February 2010

White House wants $78 million for ONC next year

The Obama administration asked for $78 million to run the Office of the National Coordinator in its fiscal 2011 budget released yesterday, a $17 million bump-up from last year's budget for the health IT office.

The 28 percent boost was an exception to more modest increases for agencies and programs associated with health IT. The administration requested $81 billion for the Health and Human Services Department - a $2.3 billion increase over last year. That excludes entitlements such as Medicare as well as funding for health IT incentives included in last year's American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. ONC has been shepherding grant programs fueled by $2 billion in ARRA funds to assist healthcare providers deploy EHRs. The HHS budget will build on that. In delivering the budget, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius remarked that the health IT was essential for modernizing the healthcare system. "The increase will enable ONC to lead and coordinate federal health IT efforts while implementing and evaluating Recovery Act health IT programs," she said. HHS also proposed $80 million of its budget for the Health Resources and Services Administration to expand health IT adoption in community health centers, which often serve people who are under-insured or have no health insurance.

Cybersecurity budget request is smaller, but adequate, says DHS official

Despite President Obama's request for a slight decrease in cybersecurity spending for fiscal 2011, the budget is enough "to move the ball forward" and will emphasize preventing and responding to cyberattacks rather than tracking down where they originate, Greg Schaffer, assistant secretary for cybersecurity and communications at the Homeland Security Department said Tuesday.

The president's request for $866 million to protect computer networks and data for fiscal 2011 is nearly a 4 percent decrease from fiscal 2010. Of the total, $379 million will be allocated to DHS' National Cyber Security Division to limit vulnerabilities in the .com and .gov domains -- a slight increase from the $355 million Obama requested in fiscal 2010. Of that, $162 million would not be obligated to the division until the Senate and House appropriations committees approve a plan for the program's goals, milestones and planned expenses.

$50 Million Budget for Integrated E-Gov

President Obama reinforced his call to modernize government by asking Congress to spend tens of millions of dollars over three years on governmentwide innovations.

The fiscal 2011 budget creates a $50 million account for the "integrated, efficient and effective uses of information technology." Acceptable uses of the money include governmentwide shared IT resources, consolidated and energy-efficient platforms, IT security services and architectural assistance to make agency IT systems talk to each other better. The Office of Management and Budget would control the pool of money from 2011 through Sept. 2013. The fiscal move reflects a new attitude toward federal IT. Throughout his first year in office, Obama has pulled together a team of high-ranking officials, from senior advisers to deputy secretaries, who are depending on IT to improve how the government delivers services and formulates policies.

White House IT budget request lower in 2011

The White House is proposing increasing technology spending by about $900 million in fiscal 2011, only a 1.2 percent uptick over the fiscal 2010 request.

But overall, the administration's IT budget request would be a decrease of 1.6 percent over the 2010 enacted funding of $80.6 billion. This is in sharp contrast to the previous decade which saw significant increases, including some double digit boosts in the 2000s. To help make up for the small increase, OMB is proposing to centralize non-military technology services across the government. What seems like shades of the Bush administration's lines of business or e-government initiatives, the Obama White House will focus on cloud computing, data center consolidations and other IT services. The Bush administration implemented shared services around human resources, cybersecurity, financial management and other areas. These efforts continue.

New regulatory battle brewing over ISP classification

A specter is haunting the Internet, the specter of Title II of the Communications Act—the section that regulates telecommunications common carriers and might eventually be used by the FCC to oversee broadband.

"Exactly what kind of companies might get tangled up into this regulatory Rubik's Cube?" worriedly asked FCC Commissioner Robert M. McDowell during a talk he gave to the Free State Foundation on Friday. "Any Internet company that offers a voice application?" McDowell fretted. "With this newfound authority, why stop at voice apps? Isn't voice just another type of data app? As the distinction between network operators and application providers continues to blur at an eye-popping rate, how will the government be able to keep up?"

