World Oceans Day: Book Uses Data to Increase Understanding
An e-book published to coincide with World Oceans Day hopes to bring together researchers, government agencies, students, and technology to better the understanding of the world’s oceans. Dawn J. Wright is chief scientist at Esri and editor of the second edition of Ocean Solutions, Earth Solutions, a book aimed at compiling and bettering the data surrounding ocean research.
Agency Resources Help Patients Understand Rights
Despite eight in 10 individuals who have viewed their health information online saying the information was useful, 41% of Americans have still never even seen their medical record. The ONC’s new infographic also provides a series of tips on how to gain access to and safely share medical information, including: You cannot be refused access to your health information because you haven’t paid your medical bill. Your provider is no longer responsible for the security of your health information after it is sent to a third party.
Data Drives Personalized Learning
Data provides parents, educators, and policymakers with the information they need to personalize and support student learning. “It’s incredibly important that the individual classroom teacher… [is] able to use data and access data to drive learning in their class,” said Chip Slaven, counsel to the president and senior advocacy adviser for the Alliance for Excellent Education. Measure what matters: Be clear about what you want to achieve for students and have the data to ensure it gets done.
The Situation Report: VA’s Culture War and CCX Brainstorm Takes Washington
We’ll be exploring everything from cloud migration strategies and security, to agency cloud collaboration and the value of open source, and open standards. And over at VA, Bob McConald has had his missteps along the way, but he has surely tried and has made some solid progress in reforming one of the most broken of all government bureaucracies. This has been particularly true in the Office of Information & Technology.
82% of Hospitals Electronically Exchange Medical Information, Study Shows
In 2008, 41 percent of non-Federal, acute care hospitals electronically exchanged key medical data with outside providers; today, that number is 82%. The study defines non-Federal, acute care hospitals as any acute care general medical or surgical, general children’s, or cancer hospitals owned by private/non-for-profit, investor-owned/for-profit, or state/local government and located within the United States. The four key domains of data sharing are electronically sending, receiving, finding, and integrating or using key medical information.
Brian Burns, the Department of Veterans Affairs’ chief information security officer, has resigned, according to an internal agency memo obtained by MeriTalk. His last day with VA will be June 10. Burns took over the CISO 
Burns first entered Federal service in 1997, after a 13-year stint in commercial IT. I think there’s a better than 50-50 chance he’s the chosen one. The employee responsible for leaving the documents on the lawn has been disciplined, according to the VA report 
A recent study pointed to a lack of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) role models for females, but it’s not slowing down females’ knowledge of technology and engineering. A national assessment of eighth graders’ technology and engineering literacy reveals female students outperformed their male peers. Overall, female students scored three points higher 
The first episode discusses solar panels and the associated costs. Solar panels absorb energy from the sun and turn it into usable electricity. They do not give off pollution, and they drive down the costs 
“Many of us still have issues getting or accessing our health information, and if you are like me, it seems to be a never-ending saga,” said Lana Moriarty, director of consumer health at ONC. The average patient has several interactions with the health care system in a given year, meaning multiple patient portals and a continuous burden on the consumer to gain their health care information where and when it is needed. Christine Bechtel, coordinator of Get My Health Data, described the issues most patients have with securing their patient records, despite their expectation that personal medical data should 
Data breaches are costing the health care industry an estimated $6.2 billion, with 89% of organizations represented in a new study by the Ponemon Institute having experienced a data breach in the past two years and 45% reporting more than five breaches in the same time period. Fifty-one percent blamed a lack of vigilance in ensuring their partners and other third parties protect patient information as a top reason for their vulnerability, and 44% say it’s due to a lack of skilled IT security practitioners. “In the last six years of conducting this study, it’s clear that efforts to safeguard patient data 
Students are directed to go online for schoolwork, and corporations are reaping the benefits by subjecting these students to targeted marketing. “Parents are very concerned about how their children’s personal data is being outsourced to ed tech companies, who are using the data for commercial purposes and tracking them online,” said Leonie Haimson, co-chair of the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy. For example, Google and Facebook are widely used by schools and both “spend millions of dollars to influence lawmaking and keep regulation at bay,” 
“We can start talking politics and we still don’t get where we need to go.” Committee members said they were disappointed and baffled over the degree of outdated technology in Federal agencies, some in mission critical systems. A major concern was the use of 8-inch floppy disks in DOD systems, as 3.2 million disks would equal just one flash drive. One congressman questioned whether such outdated technology could remain a secure means of 
The information was part of the third annual release May 5 of the Physician and Other Supplier Utilization and Payment public use data. The data set contains information for more than 986,000 health care providers who received more than $91 billion total in Medicare payments in 2014. The Obama administration has directed CMS to prepare these public data sets in an effort to make the health care system more transparent to patients, 
MeriTalk is running a series taken from a book-length work authored by a senior Federal IT official currently working in government. In this installment, the writer says: I think that the best starting point is in architecture because, “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will take you there.” I worry that the way we have run enterprise architecture has been an exercise in futility. It asks, what do you have now, what are you aiming for, and what is 
NASA plans to spend $731 million on major IT investments, but has not reported any of those programs as high risk. “You can’t manage these IT investments appropriately if you can’t acknowledge risk,” said Dave Powner, director of IT Management Issues at the GAO. Those with failing grades were not the only ones to receive criticism from 
