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There's always inherent risk—as well as opportunity—when you make it up as you go. Facebook's new plan to work with big data vendors to connect consumers' offline purchasing data with its member profiles for targeted ads has once again put the social network in the crosshairs of the privacy hawks, even as it has potential advertisers excited.

The timing isn't good for Facebook, just as lawmakers and regulators are investigating whether or not offline data collected by data brokers, when combined with online data, may violate consumers' privacy. As soon as next week, Facebook will announce it is expanding its custom audiences ad program that allows advertisers to link their customer lists with Facebook users to include offline third-party databases advertisers contract with including Acxiom, Datalogix and Epsilon. The three databases—Facebook users, advertiser customer lists and third-party databases—would be anonymously matched via user emails and phone numbers for targeting more relevant ads. While attractive to advertisers, privacy advocates are alarmed.

As the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP) nears completion, National Telecommunications and Information Administration staff is continuing to work closely with our grantees to ensure that projects are wrapping up on time and within budget, delivering the promised broadband benefits to the communities they serve.

Ensuring projects meet their milestones and protecting taxpayer funds is of paramount importance to NTIA. Our staff performs extensive and diligent oversight and provides technical assistance to our recipients tailored to their needs. This oversight involves a significant level of effort, and requires our staff to sometimes take tough enforcement action to protect taxpayer funds. NTIA oversees our projects in a number of ways. Staff remains in close and frequent contact with award recipients via regularly scheduled conference calls, email exchanges, drop-in calls on specific administrative or programmatic topics, and in-person conferences. These contacts serve as a means to reinforce the terms and conditions associated with each award and help ensure that NTIA quickly addresses challenges that arise. Additionally, recipients must report quarterly and annually to NTIA on key financial and programmatic activities. These reports are posted publicly and provide detailed information on progress in achieving program outcomes, use of funds, challenges faced, and expected future progress. Finally, NTIA conducts site visits to projects and has conducted over 150 oversight visits representing more than 94 percent of BTOP federal award dollars. As issues arise, NTIA utilizes tools such as technical assistance, Performance Improvement Plans (PIPs), Corrective Action Plans (CAPs), award suspension, or award termination, to highlight concerns and provide opportunities for recipients to get back on track.

[Commentary] Over the past 25 years, private sector productivity in America has risen by more than 50 percent according the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Government, unfortunately, cannot make the same claim. While the BLS stopped tracking general public sector productivity in 1995, comparing private sector productivity to even the most commercially-oriented government enterprises reveals a large and growing gap in productivity. So what explains this disparity? Technology. The private sector generally absorbs technological improvements and captures and capitalizes on the associated productivity benefits more effectively than government. Mobile technology presents government with an opportunity to hit the reset button and seize the productivity benefits that have eluded it in the past. Mobile devices enable employees to work from any location at any time and remain productive. Although the public sector is often a late adopter of new technologies, its entry into the mobile world is picking up speed.

[Eggers leads Deloitte’s public sector research]

Health information technology can both benefit patients but also serve as a barrier to patients of color, immigrants and those who don't speak English well, according to a new report by four not-for-profit consumer and minority rights organizations.

Their 24-page report, Equity in the Digital Age: How Health Information Technology Can Reduce Disparities, was presented at a White House summit on achieving e-health equity held by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology and the Office of Minority Health, both at HHS, and ZeroDivide, a not-for-profit using technology to benefit underserved communities. According to the report, the use of health information technology must respond to “the needs of all populations to make sure that it enhances access, facilitates enrollment and improves quality in a way that does not exacerbate existing health disparities for the most marginalized and underserved.” It recommended that mobile technology be leveraged to increase healthcare access for communities of color. The report also made several recommendations about using technology to minimize barriers in health insurance enrollment, which is expected to expand in minority and non-native English speaking populations with the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Those technologies include developing online applications “that recognize complex mixed-status households” and web portals that take into account “differences in culture, language, and health literacy among its potential users,” the report said.