March 2010

Supporting Innovation and Ensuring Global Competitiveness

On March 24, the House Committee on Science and Technology's Subcommittee on Technology and Innovation held a hearing to broadly examine factors and policies that foster innovation.

"The importance of innovation—creating new ideas, products, and services—cannot be overstated. And in this global, highly competitive economy, it is increasingly the intangible inputs of R&D, education, and entrepreneurial risk-taking that drive that growth," said Chairman David Wu (D-OR). "Innovation is key to creating new industries, and therefore key to the creation of American jobs." In the twentieth century, innovations have moved away from physical-capital intensive technology advancements of the past, like railroads, to more research-intensive advancements, like DNA sequencing, which depend more on factors like R&D and an educated workforce. Economists agree that innovation has a significant, positive impact on the nation's economy; more than half of the growth of the GDP since World War II is attributable to the development and adoption of new technologies. Members and witnesses discussed the role of the federal government in supporting innovation in the 21st century, including fostering collaborations between federal agencies and the private sector, bolstering science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education to ensure a trained workforce, and supporting basic research. Members and witnesses also discussed the appropriate role of the federal government in supporting commercialization and entrepreneurs and state innovation-based economic discovery.

Corporation for Public Broadcasting Launches New Local Journalism Initiative

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) announced funding for a major journalism initiative that will increase original local reporting capacity in seven regions around the country, and a planning project to develop an open information architecture to harness the collective power of the public media network.

CPB is funding the creation of seven Local Journalism Centers (LJCs), combining CPB and participating stations' resources for a ground-breaking new approach to newsgathering and its distribution. The Centers will form teams of multimedia journalists, who will focus on issues of particular relevance to each region; their in-depth reports will be presented regionally and nationally via digital platforms, community engagement programs and radio and television broadcasts.

The LJC initiative builds on CPB's long-standing commitment to journalism and its ongoing funding of public media news and public affairs content and initiatives, including Project Argo, a pilot effort funded jointly with the Knight Foundation to enable a dozen NPR and PBS stations to expand their reporting and increase their expertise on topics of local relevance.

In addition, CPB also announced funding for the Public Media Platform, a project administered by NPR, in partnership with PBS, APM, PRI and PRX. This coalition of public media leaders will develop a prototype for a flexible common platform to support public media innovation and collaboration. The ultimate goal is to collect, distribute, present and monetize digital media content efficiently, allowing producers and stations to devote their resources to reporting, content production and community engagement.

The Local Journalism Centers will each focus on a particular issue relevant to communities throughout their region. The seven centers will hire new reporters, editors and additional positions that include outreach and coordination duties. The total CPB and station investment over two years is approximately $10.5 million, with an expectation that each Center will become self-sustaining by the end of the two-year funding period. The LJCs currently under development are:

Southwest
KJZZ (Phoenix, AZ), KPBS (San Diego, CA), Nevada Public Radio, KRWG (southwest New Mexico and far-west Texas), Texas Public Radio, KUAZ (Tucson, AZ), KNAU (Flagstaff, AZ). The LJC is called "Fronteras: The Changing America Desk." A bi-lingual reporting team will focus on cultural shifts that are transforming the southwest, including Latino, Native American and border issues. The partner organizations will hire seven reporters, two editors and a social media editor.

The Plains
KCUR (Kansas City, MO), Iowa Public Radio, NET Radio and Television (Nebraska), KBIA (Columbia, MO), High Plains Public Radio (Garden City, KS), Kansas Public Radio. The LJC will focus on agribusiness, including farming practices, food and fuel production, looking both at local and national issues. News and information will be fed throughout the public media network, via radio, television production and online. The partner organizations will hire three full-time and one part-time journalist, an editor and an outreach coordinator.

Upstate New York
WXXI (Rochester), WMHT (Schenectady), WNED (Buffalo), WRVO (Oswego), WSKG (Binghamton). The LJC will focus on the push to remake the regional economy in upstate New York by focusing on innovation technology to stimulate development. Partner stations will hire a total of five reporters, an editor and a managing facilitator to develop feature reports and news spots as well as an interactive web portal.

Upper Mid-West
Michigan Radio, WBEZ (Chicago), Ideastream (Cleveland). The LJC will focus on reinventing the industrial heartland and in particular the economy in the upper Midwest. Partner stations will create multi-media content on the region's changing economy and report out via radio, television, digital and community programs. The partnering organizations will hire three new reporters, a senior editor and a senior producer.

Central Florida
WUSF (Tampa, Fl), WEDU (Tampa, Fl), WGCU (Fort Meyers), WMFE (Orlando, Fl), WMNF (Tampa, Fl), WUFT (Gainesville, Fl). The LJC will focus on creating multi-media content related to healthcare issues in central Florida. The goal is to create a platform for community discussion through generating new content and events, including online. The partner organizations will hire five reporters, an executive editor, a senior multimedia manager and a community engagement specialist.

Wireless survey: 91% of Americans use cell phones

Even in the face of the largest economic recession since the Great Depression, the wireless industry continues to grow as a vast majority of the US population is using a mobile phone.