IG investigators became aware of the vulnerability and the data breach during their ongoing investigation of 18F financial management. The vulnerability stemmed from 18F’s use of the Slack instant messaging system in conjunction with the OAuth 2.0 authentication and authorization process. 18F supervisors are also coming under scrutiny for delaying the 
Industry executives urged the Federal government to do more to advance the use of blockchain technology to secure online financial transactions, and to get behind nationwide adoption of cybersecurity insurance. Although bitcoin is an anonymous network, IBM Fellow Jerry Cuomo advised the commission to support what is known as permissioned blockchain, which involves the use of blockchain in networks where the users are known and trusted. “Blockchain has tremendous potential to help transform business and society, but it’s so strikingly different from what people are used to that many business and government leaders are adopting a wait-and-see attitude,” 
Dave Dimond of EMC said the challenge health care providers face has everything to do with meeting patient expectations in a world “where they want things, and they want them now.” A recent survey from Vanson Bourne found that 89 percent of health care providers say technology has already changed their patient expectations. With the health care sector moving rapidly toward value-based care–a model based on using data to improve outcomes while lowering costs–information management will be key for organizations that want to survive, Dimond said. IT is a resource that will be spread too thin without finding new ways to free up a CIO’s time to focus on the requirements of value-based care, 
At the NASCIO Mid-Year Conference in Baltimore last week, Government Technology talked to state CIOs about whether cognitive computing can help them deal with the data deluge. Wisconsin CIO David Cagigal sees a definite role for technology that learns from citizen behavior to inform services and 
FDIC experienced several data breaches over the last few years, at least seven of which were the result of employees taking sensitive information with them when moving on to new jobs. Initially, the FDIC declined to label these as major incidents, which would require immediate reporting to Congress. However, subsequent to IG investigations and news reports, it was determined all seven rose to this level and they 
The local police department has signed on to a 2015 White House initiative that calls for boosting transparency to increase trust in communities. The Menlo Park Police Department joins 52 other law enforcement agencies around the nation, including San Jose, San Francisco, Vallejo and San Leandro, participating in the 
Georgia Attorney General Sam Olens has come out in support of Federal data breach preemption as a more realistic way to ask companies to comply with regulatory requirements in the wake of a breach or data loss incident. His statement comes on the heels of California Attorney General Kamala Harris’ report that the burden on companies to comply with the patchwork of state data breach laws is too heavy, and that state laws should be harmonized to lessen that burden. Saying that “the day of benign neglect is gone,” Olens said companies that are lagging behind in putting reasonable security measures in 
Evolving requirements to greatly improve Federal protection of information technology resources will shape Federal software spending. In fact, Federal cyberprotection goals should be augmented and significantly modified, according to recent studies of the Federal market. The linkage between increased Federal investing in cybersecurity and the requirements for bolstering IT protection are portrayed in two 
There’s no question that the U.S. government has collected an incredible amount of data. Whether for things like the Census, housing, agriculture, transportation, or health care, Federal agencies have accumulated data from around the country. In the past seven years, the White House has made efforts to leverage more technology 
Microsoft surprised the world last month when it filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Justice, alleging that the frequent practice of attaching gag orders to search warrants for customer data violates the U.S. Constitution.
With public-sector information-technology projects at any level of government, one does not have to look too far to find examples of waste and worse. In the wake of a series of failed projects, Hawaii is auditing its last four years of IT spending. On the local-government level, it would be hard to find a better example of what can go wrong than New York City’s CityTime payroll-system project, abandoned after its costs ballooned from $63 million to $700 million amid mismanagement 
Can other technology companies defy the government the way Apple did when asked to help U.S. investigators crack the code of iPhone 5C? Unlikely. Especially in jurisdictions where the governments may not be so benign in pursuing hidden material in electronic devices or data centers. Not EMC Corporation, the world’s largest 
Under the appendix, Federal agencies are required to subject security controls for major applications and support systems to audits at least every three years. “While some documentation of security controls is essential, these three-year assessments are not cost-effective or consistent with best-practices or other Federal policies,” the lawmakers said. Carper and Johnson requested OMB to submit its response to the Senate 
U.S. Chief Information Officer Tony Scott Tuesday hinted his office may be working to help guide Federal agencies to adopt “bimodal IT” to balance modern IT with old but necessary systems.
The senators say the lack of a new policy is preventing Federal agencies from moving to automated systems that can better protect Federal networks from cybersecurity threats. The existing Federal cybersecurity policy was created in 2000 and the threat landscape has evolved 
One of the most recent developments was the formation of a Federal Commission on Enhancing National Cybersecurity. Another was the formal introduction in Congress of the administration’s information technology investment plan, which is heavily tilted toward cybersecurity protection. The goal of the panel is to make recommend actions that can be taken over the next decade to enhance cybersecurity awareness and protections throughout government and the private sector, according to a 
Facebook has published its latest Global Government Requests Report covering the second half of 2015. The transparency report reveals that there has been a 13 percent increase in the number of government requests for data, but it also shows that Facebook is still not able to be as transparent as it might want. For the first time the social network is able to report about the number of data requests that have a non-disclosure 