Government Executive - Authors - Danielle Belopotosky

Defense, VA struggle to share medical information

Danielle Belopotosky — Thu, 22 Jun 2006 00:00:00 -0400

Despite some progress made on two demonstration projects to exchange laboratory results and patient health information, Linda Koontz, director of information management issues at the Government Accountability Office, said in written testimony that the agencies have failed to develop a clearly defined management plan.

"I don't want to criticize the services that our veterans receive. ... I think we can do a better job serving those veterans and the rest of America's taxpayers by better managing our resources and investments," Oklahoma Republican Tom Coburn, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Subcommittee on Federal Financial Management, said in prepared remarks.

Defense and the VA have been working for the past eight years to develop the capability to exchange e-health information.

The two-way exchange project, which enables the real-time sharing of allergy, laboratory, outpatient and radiology information, is being tested by Defense and all VA treatment facilities, Carl Hendricks, chief information officer for the military health system at Defense, said the second project, which facilitates the sharing of lab order entries and results, is being tested at several Defense and VA sites.

Still, the departments have incurred delays to share patient data and have not yet fully populated repositories to store the data for future e-health systems, GAO reported. Even though a December 2004 Defense/VA report said the Federal Health Information Exchange program is fully functional, not all of that data was captured in Defense's system as of September 2005.

Two deadlines have been missed to develop an interface to connect each department's databases. Hendricks said the ability to exchange pharmacy medication and allergy data between repositories should be complete by the end of fiscal 2006.

"Developing an electronic interface that will enable VA and DOD to exchange computable patient medical records is a highly complex undertaking," which could improve the quality of healthcare for its beneficiaries, Koontz testified. "Establishing accountability measures and addressing security" would help avoid further delays.

Hendricks said the department has imposed security policies to protect information systems and medical data. In addition, the department has training procedures in place for government and contract workers, as well as an accreditation process for its systems.

Michael Kussman, the VA's deputy undersecretary for health, testified that the departments in 2005 signed an agreement that defines the "authorities and parameters" of sharing data. The sharing of data also complies with federal health privacy rules, he said.

Moreover, he said progress at the VA to modernize its delivery of benefits via VETSNET has been "discouraging." After a $300 million investment and "numerous false starts," the VA re-launched its efforts in 1996. But only now is the department "developing an integrated master plan for its compensation and pension system," Kussman said.

"It's not fair to ask future generations ... to pick up the tab tomorrow for systems and plans that don't work well or on time today," Coburn said.

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Former federal technology official to take industry post

Danielle Belopotosky — Mon, 19 Jun 2006 00:00:00 -0400

The Information Technology Association of America named Bond as its president and CEO beginning in August.

Bond told National Journal's Technology Daily that the job is the "kind of role I have always hoped to land" and one for which he is best prepared. He has become a public-private hybrid in Washington's tech scene.

At ITAA, he plans to steer the policy conversation around worker talent for U.S. companies, digital convergence and a vision of "America as the innovation headquarters of the world."

He said the Bush administration and Congress have embraced the goal of building an innovation-centric economy in the United States. Policymakers, he said, can play a role by setting the right environment to attract global talent, by reforming the patent review process and by boosting science funding.

"Phil comes to ITAA with an outstanding background in government service, a keen understanding of technology policy issues and a deep appreciation for what it takes to be successful in both the business and association worlds," ITAA Chairman David Sanders and president of Perot Systems' commercial solutions, said in a statement. Bond will succeed interim ITAA President Robert Laurence.

Since 2005, Bond has served in Washington as senior vice president of government relations of Monster Worldwide, the parent company of the job search engine Monster.com. His departure from the company comes after a recent Securities and Exchange Commission probe into the New York-based company's timing in granting employee stock options.

At Commerce from 2001 to 2005, Bond oversaw operations for the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the National Technical Information Service and Office of Technology Policy. He was charged with maximizing U.S. competition and technological innovation.

Industry applauded ITAA's selection. "Phil is a leader wherever he goes and will continue to be an asset to the IT industry in Washington," said Jennifer Greeson, an Intel spokeswoman. Under Bond's leadership, she said Intel, an ITAA member, hopes the group will "continue to be supportive of efforts to boost the U.S. competitiveness agenda, including education [and] funding for basic research."

Before his move to Commerce, Bond was Hewlett-Packard's director of federal public policy. He also worked as senior vice president of government affairs at the Information Technology Industry Council. "He's a strong leader and knows the tech issues and tech politics of Washington as well as anyone," said Ralph Hellmann, ITI's chief lobbyist and Bond's successor there.

Bond also worked on Capitol Hill and in the Defense Department under then-Defense Secretary Richard Cheney from 1992 to 1993.

ITAA launched an executive search after its former president, Harris Miller, announced his resignation in January. Miller sought the Democratic Senate nomination in Virginia but lost the race last week.

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Data mining helps uncover fraud in disaster relief

Danielle Belopotosky — Fri, 16 Jun 2006 00:00:00 -0400

The Government Accountability Office reported its findings on the fraud to the House Homeland Security Investigations Subcommittee on Wednesday. GAO found that the lack of "upfront controls" and inadequate data checks at the Federal Emergency Management Agency led to the improper disbursement of anywhere from $600 million to $1.4 billion to alleged hurricane victims who registered for federal assistance.

As of February 2006, FEMA has delivered some $6.3 billion in aid under its individual and household program, which included a $2,000 debit card to individuals to help cover immediate needs, such as clothing, food and shelter.

"The need to provide assistance quickly led FEMA to issue payments ... without first validating the identity and damaged property addresses," and without validating that losses were related to the hurricanes, said Gregory Kutz, GAO's managing director of forensic audits and special investigations.

In Louisiana and Mississippi, where hurricane damages were widespread, ownership and occupancy of property that were exempt from inspections underwent electronic verification. But after closer investigation, GAO was able to determine that some addresses used were not those of homes but of post-office boxes, a cemetery and even a parcel store.

Through the use of data-mining technologies, GAO uncovered FEMA payments that were based on duplicative registration data. Of the sample of payments studied by GAO, an estimated 16 percent were based on invalid registration information.

In one case, an individual using 13 different Social Security numbers, one of which belonged to the person, received 26 payments totaling $139,000. By searching public records, GAO found that of the 13 addresses that person claimed as damaged property, eight were bogus addresses or were publicly owned.

Matching information from FEMA registrations to a database of federal and state prison inmates, furthermore, GAO found more than 1,000 registrants used names and Social Security numbers belonging to prisoners who were not displaced by the storms. In one case, a Louisiana inmate received more than $20,000 for registering a post-office box as damaged property.

Using information stored on data bases linked to JPMorgan Chase bank, which issued the FEMA debit cards, GAO also was able to determine purchases that fell outside of FEMA's regulations, which are to meet legitimate disaster needs.

Some of those purchases included diamond jewelry, $2,000 in football tickets, a divorce lawyer, $300 worth of "Girls Gone Wild" videos and $600 for a visit to a gentleman's club. One of the questionable uses was $2,000 in donations to a faith-based charity.

"Pursuing collection activities after disaster-relief payments have been made is costly, time-consuming and ineffective," GAO wrote. The office urged FEMA to address the weaknesses in its registration process to reduce the risk of fraud. GAO will refer potential cases of fraud to a task force to investigate and issue indictments where necessary.