Over 285 million Americans are mobile subscribers, about 91 percent of the total population. That's up 15 million over the same time last year, and growth has slowed somewhat due to market saturation. Those 285 million callers used 1.12 trillion minutes of talk time in the last half of 2009, up 3.4 percent of the same period in 2008. That breaks down to an average of 6.1 billion minutes used per day, or about 21 minutes per person per day. Wireless service revenues totaled $77 billion for the last half of the year, up slightly from last year. But the real growth is coming from wireless data services -- mobile Web, text messages, and other non-voice services. In the latter half of last year, revenue for wireless data service totaled over $22 billion, nearly a third of overall wireless services revenue and up 26 percent year-over-year. 257 million "data-capable" devices are active on US carriers' networks. However, roughly 50 million of those are smartphones capable of more advanced wireless services than SMS, MMS, and WAP browsing. Another 12 million are 3G-enabled laptops. Those devices are responsible for the majority of data service revenues.

Rep Smith Blasts Microsoft

Microsoft came under attack Wednesday from a House lawmaker for not following Google's lead in resisting China's demand for foreign firms to abide by the country's censorship rules and Internet restrictions.

During a hearing focused on Internet control in China before the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, Rep Chris Smith (R-NJ) singled out Microsoft, which has said it will continue to operate in China and follow Chinese laws. Microsoft "needs to get with the program" and "join the side of human rights...rather than enabling tyranny," Smith said. In response, Microsoft spokeswoman Christina Pearson said, "We appreciate that different companies may make different decisions based on their own experiences and views. At Microsoft we remain committed to advancing free expression through active engagement in over 100 countries, even as we comply with the laws in every country in which we operate."

House Passes File Sharing Bill

The House on Tuesday passed a bill that would mandate a policy banning the use of file sharing software on federal computers and networks, along with those used by contractors.

H.R. 4098, introduced in November, directs the Office of Management and Budget to issue rules that forbid the tools and allow agencies to seek exemptions for legitimate uses on a case-by-case basis. The House vote -- 408 to 13 -- will bolster national security by safeguarding sensitive information, backers of the bill said. "We can no longer ignore the threat to sensitive government information, businesses and consumers that insecure peer-to-peer networks pose," said Edolphus Towns (D-NY), the bill's sponsor, in a statement. "Congress acted today to protect the American people by helping to prevent inadvertent security breaches on insecure networks."

The bill now moves to the Senate.

Senator chides White House for ignoring existing transparency laws

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) said on Tuesday that the Obama administration's open government agenda is diverting its attention from existing transparency laws, including a spending accountability act that President Obama co-sponsored when he was in the Senate. At a March 23 hearing, Sen Coburn told White House officials that they are pursuing a transparency agenda that neglects other initiatives such as building out USAspending.gov, a searchable Web site containing all federal awards that Congress mandated the government to create in 2006. "Had you put the same effort into USAspending.gov as you've put into everything else, we'd be a lot further down the road right now, wouldn't we?" he said at a hearing of the Subcommittee on Federal Financial Management, Government Information, Federal Services and International Security. "There is only one of these [transparency agendas] that's a law, and in fact we're out of compliance on the law. . . . The others are mandates that the president has set, and I applaud them, but in fact [they've held us up from] achieving what we were trying to achieve."

House kicks off caucus to push for open government laws

House Republicans and Democrats on Thursday launched a congressional transparency caucus that will call for new laws requiring federal information be accessible on the Internet for free and will teach other members about open government initiatives.

"On a bipartisan basis this caucus can bring about real changes to the way our government does business," said Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), a co-chair of the new 19-member group and ranking member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. "We need to work together if we're going to ensure that taxpayer dollars are spent responsibly and lawmakers are operating honestly and effectively," added the caucus' other co-chair, Rep. Mike Quigley (D-IL). The caucus will work to educate peers and the public, legislate new policies and oversee existing ones, in that order, according to the group's members. A priority area will be the president's open government directive, which demands agencies increasingly publish their records online. Lawmakers from both parties are attempting to require agencies to post public information online by default, which would subsequently preserve for posterity parts of the directive.

Health Care Opponents Dominate the Blogosphere

Last week, the blogosphere had something in common with the mainstream media. As the health care bill moved toward House passage, both devoted unprecedented levels of attention to the issue.

The difference was that while the traditional press was focused largely on political strategy and counting votes, bloggers sounded off about the bill itself and the legislative process. From March 15-19, fully 56% of the week's links in the blogosphere were about the health care issue, according to the New Media Index from the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism. That was five times bigger than the next story and the highest level of interest in the subject since PEJ began tracking social media in January 2009. In addition, it represents the most attention bloggers have paid to any topic since June 15-19, 2009, when the post-election protests in Iran made up 63% of the week's links.

Telework and benefits bills take one step forward

A House subcommittee on Wednesday approved legislation to promote telework in federal agencies, increase oversight of prescription drug coverage in the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program and allow federal employees to invest the value of their unused annual leave in their retirement accounts. The House Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on the Federal Workforce, Postal Service and District of Columbia unanimously approved the 2009 Telework Improvements Act (H.R. 1722), introduced by Rep. John Sarbanes (D-MD). The bill would codify a governmentwide telework policy that Office of Personnel Management Director John Berry announced in April 2009.

CIO survey reveals cautious embrace of emerging trends

The presidential push for transparency in government may provide direction for federal chief information officers' efforts, but cybersecurity concerns continue to top the list of CIOs' biggest headaches. For industry group TechAmerica's 20th Annual Survey of Federal CIOs, released March 23, Grant Thornton LLP interviewed 45 CIOs and information resource management officials at 39 federal executive and legislative organizations about IT issues and policies. The topics included cybersecurity, social networking, cloud computing, transparent government and Federal Information Security Management Act reform.