion marriage of their respective companies, Viacom and CBS. "Our union will be king," Viacom's Redstone said in the announcement of the deal. Karmazin added that the new Viacom "will be the first 21st century media company ... the future is virtually unlimited for this new and exciting company." Wall Street ate it up. "It's just perfect," Merrill Lynch analyst Jessica Reif-Cohen gushed to Time. It sure sounded good on paper. Viacom had the cable networks -- MTV, VH1, Nickelodeon and a movie studio in Paramount Pictures. CBS had the iconic broadcast network, 200 radio stations, a huge outdoor advertising company, lots of TV stations and even Oprah Winfrey. We all know what happened next. After the Sept. 11 attacks and the first Internet bubble burst, advertising went into the toilet and media stocks tumbled.

Despite Fears, Pledge-Drive Dollars Rise at Public Stations

With the country beset by recession, layoffs and mortgage woes, officials at Washington public radio station WAMU-FM have been understandably nervous about their on-air fundraisers over the past year. As each pledge drive approached, the same question loomed: Would listeners continue to heed the station's plea for dollars? The answer, it turns out, has been surprising. Each of the station's past three quarterly drives has set records, including the most recent one in May. Four months into its new fiscal year, donations are 50 percent higher than at the same time last year, and membership -- public broadcasting-speak for people who contribute -- is up 53 percent. "We're getting astounding numbers," says Walt Gillette, WAMU's head of fundraising. WAMU's numbers are at the sunny end of the spectrum, but things are looking up elsewhere in the Land of Pledge Drives. As money from government and corporate sources has shriveled, struggling public stations have found that the public is willing to step up. Stations across the country say contributions from viewers and listeners have held steady, and in some cases have been rising in defiance of the worst recession in decades.

Privacy Groups Score Obama Team

Privacy watchdogs on Wednesday gave the Obama administration an "incomplete" for consumer privacy; an "A" for medical privacy; a "C+" for civil liberties; and a "B" for cybersecurity. The scores from the Electronic Privacy Information Center and a coalition of consumer, educational, library, labor and technology stakeholders were unveiled at a National Press Club event that organizers hoped would act as an "early warning system" for the administration.

Chopra: Cyber Czar To Be Named Soon

White House Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra told reporters at a high-tech summit Wednesday that the Obama administration will announce its long anticipated cybersecurity coordinator "in the not-too-distant future." "I've had the pleasure of interviewing a number of candidates that I think are top notch," he said. "I don't think we're in a position to say that we have a candidate picked yet but I'm hopeful." President Obama in late May pledged to handpick his cyber czar -- a position recommended by recent legislation and an administration report.

Administration issues solicitation to archive social media content

The Obama administration issued a solicitation in August for a contractor to archive the increasing amount of information published online that qualifies as presidential records. The White House wants an automated process to capture, extract and store information posted by employees in the Executive Office of the President on publicly accessible Web sites, including social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, according to the solicitation posted on FedBizOps and dated Aug. 21. The contractor will be responsible for archiving comments on pages the White House creates and messages sent to the office on those sites. The notice specified the contract applies to offices subject to the 1978 Presidential Records Act, which requires the White House to preserve the president's records and communications. It notes that the White House already is capturing and restoring communications on several social networking sites, including MySpace and Vimeo. The system must be easy to organize and search captured information, and the contractor would be responsible for ensuring the records are transferred to the National Archives and Records Administration in an acceptable format.

Feds to Let Citizens Log In With Yahoo, Google, Paypal Accounts

US citizens will soon be able to log in to government websites using their Google account, or the URL of their Yahoo profile. It's a significant embrace of the open and emerging tech standards the Obama Administration promised. The US government pilot program will allow people to interact with various government websites using an OpenID or an Information Card, he nation's information technology officer will announce Wednesday. These are two of the most popular emerging technologies that let web users manage their identities across multiple websites. Under the new program, which will go into effect in the coming weeks, people will be able to sign in, request information, participate in forums and build user profiles on the government's websites without having to set up a new user account. Anyone will be able to interact with the government sites using credentials provided to them by Yahoo, Google, AOL, VeriSign or PayPal, among others.

Military spends $10M to build Web sites aimed at squelching anti-US messages

Can a series of customized Web sites written in specific, strategic foreign languages actually influence how the world perceives our government's policies? And by-the-way help fight the war on terror? Sounds like a stretch but that is indeed the goal of the project known as the Trans Regional Web Initiative. General Dynamics Information Technology said it was awarded a $10.1 million contract to start the project the officials hope would quell any anti-US communications out on the Web. Specifically the project requires "the capability to posture for rapid, on-order global dissemination of Web-based influence products and tools in support of strategic and long-term US Government goals and objectives." The project will build a minimum of two and no more than twelve websites focused on Modern Standard Arabic, French, English (British dialect and spelling), Portuguese, Spanish, Armenian, Azeri, Chinese, Farsi, Georgian, Hindi, Punjabi, Russian, Tagalog, Thai, Urdu, Bahasa (Indonesian and Malay), according to the group supporting the contract, the US Special Operations Command, which is devoted to fighting "unconventional warfare."

Chopra: Open government directive imminent

The Obama administration is weeks away from unveiling a comprehensive open government directive to push agencies toward greater accountability and transparency, Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra said Wednesday. The directive will lay out a structured schedule for the release of data in a machine-readable format and institute reporting requirements for agencies to describe how they will involve the public in open government initiatives, Chopra said. President Obama instructed administration officials shortly after taking office in January to operate under principles of openness. More interactive Web-based platforms are in the works, according to Chopra. The Obama administration launched an Internet-based dashboard in June that provides details about every major federal IT project at a single location, including each initiative's goals, schedule, cost outlays, key personnel, and contractors used. The OMB also runs Data.gov, a service that provides the public raw feeds of government information.

Benton

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