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Privacy language urged for bill to digitize federal employee health records

Danielle Belopotosky — Tue, 13 Jun 2006 00:00:00 -0400

The bill, H.R. 4859, is currently under consideration in the House Government Reform Federal Workforce Subcommittee. The measure would require participating health plans and providers to collect claims and services data into e-health records by 2008. It also would authorize funding from a federal health IT trust to provide incentives to contracted providers.

Under the legislation, 8 million federal employees would have access to free e-health records, which in time could lead to lower premiums for the insured, Subcommittee Chairman and bill author Jon Porter, R-Nev., said in prepared opening statement.

Government contractors would have to establish and maintain e-health records for employees, and patients would control who has access to their health information.

The measure defers to the health privacy regulations promulgated under a 1996 law as a way to ensure that employee privacy is maintained when e-health data is exchanged and stored by insurance companies.

Those rules require medical personnel to limit the disclosure of patient information to the "minimum necessary." But Jacqueline Simon, public policy director for the AFL-CIO's American Federation of Government Employees, told the subcommittee that "this rule is not absolute.

"It is questionable if all medical personnel understand the various restrictions surrounding 'medical privacy'," she said.

Simon pointed to a "fragmented" system of state and federal laws that protect privacy to varying degrees. Moreover, she questioned the relevancy of the 1996 law. The Washington Post last week reported that out of the 19,420 grievances filed under the law, no fines have been filed.

"The ubiquitous use of computers has made access to confidential medical records much easier and much more vulnerable to exploitation," Simon added, noting that the digitization of healthcare records could create problems that extend beyond hospitals or clinics.

A recent poll of more than 1,000 consumers found that 86 percent are concerned about the industry's ability to protect personal health data.

Colleen Kelley, the national president of the National Treasury Employees Union, said the recent security breach at the Veterans Affairs Department, where as many as 26.5 million veterans were placed at risk of identity theft, further shows the "status quo is not working."

Kelley called on a full review of the federal privacy rules to ensure adequate protections. Furthermore, she said employees must be protected from their employers accessing any of their personal health records.

Daniel Green, the Office of Personnel Management's deputy associate director of the Center for Employee and Family Support Policy in the Strategic Human Resources Policy Division, said that while OPM agrees with the legislation in principle, the agency is concerned with some of its provisions.

He said privacy issues must be addressed before electronic health records containing personal identifiable health information become accepted in the mainstream and added that, while privacy issues are addressed in the legislation, more work needs to be done to be sure they comply with the current law.

The bill should focus more on implementing interoperable standards covering carrier information than stressing the need for a carrier based "personal health record," Green said.

"There is nothing more personal and private than a person's medical information," Porter said, noting that his bill would not alter the federal privacy rules. However, he urged the Health and Human Services Department to consider revising the rules to ensure their adequacy.

Porter said he will move the bill forward in "short order" in subcommittee. A subcommittee spokesman said a date for action has yet to be set.

Daniel Pulliam contributed to this report.

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Commission strives to aid national e-records adoption

Danielle Belopotosky — Tue, 16 May 2006 00:00:00 -0400

Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt stressed that time is of the essence to find short-term health information technology applications to produce tangible results for consumers.

The recommendations range from HHS-endorsed standards for laboratory data to establishing criteria for securing technologically compatible messages between doctors and patients. Leavitt, who chairs the American Health Information Community, had set Tuesday as the deadline for its working groups to make attainable proposals.

To foster the adoption of e-health records, a working group recommended that a health IT panel endorse standards for commonly used laboratory results by October. There is a March 2007 deadline to establish software certification criteria for e-health records.

But when the group said federal agencies that provide direct patient care should develop a plan to integrate those standards into business practices by the end of the year, officials from the Defense and Veterans Affairs departments said that deadline is unrealistic.

Another recommendation for federal agencies to include the adoption of such standards in their business contracts related to health care also was met with resistance by agency officials.

Assistant Defense Secretary William Winkenwerder urged the group to "proceed with caution," given the department's more than 200,000 contractors. Moreover, transitioning to a system to integrate standards immediately could be cost prohibitive. But he said the terms of contracts to be awarded in fiscal 2009 should be set within the next 18 months, at which point any modification could be included.

Leavitt warned that a delay in implementation by the federal government would send a wrong message to the private sector.

The Office of Personnel Management, meanwhile, said it already has notified its health insurance carriers they are expected to adopt standards as they are deployed. "I don't anticipate any problem of keeping up," OPM Deputy Director Dan Blair said.

The commission agreed that HHS should issue guidance on whether any changes in current laws are necessary to achieve information sharing while also maintaining privacy.

Taking lessons from Hurricane Katrina, which left nearly a million people without medical records, the group suggested that HHS create a basic template for patients to create records. The template includes medication histories, allergies, diagnoses and advanced directives in an effort to assist emergency responders.

Another group recommended that HHS develop the regulatory environment for clinicians to be reimbursed for remote communications such as secure messaging with patients. The group said HHS should work with state agencies to develop licensing alternatives so doctors could provide electronic care across state lines.

HHS also was encouraged to conduct demonstration projects within the next six months to measure the value of e-registration forms and medication histories with chronically ill patients.

The biosurveillance group, meanwhile, called on HHS to develop sample agreements for state and federal health agencies to share data by September.

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Powell recalls State Department tech transformation

Danielle Belopotosky — Fri, 05 May 2006 00:00:00 -0400

Powell served as the national security adviser under former President Ronald Reagan and as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff before his most recent stint as secretary of State. In his mind, he said, the information society began with the fall of communism.

As a witness to and participant in the emerging information age, after a year-and-a-half in the State Department, Powell said he quickly found its computer systems to be inadequate to meet the modern-day needs of its visa program. At the time, the visa-applicant database was incompatible with law enforcement databases to perform thorough background checks.

Under his leadership, the department replaced its outdated Wang computers with 44,251 Internet-capable computers with high-speed access in its consulate offices and throughout the department.

He further tried to send the message to the department to become "hardwired digital" and directed his team to update the Web site, particularly pages with country-by-country information, on a daily basis. At the time, they were updated every three months, to which he responded: "You don't understand. We no longer live in a lunar environment; we live in a transactional one."

"When I look at world," Powell said, "I see not a battlefield but a playing field."

But as other nations try to become players in the digital age, some people working in emerging nations question whether efforts to bridge the "digital divide" between the technology haves and have-nots are moving in the right direction.

At the conference this week, Advanced Micro Devices, Intel and Nicholas Negroponte of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology discussed plans to build low-cost computers for children in the developing world. "When I listened to the presentations here," Ibrahim Kaliisa of Uganda said he wondered whether the companies are talking to each other. Kaliisa serves as special adviser on information and communication technology to the president.

"If truly we can understand these programs in that part of the world, how come these leaders who are announcing these initiatives aren't talking to each other?" he asked.

C.K. Prahalad, a professor of business administration at the University of Michigan, further questioned whether the focus of Internet connectivity should be on computers or something else.

Teresa Peters, the senior program officer for International Library Initiatives at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, said people in developing nations are not "clamoring" for computers; rather, they want cell phones. Organizations need computers the most, she added.

"Many of the great initiatives don't come to much" unless they are integrated into the local society, Prahalad said.

Peters' recipe for successful integration of information technology into developing societies is "small, simple, local and cheap." "If we don't localize, it doesn't work," she said.