Over here at Ars, we're trying to keep up ourselves as the legal war over the FCC's authority to invoke open Internet rules seems poised to take a decisive legal shift—from a debate not just over the agency's authority to regulate the Net, but over whether it can be classified as a common carrier service. Clearly McDowell doesn't like this idea, but arguably it has been forced upon the open Internet movement. Here's why, and a preview of what the debate will look like for the foreseeable future.

Addressing the Next Wave of Internet Regulation: The Case For Equal Opportunity

In October 2009, the Federal Communications Commission released a Notice of Proposed Rule Making in which it asked for guidance on how to convert a principle of "nondiscrimination on the Internet" into a practical rule for broadband service providers.

The ultimate formulation of the nondiscrimination principle could have a significant economic effect on economic welfare in the short term and on innovation. In this paper, we explain the economics of discrimination and offer a new approach for identifying anticompetitive discrimination. Discrimination raises concerns when it interferes with what is often referred to as "equality of opportunity." However, the Commission's proposed nondiscrimination policy, which would limit the ability of service providers and content providers to contract on terms that (1) are mutually agreeable to both parties, (2) are available to all prospective consumers, and (3) do not impose significantly externalities on third parties, is inimical to promoting equality of opportunity. Moreover, given the two-sided nature of the Internet access market, a blanket rule forbidding broadband service providers from offering quality of service to content providers (and charging for it) would likely harm endusers and certain content providers.

[Robert Hahn is Senior Visiting Fellow at the Smith School, University of Oxford and Senior Fellow at the Georgetown Center for Business and Public Policy. Robert Litan is Vice President for Research and Policy at the Kauffman Foundation and Senior Fellow in Economic Studies at the Brookings Institution. Hal Singer is President and Managing Partner, Empiris, LLC and Adjunct Professor at Georgetown McDonough School of Business.]

FCC Authority To Fund Universal Broadband Service Initiatives

AT&T filed a white paper on the Federal Communications Commission's authority to refocus its existing universal service programs to support broadband infrastructure and services. AT&T's paper suggests the FCC has authority under 47 U.S.C. § 254 and Title I of the Communications Act, 47 U.S.C. § 151 et seq., to fund broadband Internet access deployment and subscribership using universal service.

Mississippi Partners With Mapping Firm BroadMap

Mississippi's Office of the Governor and broadband mapping firm BroadMap have announced that they plan to work together to collect and verify the availability, speed and location of high-speed Internet access across the state.

Mississippi is working with BroadMap, the nonprofit One Economy Corporation and with assistance from public policy firm New America Foundation to develop a map enabling state residents and businesses to better understand their options related to broadband. The National Telecommunications and Information Administration recently awarded Mississippi approximately $2 million in grants for broadband mapping and related strategy.

BIP Round Two Application Guide

The Department of Agriculture's Rural Utilities Service has released an application guide for its second and last round of broadband stimulus funding.

The guide provides general information about the program, highlights tips for a successful application, and explains important details about specific application requirements. The guide follows the sequence of application requirements in the Easygrants application system. The guide consists of two main parts: General Information - Provides background information, project and applicant eligibility requirements, definitions of key terms, evaluation (scoring) criteria, and submission guidelines. Application Instructions - Provides detailed instructions for completing your application in the Easygrants online application system.

Consumer groups: Comcast-NBC is a horizontal merger that hurts viewers, Internet users

Mark Cooper will represent consumers in two hearings this Thursday on Comcast and NBC Universal's proposed $30 billion merger. And the way the veteran consumer advocate sees the deal, television viewers and Internet users aren't going to end up the better from it.

Cooper, director of research at the Consumer Federation of America, points out that Comcast and NBC Universal have significant business lines that do overlap. To him, that makes the deal a horizontal merger with much greater competition concerns.

"This is a hugely complicated deal and Justice has to look at all the aspects, including the many horizontal aspects that will take away competition if this merger is approved," he said. "The fact that they keep saying it's a vertical merger is to confuse you."

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