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Rice seeks better welcome for foreigners

Danielle Belopotosky — Wed, 12 Apr 2006 00:00:00 -0400

New security measures taken since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, have caused delays in visa approvals and created an image that the nation is no longer welcoming, she said. "We have heard these concerns ... and we are doing everything we can to improve" ease of travel while boosting security, she said.

Industry leaders say burdensome visa processes, high visa fees and confusion over biometric requirements on documents for entering the United States have prompted potential visitors to choose other travel destinations. Furthermore, the United States still struggles to keep pace with global travel. The U.S. share of international travel has dropped 35 percent since 1999, with an annual loss of roughly $20 billion, according to the Travel Industry Association.

To address traveler concerns, Rice and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff in January announced a joint initiative aimed at securing U.S. borders while sending a message that the U.S. door is open to visitors. "When we make it harder for terrorists to travel, we make it harder for them to attack us," she said in explaining the security steps.

Despite gloomy industry statistics, Rice said the number of travelers to the United States has increased every year since 2001. More than 52 million visitors are expected to travel to the United States for study, travel or work this year, she said.

Rice said the State Department has initiated policies that have decreased wait times for visa applicants, with 97 percent now receiving their visas within a day or two.

A work in progress at the Homeland Security and State departments is the creation of "travel documents for the 21st century," including biometric passports to prevent copied, forged or misused documents. E-passports are deployed among diplomats and will be ready for everyone by the end of 2006. Rice said officials also are looking into implementing an e-visa process.

In an effort to expedite travel planning, the United States has created 515 consular positions since 2001. Furthermore, consulate offices later this year will begin testing how digital videoconferencing can help speed the visa process and ease the burden for travelers who live in remote areas to conduct their required visa interviews.

The departments also are testing a program at Washington Dulles and Houston International airports where customized video messages and "friendly greeters" will help ease traveling woes and give travelers a better sense of what to expect in the country.

Rice urged the travel and tourism industry to take an active role in easing travel by advising clients about updated security measures and travel documents. "It is not the end of the road, nor is it as good as it gets," she said.

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Public-private partnership unveils e-health prototype

Danielle Belopotosky — Thu, 06 Apr 2006 00:00:00 -0400

Greater use of information technology has the potential to improve health care and safety while reducing costs, redundant testing and duplicative administrative procedures, said House Ways and Means Health Subcommittee Chairwoman Nancy Johnson, R-Conn. Still, the adoption of health IT has been slow, she said.

David Brailer, who heads the health IT office at the Health and Human Services Department, said progress is being made at the federal level to develop a nationwide e-health infrastructure.

On May 16, the American Health Information Community, a multi-stakeholder workgroup, will present recommendations aimed at developing a bio-surveillance data-sharing system, an electronic registration form and medication history for patients, remote communications options for doctors and patients, and e-health records that include laboratory results.

Furthermore, Brailer said uniform health IT standards will be announced in May, while final criteria for certifying e-health records are expected this month. Proposals for the requirements of a health information infrastructure are expected in June, and best practices for privacy and security policies, which are currently under review, are due in early 2007, he said.

In a House Small Business Regulatory Reform and Oversight Subcommittee, lawmakers questioned whether small healthcare groups could afford to adopt technology that enables the exchange of e-medical records.

"Because many small businesses operate on slim margins, any increase in cost can turn a profitable business into an unprofitable one," subcommittee Chairman Todd Akin, R-Mo., said in his opening statement. The hearing focused on the potential economic benefits that could be derived through the adoption of new technologies.

"Our research shows few physicians have implemented electronic health-record technology because it requires resources not typically found in small physician practices," said Joan Magruder, vice president of business development at BJC HealthCare in St. Louis. The BJG Medical Group includes more than 200 participating physicians.

Magruder said the one-time cost for a doctor's office to transform from a paper-based record system to an electronic one ranges from $30,000 to $45,000. To accelerate the adoption of health IT among its participants, the medical group will underwrite a one-time implementation cost if the doctors purchase the needed equipment.

Connecting for Health, a collaborative of 100 public and private organizations, released its framework for building a health information network capable of sharing e-medical data. The framework, which includes 16 technical and policy components, is available for free online. The documents include testing interfaces, code, technical specifications, and model privacy and security policies.

The system uses a service that identifies where specific medical records are kept but does not identify individuals. Under that approach, information is stored locally by doctors or hospitals and shared when authorized by patients.

Three communities that operate on different health information networks in Boston, Indianapolis, and Mendocino County, Calif., began testing the prototype in mid-2005.

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Push for new travel IDs continues despite concerns

Danielle Belopotosky — Wed, 05 Apr 2006 00:00:00 -0400

Speaking at the Chamber of Commerce on Wednesday, James Williams, director of the US-VISIT immigrant-tracking program, said the requirement for passports or other secure travel documents has two goals: to enhance security and facilitate legitimate travel and trade.

Beginning in 2008, citizens from the United States, Canada and Mexico will have to obtain passports or alternate identification cards that meet the statutory requirements of the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative in order to cross land borders. The initiative was created under a 2004 intelligence law.

In January, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced a plan to issue alternative passports. The standards for the documents have yet to be determined, but Williams said the department will request proposals in coming weeks, with hopes of having production capabilities by the end of the year.

Williams said the purpose of new ID cards is to offer an inexpensive alternative to passports for those living in border communities who frequently cross borders.

But Ken Oplinger, president and CEO of the Bellingham/Whatcom Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Washington state, said a new document requirement will negatively impact the economies of the border communities.

Oplinger said about 80 percent of private U.S. ferry operations are in Washington. Much of that business relies on tourism, and the new border cards could cut into that business, he said, urging the Bush administration to find a long-term solution that addresses everyone's concerns.

He is part of coalition of business and associations from Canada, Michigan and New York that hopes to avoid the adoption of new travel documents by making the initiative subject to standards in a law that mandates federal standards for driver's licenses.

In order to meet the travel initiative's requirements, driver's licenses issued under that law would have to include nationalities, making them subject to State Department jurisdiction. Williams said the administration is pondering ways of harmonizing driver's licenses with department standards. He said "it is possible for a state to opt to meet the standards we set forth" for cross-border travel.

Shirley-Ann George, the vice president of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, said the United States must thoroughly study the impact of meeting the looming 2008 deadline. "It's about getting it right -- mitigating the damage" -- and not inhibiting legitimate commerce and tourism.

The Canadian chamber submitted for public comment several recommendations, including developing a comprehensive public education plan, making a new document affordable and accessible, and offering a short-term pass.

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Government’s work with data brokers prompts privacy concerns

Danielle Belopotosky — Tue, 04 Apr 2006 00:00:00 -0400

With the spate of thefts of or unauthorized access to personal information, there are "questions with regard to the federal government's reliance on and contributions to the use of personal information," House Judiciary Constitution Subcommittee Chairman Steve Chabot, R-Ohio, said on Tuesday at a joint hearing with another Judiciary panel.

The government uses information services for data related to enforcing child-support orders, screening potential employees, helping law enforcers locate missing children, and tracking laundered money, according to Stuart Pratt, president and CEO of the Consumer Data Industry Association. In 2004, some 5.5 million location services were conducted to enforce child support.

To better understand what information is being collected, Chabot and his panel's ranking Democrat, Jerrod Nadler of New York, last year told the Government Accountability Office to report on how federal agencies amass data and whether information brokers comply with privacy and security practices.

Linda Koontz, the director of information management issues at the GAO, reported the findings at the hearing. The report, which reviewed the Homeland Security, Justice and State departments and the Social Security Administration, found that some $30 million was spent on contracts with information brokers in fiscal 2005.

The privacy and security measures of major resellers that do business with the federal government are "not fully consistent with fair-information practices," Koontz said. GAO found that some resellers do not adhere to those practices because "they do not obtain their information directly from individuals."

Furthermore, GAO found that agency privacy practices are unevenly applied. Koontz said while agencies issued public notices about data collection, they did not indicate relationships with information resellers. In addition to such "ambiguities," she said the agencies "lack policies" that address the use of reseller data or ensure the accountability of personal information.

Homeland Security Chief Privacy Officer Maureen Cooney said the department's use of personal information must be "transparent and appropriate." Her office conducts privacy impact assessments, which she says help address privacy questions in the overall development and deployment of technology systems.

Privacy assessments address the risks of collecting and disseminating information in electronic form. They also evaluate protections, as well as alternative processes for handling the information in an effort to mitigate risks. Cooney said the department is implementing those assessments in national security systems that include personal information.

Koontz recommended that similar general guidelines be implemented across agencies.

Homeland Security's privacy office also is drafting guidance on the use of commercial data in government systems, and for comparing commercial and government data.

But the accuracy of that data is a "crucial basis" for the use of information, said Peter Swire, an Ohio State University law professor. "Because of the unique importance to individuals of government decisions, it is especially important to have accurate data," he said.

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Science agency chiefs laud Bush's budget request

Danielle Belopotosky — Wed, 29 Mar 2006 00:00:00 -0500

During a Senate Commerce Technology, Innovation and Competitiveness Subcommittee hearing, Chairman John Ensign, R-Nev., told a panel of agency heads that federally funded research has played a critical role in creating viable commercial products and should continue to feed U.S. innovation.

"Basic research is the key to innovation," Ensign said. Even in tight budget years, he said policymakers need to fund basic research and infrastructure priorities, which are not a drain on the economy.

Funding "transformational research," even when research may result in "dead ends," is critical to U.S. innovation, he said.

Arden Bement, director of the National Science Foundation, said his agency works at the "frontier" and its research has resulted in marketplace examples such as the development of the Internet, the Web browser and bar codes. Its high-risk research allows NSF to anticipate from where the "next big move of the frontier will come," he said.

While President Bush said his top budget priority is to halve the deficit, his fiscal 2007 funding request included "pro-growth" strategies like a 2 percent increase in non-defense research and development spending, said John Marburger, director of the White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy. Non-defense R&D spending is up $1.1 billion, reaching $59 billion, in Bush's request.

Bush's plan is "exactly what we need at the right time," said William Jeffrey, director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, whose mission is to develop measurement and standards tools to enable the develop and manufacture products. It will increase "our capability and capacity."

But the budget request is targeted. "This budget is about priorities," Marburger said. Those priorities are folded into Bush's American competitiveness initiative, which includes key areas of investment in the National Science Foundation, the Energy Department's science office and NIST's "core programs."

The budget would target biotechnology, nanotechnology, information technology and manufacturing, as well as energy sources and biometrics, and it would respond to international standards challenges that U.S. companies face, he said in his testimony.

As the budget process continues, Marburger said the administration's plea to Congress is to keep the proposal "free of earmarks" and "reject unnecessary new programs and bureaucratic burdens and to keep the initiative clean and simple."

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Sun Microsystems CEO pushes 'open source' government

Danielle Belopotosky — Wed, 08 Mar 2006 00:00:00 -0500

McNealy recited a humorous "Top 10" list of similarities, including both regions boasting claims to fame as "high-cost centers" and "trying to protect our ports." He added that "we both invented the Internet," referring to a famous quip by former Vice President Al Gore.

Turning somber, McNealy said the greatest challenges facing the technology industry and government are security threats, finite resources and the global demand for energy. He said government computer systems lack integration and run outdated systems.

He said government's inclination to use proprietary standards creates barriers to improving integration among agencies. "We believe in open interfaces, open source code," McNealy said.

On Friday, Sun and more than 35 other organizations and technology companies formed the Open Document Alliance to improve access and retrieval of government e-documents.

The mission is to enable governments to offer documents and records "independent of the applications" that will be able to be accessed today, as well as the future. They support the use of open document formats based on extensible markup language, or XML, including text and spreadsheets.

"Moving to this format will ensure you won't need to buy Windows 98 to see your documents," McNealy said. Other members of the alliance include Corel, IBM, the Open Society Institute, the Massachusetts High Tech Council and OpenForum Europe.

Other government issues for Sun include access to H-1B visas for highly skilled, temporary employees, export controls, and patents, McNealy told a handful of reporters after his speech.

On the visa issue, he said preventing skilled engineers and scientists from working in the United States has an economic impact. "What are we thinking?" he said of the current H-1B visa cap, which currently is set at 65,000.

That approach could have prevented people like Sun co-founders Andy Bechtolsheim and Vinod Khosla from remaining in the United States after receiving advanced degrees, he said. Instead, in 1982, they were able to create an "enormous amount of economic value and jobs" in the United States.

McNealy said competitiveness is not just an American issue but one that needs to be addressed on a global scale. Today, 3 million new people are experiencing the Internet each week, but by 2007, three out of four people still will not have an Internet connection, he said.

"We've got to get them on," he said. "One of our causes at Sun is to bridge that digital divide."

Sun also is working to promote greater access to education. The company has launched an online global education and learning community, where open-source, Web-based classes are available for educators, parents and students. More than 2,700 members worldwide have joined the community, and 100 projects have gone online since it was launched in 2004, he said.

The online classes are "self-paced, on-demand, free, modifiable and localizable," McNealy said. "We put it on the Web because the Web is a great invisible hand."

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Report: Better IT support leads to more federal telework

Danielle Belopotosky — Mon, 06 Mar 2006 00:00:00 -0500

In its second annual federal telework survey, CDW-G, a company that advises and sells computer and network systems to the government, found that 32 percent of IT professionals who responded said their agencies started or expanded telework programs in 2005. Nearly one-third of the respondents said their agencies could support 100 percent of eligible telecommuters.

Forty-one percent of the employees surveyed said they had worked off site in some capacity in 2005, and that is double from the year before. Of those, 43 percent said they started teleworking in the last year. CDW-G conducted online, telephone and in-person interviews with Washington-area employees and IT staff.

"There is strong interest in federal workers to continue to get more options to telework," said Max Peterson, vice president of federal sales at CDW-G. The study indicates that perceptions about telework are improving, with more than half of the respondents saying their supervisors and 85 percent of their peers favorably view the option.

The fiscal 2001 law overseeing appropriations for the Transportation and Treasury departments directs agencies covered under the law to establish telecommuting policies by 2004. Agencies must determine which employees are eligible to participate.

The Office of Personnel Management has monitored the implementation of such programs and has partnered with the General Services Administration to expand telework across the government.

In 2004, more than 140,000 federal employees teleworked, representing a 19 percent adoption rate among the 1.8 million employees deemed eligible, according to a December OPM report.

But the CDW-G survey revealed that security remains a challenge to continued teleworking growth. Only 39 percent of IT professionals said they have an approach to meet requirements in a federal security management law.

More than half of respondents were unsure if telework requirements hinder their ability to meet the security requirements. Roughly half of IT support staff who responded said their agencies had written IT policies in place for telework.

Only one-quarter of the IT respondents said support is an obstacle for telework growth. For those who work remotely, nearly 70 percent can receive IT support via a telephone help desk or online.

Greater IT support also is enabling advanced collaboration tools for remote workers. According to the survey, Web-based applications, audio and Web conferencing, and instant messaging are keeping colleagues in touch.

Also driving the adoption of federal telework is the investment in continuity-of-operations plans. CDW-G found that 87 percent of teleworkers said they could work off site in an emergency.

While GSA has established more than a dozen telework centers in the Washington area, nearly all employees who telecommute work from home. One percent of respondents work from a center.

"You get the maximum benefit if telework is set up so you can work from wherever you need to work from, as opposed to just giving another brick-and-mortar place to work," Peterson said.

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Expansion of FBI database holding DNA profiles debated

Danielle Belopotosky — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 00:00:00 -0500

The database currently holds the profiles of 2.8 million convicted offenders, according to the FBI. States also link their databases to the FBI's Combined DNA Index System, or CODIS.

The federal database does not include the names or other identifying information, CODIS chief Thomas Callaghan said. He said the software does not allow inputting that information. As of December 2005, the federal database has assisted in more than 30,000 investigations.

In recent years, it has been expanded to include the DNA of those who have been arrested or indicted. It also holds profiles for DNA collected at a crime scene, that of missing persons and human remains, as well as family members of missing persons. Last month, President Bush signed a law to include DNA of those "arrested or detained" by federal authority.

Furthermore, proponents argue that a universal database would assist law enforcement agencies.

The basic premise of the DNA database is to protect against, prevent and eliminate criminal activities, said James Hodge, an associate professor at the Bloomberg School of Public Health and executive director of the Center for Law and the Public's Health. He said the argument to create a universal database is constitutionally sound.

Hodge further said there are ways to use the database to focus on suspects without creating an "intrusive dragnet," such as when the police sweep entire blocks near a crime scene to collect DNA. The potential benefits include more efficient identification of missing persons or would even reduce the costs associated with investigations.

Other non-traditional arguments, he said, would be to close the racial divide that currently exists within the database. The current portfolio makes it much more likely that a black person would be targeted as a suspect, he said.

He also argued that genetic data "is not all that different from other data" that is collected and that it should not be singled out as especially sensitive. On the privacy side, he said constitutional protection of DNA is "essential." He also said states should be required to destroy the DNA sample that is collected to create the profile.

Tania Simoncelli, a science and technology fellow at the American Civil Liberties Union, agreed that the samples ought to be destroyed. "Databases are not just databases but databanks," she said, citing examples of sample misuse in labs. Wisconsin is the only state with a law directing labs to destroy DNA samples.

But she argued against a universal database because it "would be unfeasible, undesirable and unconstitutional."

The cost to build the infrastructure and ongoing maintenance would render it impossible, she said. While DNA is a tool for criminal investigations and establishing innocence, Simoncelli said it does not actually require a database.

She also said it would not necessarily aid criminal investigations given the current backlog in criminal labs. In 2002, for each analysis completed, two investigations remained outstanding.

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Congress to look at agencies' efforts to fight avian flu

Danielle Belopotosky — Wed, 22 Feb 2006 00:00:00 -0500

A 2002 law that aims to coordinate national monitoring, response and reporting in the case of bioterrorism or health emergencies is up for reauthorization in 2007. But since its enactment, the Homeland Security Department has been charged with the surveillance and detection of bioterrorism attacks. And in 2004, the Health and Human Services Department launched its health information technology initiative, which includes the monitoring of and response to public health emergencies.

"We are trying to look at all of those [efforts underway] to determine how they are or are not integrated," Jennifer Bryning said Wednesday during a Capitol Hill briefing, where experts also demonstrated tools for health emergencies. Bryning works on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Bioterrorism Subcommittee.

Since a 2003 Government Accountability Office report, there has been concern that HHS and Homeland Security are duplicating efforts. The report concluded that preparedness for a bioterrorism attack varies across state and local jurisdictions.

The federal government's clumsy response to Hurricane Katrina in August has highlighted the idea of situational awareness, Bryning said. And given the growing threat of an avian flu outbreak, there is a heightened need to think about animal health surveillance, she added.

The World Health Organization on Monday confirmed 171 cases of avian flu, of which 93 people have died. Since then, new cases have been confirmed in Indonesia and Iraq. As a result, Bryning said the HELP subcommittee will focus on three overarching areas: leadership, the role of local health officials, and hospital preparedness.

The subcommittee will review the leadership roles in the national response plan. While HHS is responsible for public health, "there was confusion about how the plan was implemented" by different agencies, she said.

As Congress tackles the broad issues, there are many who are testing new ways to better detect and respond to emergencies. The Army is working with college laboratories to develop air, water and wind sensors that gather data, which is transmitted to mesh networks in real time.

And the National Library of Medicine is moving data from an Internet-based database of toxic chemicals to a wireless information system where emergency responders can receive information on handheld devices in the field, said Jack Snyder of the National Library of Medicine.

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State Department unveils trial of electronic passports

Danielle Belopotosky — Tue, 21 Feb 2006 00:00:00 -0500

Diplomats received the first e-passports containing radio frequency "contactless chips" and face recognition technology in late December. The e-passport contains a chip, which is embedded into the cover of the document and includes a digital image of the traveler, as well as their name, date and place of birth, gender, passport number and dates of passport issuance and expiration.

Contactless chips "interact intelligently via RF with a contactless reader," according to the Smart Card Alliance's Web site. The chips used in the e-passports can be read "at a close distance," according to the department.

But privacy advocates have raised concerns over the possibility of someone in close proximity to the passport-holder who could use a chip reader to "skim," or steal, personal information from passports.

"The dangers of 'skimming' already have been the subject of serious public concern," the American Civil Liberties Union wrote in April 2005 comments to State over its proposal to use radio frequency identification chips in e-passports.

Low-frequency RFID chips be read from up to 20 feet, but the department has maintained e-passports would include chips that only can be read from "approximately four inches" away from the source.

To eschew concerns over privacy and safety, the department said the front covers of e-passports have a built-in anti-skimming device. It is akin to "wrapping them in tin foil to prevent the radio frequency signal from getting through," said Jay Stanley, communications director at the ACLU's Technology and Liberty Program.

The e-passports also are equipped with an encryption feature to prevent the interception of information by a third party, or what the department calls eavesdropping.

"It is certainly an improvement" over State's initial e-passport proposal, Stanley said. But the use of radio frequency technologies still creates a potential problem of security and identity theft. Questions remain over whether the chips still can be read without other people's knowledge and if the technology can be used as unique identifier even if it is encrypted, he said.

Another concern is how much the new passports will cost the consumer. The estimated cost for the government to produce e-passports would increase from the current $2.40 to more than $10 each, according to documents obtained by the ACLU. The figures were disclosed during a speech by Frank Moss, State's deputy assistant secretary for passport services.

Applicant fees for new paper-based passports currently total $97 each. When e-passports are issued to all later this year, the passport fees for first time applicants will remain the same, according to the State Department.

The United States began testing e-passports at the San Francisco International Airport for citizens of Australia and New Zealand, as well as airline crew members from Singapore. The tests aim to determine whether the e-passport systems comply with standards developed by the International Civil Aviation Organization.

The nationwide rollout of e-passports is slated for the end of 2006. But, "the devil is in the details," said Stanley. The implementation still "needs to be scrutinized by the tech community."

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Multi-agency task force to review Web restrictions abroad

Danielle Belopotosky — Tue, 14 Feb 2006 00:00:00 -0500

It is a "top priority" of the U.S. government to "ensure maximum access to information over the Internet and to ensure minimum success by censors to information or silence legitimate debate in this global town hall," Josette Shiner, the undersecretary of State for economic, business and agricultural affairs, said at a press conference.

The task force on global Internet freedom will meet for the first time next week. Representatives from U.S. companies, academic researchers and nongovernmental organizations, or NGOs, will be invited to discuss with State and Commerce department officials the challenges of operating in nations that regulate information.

Shiner said the group will make policy recommendations to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in the coming months.

The announcement came one day before the House International Relations human rights subcommittee is slated to grill U.S. companies about their roles in filtering Internet content in China. Officials from Cisco Systems, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo are scheduled to appear at the hearing, as are State Department officials.

None of them sent representatives to a Congressional Human Rights Caucus briefing earlier this month. Congressional committees have authority not granted to informal caucuses.

U.S. companies have come under fire for helping the Chinese government restrict information online. Yahoo has been criticized for providing to the government personal information about the Internet activities of a journalist, Shi Tao, and a former public servant, Li Zhi. The disclosure of the information subsequently led to hefty prison sentences for them.

On Monday, Yahoo defended its Internet policies. The company conceded "doing business in certain countries presents U.S. companies with challenging and complex questions" but said it takes "users' privacy very seriously." The company further said it would work with government, industry and NGOs to explore industry practices and "promote the principles of freedom of speech and expression."

But some observers said that statement is insufficient. While Yahoo announced that it would act collectively with industry and government, "we want to make sure it is a process that occurs swiftly and doesn't languish," said Amy O'Meara, a spokeswoman for Amnesty International. Furthermore, any initiative must go beyond a dialogue, and that could be enforceable under U.S. law, she said.

New Jersey Republican Chris Smith, the chairman of the subcommittee, is drafting legislation that would require U.S. companies to house their e-mail servers in the United States in an effort to minimize Chinese control over information.

The draft also currently includes provisions that would establish export controls on certain technologies being used by governments restricting free speech, a code of conduct for Internet companies and an office at the State department to implement strategies aimed at combating Internet jamming by repressive governments.

Amnesty International also has urged Yahoo to boldly call for the immediate release of China's Internet dissidents. And Paris-based Reporters Without Borders last week urged Yahoo to release all of the names of Chinese people for whom it has provided data.

In the spirit of promoting access to political information, Wednesday's hearing will be the first in Congress to be covered live by the authors of a few Web logs, according to Smith's office.

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DHS runs drill to test readiness for online attack

Danielle Belopotosky — Fri, 10 Feb 2006 00:00:00 -0500

The Homeland Security Department on Friday concluded a weeklong exercise aimed at assessing public- and private-sector responses to cyber attacks on the nation's critical infrastructure.

Operation Cyber Storm's mission was to assess interagency coordination, identify policy issues and information-sharing capabilities, and pinpoint the challenges that emergency responders face. The department's cyber-security division spearheaded the exercise, which included 115 federal and state agencies and organizations, the public sector, and foreign governments.

The goal of the exercise is to develop a national response system and implement it across all industry and government sectors, Andy Purdy, the department's cyber czar, said at a press conference. The exercise is required by Congress and a presidential directive on national preparedness. An after-action report will be released this summer.

The scenarios in the test, which included pre-scripted, simulated attacks on energy and transportation infrastructures, aimed to disrupt government operations and impact the public's confidence in the system, Purdy said.

"We are increasingly prepared to communicate and coordinate responses to a cyber attack," Purdy said.

The operation offered no single command center for responses, so the department's role was that of "the conductor of the orchestra," said George Foresman, Homeland Security's undersecretary for preparedness. He said the department is to serve as a "crisis coordination point" to detect attacks, alert stakeholders, coordinate responses and provide technical assistance.

Improving coordination with the private sector was critical to the exercise, Purdy said. An estimated 85 percent of critical infrastructures, includes those in the telecommunications, financial and utility sectors, are in private hands. Computer viruses and Internet attacks result in an estimated $80 billion in losses for U.S. companies and consumers.

Alan Paller, director of research at the SANS Institute, said he thought the exercise was a step in the right direction. In observing about 90 minutes of it on Wednesday at the U.S. Secret Service headquarters, Paller said he saw improvement over past incident-response tests because it involved company and agency officials, rather than consultants contracted by the government.

"I looked around and there was the Red Cross security guy, the main technology guy at Wachovia," Paller said. "Last time they did it, neither the people nor the scenarios had enough credibility to matter."

The need for customer confidence often keeps companies from acknowledging cyber attacks, Paller said, but exercises like Operation Cyber Storm let the right people meet and gain confidence in each other.

Paller said the exercise had a right mix of everyday cyber attacks and major attacks of national significance, such as an Internet-based assault on an electrical network.

Other private-sector participants included Computer Associates, Electronic Data Systems, Microsoft, Symantec and VeriSign. The Commerce, Defense, Energy, Justice, Transportation and Treasury departments, as well as the CIA, National Security Agency and officials from Michigan, Montana and New York, also were among the participants.

Chengi Jimmy Kuo, senior fellow at McAfee, a Santa Clara, Calif.-based security company, said the five days he spent in the Secret Service headquarters' basement were educational from a communications standpoint.

"The tests primarily tested who contacted who with what information at what time or whether they contacted anyone at all," Kuo said. "They tested the phone trees. It was good to see people go through all of that."

Bob Dix, executive vice president for public affairs and corporate development at Citadel Security Software, another participant in the exercise, said the drill signified an important first step by the Homeland Security Department on cyber preparedness.

Daniel Pulliam contributed to this article.

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More federal technology work expected to go private

Danielle Belopotosky — Thu, 12 Jan 2006 00:00:00 -0500

Input, a Reston, Va.-based market research firm that released the report Thursday, found that the federal government has tended not to look outside of its IT workforce because of regulatory issues and political pressure.

Language in a fiscal 2006 appropriations law requires outside vendors to prove that they can save 10 percent, or $10 million, in costs over what federal workers could do. But as the aging federal IT workforce nears retirement and budgetary restraints force agencies to reduce costs, the idea of moving some IT projects to the private sector is expected to jump in the coming years.

According to Government Accountability Office reports, 30 percent to 40 percent of federal computer specialists and telecommunications workers are eligible for retirement this year. Half of those are expected to retire.

Input's report forecasts that agency spending on outsourcing will grow at an annual 8 percent rate, to $17.6 billion, through 2010.

"A number of factors have combined to make outsourcing one of the fastest-growing federal market segments over the past several years," Input senior analyst Chris Campbell said in a statement.

The growing deficit, tightened spending and the war in Iraq all will drive the move toward the private sector as a way of reducing costs, streamlining operations or injecting new technologies into the daily operations federal agencies, he noted.

A 1999 statute requires agencies to review their IT workloads and determine whether jobs are inherently governmental or commercial in nature. But that discretion has been left to agency heads. Those agencies that offer competitive sourcing realized a $1.4 billion cost savings in fiscal 2004, according to agency reports to the White House Office of Management and Budget.

Of the defense agencies that outsource some operations, the Navy is the largest spender, according to the report. Meanwhile, Input forecasts the largest growth in outsourcing for the Postal Service. It is expected to expand from $872 million in fiscal 2005 to more than $1.2 billion in fiscal 2010.

The report further identifies six key areas for outsourcing growth, including infrastructure, application and desktop services, network and application management, and business processing.

Overall spending for infrastructure services reached $3.1 billion in fiscal 2005 and is expected to hit $4.3 billion over the next four years. Application services, where vendors manage computer and communications services, represent the largest segment of federal outsourcing. Federal agencies will spend $6.5 billion on them by fiscal 2010.

Despite budgetary restraints and political pressures, federal IT outsourcing is expected to "remain one of the healthiest federal markets," Campbell said.

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Administration to expand foreign language program

Danielle Belopotosky — Wed, 11 Jan 2006 00:00:00 -0500

President Bush last week announced a foreign-language program designed to strengthen national security. Bush, who spoke at the Summit of U.S. University Presidents on International Education, said the best way to spread freedom "is to have those of us who understand freedom be able to communicate in the language of the people we're trying to help."

He said "the war on terror" is not over. "There is still an enemy that lurks," and therefore, the United States must have "a language-proficient military" and intelligence officers and diplomats who can speak the language of those who want to hurt the United States or nations that it helps.

To meet that need, Bush announced the National Security Language Initiative. The program will focus on language areas of critical need, including Arabic, Chinese, Russian, Hindi and Farsi. Bush will request $144 million in fiscal 2007 to fund the effort.

Under the program, the secretaries of the Defense, Education and State departments, along with the national intelligence director, will develop a plan to expand foreign-language learning from kindergarten to universities. The State Department also will provide scholarships to students to study abroad and short-term opportunities for up to 3,000 high-school students by summer 2009.

The program also aims to increase the number of language teachers. It would establish a National Language Service Corps to recruit government workers and civilians to voluntarily teach. The State Department plans to expand its Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant Program to attract native speakers of what are considered critical languages.

The program "will press forward to bring people into the Foreign Service and into the Defense Department and into our intelligence agencies who are competent in those languages," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said at the summit.

To attract international students to study science and technology, Karen Hughes, undersecretary of State for public affairs and diplomacy, announced last week the creation of a Fulbright science and tech scholarship. It will be awarded through a worldwide competition and will offer foreign students an opportunity to study at a "top-flight" U.S. science institution, she said.

Bush also noted at the summit that "it's in our national interest that we solve visa issues." Speaking to the concern by universities that new visa policies have delayed or hindered access of foreign students to attend U.S. institutions, Bush said, "I fully understand some of your frustrations, particularly when you say the balance wasn't actually calibrated well, but we're going to get it right."

Meanwhile, Congress approved language in the fiscal 2006 funding law for the Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education departments to support programs for college students who are participating in advanced foreign-language training abroad in areas critical to U.S. national security. Bush signed the bill into law Dec. 30.

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Senate approves disease surveillance bill

Danielle Belopotosky — Fri, 06 Jan 2006 00:00:00 -0500

The bill, S. 2170, "seeks to establish a real-time, biological threat-detection system and improves the United States' ability to detect, identify, contain and respond to global biological events and potential bio-terror attacks," Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, a Tennessee Republican and author of the bill, said in a statement upon Senate passage.

The measure calls for cooperation with the World Health Organization and individual nations to detect and contain disease outbreaks, such as the current avian flu. It would authorize financial assistance to developing nations for equipment to improve monitoring and reporting, and it would provide advanced training opportunities for public health employees.

The Senate passed the measure by voice vote late on Dec. 21. Information was not immediately available afterward. The bill text was not online, and lawmakers left town.

Under the legislation, the State Department could direct funding to developing nations to purchase communications equipment, computers and Internet services in an effort to detect and report biological threats. U.S. technology manufacturers would receive preferential treatment from developing nations as they purchase equipment.

To ensure that the equipment used by other nations and international organizations can work together, it would have to meet WHO standards. Moreover, the measure would provide technical and grant assistance to facilitate standardization in reporting public health information.

Eligible nations -- those willing to comply with WHO reporting standards-- would have to provide the infrastructure, technical personnel and other resources to receive aid.

The measure also would establish "priority" assistance for some nations, Frist said. For example, he said such aid would be provided for countries that let personnel from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and WHO to investigate disease outbreaks, that provide early notification" of the outbreaks and that share surveillance data with U.S. and world health groups.

The bill further would establish a fellowship program for people in developing countries to pursue graduate degrees in public health and advanced epidemiology. In return, they would have to agree to a four-year commitment to serve as a public health employee for the government or international health organization. Fellowships for U.S. citizens also would be offered.

The measure would authorize money for in-country training courses for laboratory technicians or other public health personnel. Under the measure, the CDC and Defense Department could expand U.S. laboratories abroad to implement on-site training.

Sen. Joseph Biden, D-N.J., introduced similar legislation in 2002, but it never made it out of the Senate. The Frist-authored bill now goes to the House.

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Medicare drug plan hindered by technology woes

Danielle Belopotosky — Wed, 04 Jan 2006 00:00:00 -0500

Computer glitches, incomplete medical information and jammed telephone lines were among the reported problems that surfaced in the first days of Medicare's plan, which was enacted in 2003 and fully implemented Sunday. Some beneficiaries in Maine, Massachusetts, New York and elsewhere reported that their information could not be found in the Medicare database.

Furthermore, some pharmacists who accessed the database to determine patient eligibility for the benefit reported slow computer responses. They had to call into overloaded phone lines at healthcare plans and to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to verify eligibility.

"What we experienced on the first day [Monday] were high volumes" of requests, said Robert Borchert, a spokesman for NDCHealth, a healthcare technology company that handles the electronic verification of program beneficiaries for Medicare.

Borchert said the company made adjustments to the hardware and computer codes to rectify the problems. Improvements to response times were seen later on Monday and Tuesday, with a return to normal query responses by Wednesday. "We are at sub-second response times," he said.

As far as other errors within the database, "That is a different issue," he said. Once individuals are enrolled in the drug program with their healthcare plans, the insurers must submit the electronic files to CMS so they can be put in the agency's format. The files then are submitted to NDCHealth. "It is a continuing process," Borchert said.

Given that 21 million people now have access to the benefit, the few problems have not overshadowed the program's early success, said Peter Ashkenaz, a spokesman for CMS. Moreover, due to the "surge in enrollment" in December, human error in completing enrollment forms and the time it takes to process the forms, some beneficiaries had not received their confirmation letters or plan cards in time for the transition.

In Maine, a separate issue hindered the transition for thousands of individuals. Two days before the program's start, Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, sent a letter to CMS Administrator Mark McClellan, alerting him of reported "inaccurate and incomplete information" of Maine beneficiaries in the computer database.

"The CMS database does not include correct information on roughly half of the approximately 45,000 dual-eligible Medicare beneficiaries," Snowe wrote in the letter. Furthermore, she said some 35,000 low-income people eligible for assistance and also enrolled in the state's pharmacy assistance program had not been validated in CMS' database.

Ashkenaz said the root of the problem in Maine was that "the state had decided" to move its beneficiaries into the Medicare plan Dec. 29. "Needless to say, that was the end of December."

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Panel: Agencies lack control over illegal prescription drug imports

Danielle Belopotosky — Tue, 13 Dec 2005 00:00:00 -0500

"Most of us are critical of federal agencies and their inability to get control of this issue," said Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee Chairman Edward Whitfield, R-Ky. More than 11,000 parcels containing illegal shipments of controlled drugs are imported daily through New York City's John F. Kennedy airport, he said.

Still, Whitfield said it is important to note the accomplishments of the federal agencies in charge of monitoring and inspecting shipments, including the Food and Drug Administration, Customs and Border Protection and the Drug Enforcement Administration. Each has implemented new policies aimed at solving the problem of the illegal importation of illegal controlled substances.

But law enforcement efforts have been challenged by the proliferation of Internet pharmacies even though federal law enforcement and regulatory agencies have convened task forces to address the issue since 1999, said Richard Stana of the Government Accountability Office. He said a new study found agency efforts lack coordination and proper resources to address the issue.

The GAO study identified three factors that complicated agency efforts to thwart illegal importation of drugs, Stana said. First, the volume of such imports has strained federal resources at mail and customs facilities.

Additionally, Internet pharmacies that operate outside of the United States operate out of FDA jurisdiction and therefore evade federal law enforcement actions. Lastly, he said an FDA policy that allows recipients of unapproved imports to provide proof of admissibility has further strained its resources.

The study also found that neither the FDA nor the CBP "systematically collects data on the volume of these imports," Stana said.

"Unfortunately ... nobody is really in charge," said ranking member Bart Stupak, D-Mich. "I do not believe we are closer to solving this problem now that we were nearly a decade ago," when Stupak introduced his first bill addressing Internet pharmacies.

Stupak called on Congress to hold each agency accountable for their policies, and for the administration to communicate which policies are working and those that are failing. He also questioned what role credit card companies, Internet service providers and independent shippers ought to play in law enforcement activities.

"We at least need to come up with new ideas how to approach the problem," he said.

The GAO recommended that each agency to develop a strategic framework for developing interagency coordination, as well as identify the scope of the problem and the resources that are necessary to confront it. Furthermore, the office suggested the task forces set milestones and performance measures.

Rep. Charles Norwood, R-Ga., who sits on the Energy and Commerce Committee, said at the hearing that he soon will propose a bill that focuses on rogue Internet pharmacies that do not require a doctor's prescription to purchase controlled drugs.

Studies estimate that some 90 percent of Internet pharmacies do not require a prescription.

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HHS awards last contracts for digital health records

Danielle Belopotosky — Thu, 10 Nov 2005 00:00:00 -0500

Four contracts totaling $18.6 million were awarded to four groups comprised of technology developers, management consulting firms and defense contracting companies.

"The Nationwide Health Information Network contracts will bring together technology developers with doctors and hospitals to create innovative, state-of-the-art ideas for how health information can be securely shared," HHS Secretary Michael Leavitt said in a statement.

Accenture, Computer Sciences Corp., IBM and Northrop Grumman will lead the groups. Each company will partner with tech companies and healthcare providers to develop an infrastructure within a year that meets government standards and regulations.

Each prototype network should be able to securely share information among hospitals, laboratories, pharmacies and physicians in three participating markets. Information also must be able to flow securely among the four separate architectures, David Brailer, the national coordinator for health information technology, said in a conference call.

The prototypes will test patient identification and information locator services, user authentication systems, and access control to test the feasibility of a large-scale system. The final architecture will be free for public use in order to spur innovation.

The American Health Information Community will offer the contractors direction. AHIC, whose members were appointed by Leavitt, is comprised of private and public players. The group will identify "breakthrough cases," or priority areas for the contractors to implement in their planning.

Five areas have been identified: chronic disease management, quality measurements, biological surveillance, e-prescriptions and a consumer drug-list portal. "We would hope that with these contractors, these breakthroughs might see the light of day," Brailer said.

The consortia also will work with health insurance companies to define a business model and to understand what role they might play, said Scott Myers of Accenture.

The goal is to create a system providing "cheap, easy connectivity for doctors" at a low cost for consumers while allowing public health officials to extract anonymous, aggregated data in case of a national disaster or biological attack, Brailer said.

The announcement of these contracts comes 18 months after President Bush called for a nationwide system of interoperable e-health records by 2014. This "marks a real turning point in the United States," Brailer said Wednesday at the World Health Innovation and Technology Congress in Washington.

This is the fourth set of major HHS technology contracts to be awarded this year. The department previously awarded contracts to develop a process to certify health IT products, find solutions to address conflicting state and federal regulations and privacy practices, and create a system to harmonize information standards.

Other technology companies that are working on similar issues within a consortium include Cisco Systems, Microsoft, Oracle, Sun Microsystems and WebMD.

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E-government on Britain’s agenda too

Danielle Belopotosky — Mon, 07 Nov 2005 00:00:00 -0500

"The future of public services has to use technology to give citizens choice, with personalized services designed around their needs -- not the needs of the provider," he said in a webcast promoting the United Kingdom's information technology strategy.

Blair directed the Chief Information Officers' Council and the Service Transformation Board to devise the strategy, which aims to transform the business of government. In order to ensure effectiveness, the government will engage citizens, businesses and public servants, and draw upon what they want and need, the strategy said.

Its key principles include fostering e-government, and the plan calls for national standards, decentralization of delivery, flexibility and greater customer choice for public services.

The government said it will drive the adoption of modern channels to disseminate information to its customers. By the end of 2005, more than 96 percent of government services will be "e-enabled," according to the plan.

Soon, citizens will be able to access government services via mobile devices and interactive digital television, Cabinet Office Minister John Hutton said in a statement.

"Private companies have been swift to shape their services around people's needs and lifestyles," Hutton said. "Now public services need to raise their game and offer people the levels of convenience, choice and efficiency they rightly demand."

In order to leverage technology across departmental boundaries, Britain's treasury plans to release 10 percent of its annual spending on technology, or $2.4 billion, to update traditional systems.

Furthermore, the government will consolidate its call centers and Web sites. There are currently more than 2,500 government sites and 130 centers in Britain's central government alone.

"For each government organization, the number of different Web sites it uses will be reduced and consistently introduced in line with its overall communications strategy," according to the report. The government also is considering a single non-emergency public service number, similar to 311 in New York.

To further reduce government waste, the strategy calls for a "shared services" approach, which means public organizations would need a common infrastructure to efficiently leverage services. The strategy specified the use of commercial technology to facilitate human resources, finance or other corporate services.

The plan notes that data sharing among organizations is "integral" to transforming government but also calls balancing that need with maintaining privacy. Other components to the strategy include security and identity management.

To ensure that public servants can use the latest technologies, an IT-based career development program for government workers will be launched. "I want to ensure every IT professional in government has the right skills and support to make this happen," Ian Watmore, the head of the e-government unit and the government's chief information officer, said in a statement.

Full implementation of the plan is set for 2011.

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