October 2010

ONC to begin NHIN Direct testing at year's-end

The Office of the National Coordinator will start real-world testing of clinical information exchanges between healthcare providers using "NHIN Direct" standards and services in late December or early January, according to the connectivity project's director, who said each pilot will focus on an aspect of meaningful use.

NHIN Direct is a set of technical tools and services that will enable providers to share secure messages, such as patient referrals and care summaries, in one-to-one "push" exchanges with other providers. [NHIN stands for Nationwide Health Information Network.] NHIN Direct project director Arien Malec told the Health IT Standards Committee that draft technical descriptions of standards for transporting messages will be ready next month, and that healthcare organizations are gearing up to test them in seven pilots around the country. A streamlined version of the more robust nationwide health information network standard set, NHIN Direct will offer physicians and small practices the ability to conduct the basic health record exchanges required in the first stage of meaningful use in 2011 requires.

GOP Overseer: Technology = Transparency

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), who could well become chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee if the Republicans take control of the House after next week's elections, says the key to transparency in government can be summed up in one word: technology.

Rep Issa believes agencies should be required to use "consistent, compatible electronic data formats for financial, regulatory, and legislative information" making it a simple matter to reconcile agencies financial reports and for citizens to track federal spending. Specifically, he makes the case for the Extensible Business Reporting Language data-tagging format.

AT&T exec speaks out on traffic pumping

AT&T Vice President of Federal Regulatory Hank Hultquist tapped a literary reference involving Sherlock Holmes recently to illustrate a point about the Federal Communications Commission's policy on traffic pumping. (That's where a company sets up a free inbound phone line in an area with high terminating access charges and splits the charges with a competitive carrier in that area.)

Hultquist notes that the master detective once solved a case by remarking that a dog did not bark when it recognized a particular perpetrator. But the AT&T exec remarks that he isn't sure how to interpret the FCC's silence on traffic pumping. He points out that when the FCC asked some questions about Google's blocking of traffic destined for traffic pumpers, Google narrowed the scope of its call blocking. But as Hultquist notes, Google "has never stopped blocking calls to traffic-pumpers and the FCC has never again barked about this issue."

Policy issues key to small telco financial, competitive health

The Telergee Alliance Benchmarking Study finds that 2009 was a challenging one for small U.S. telcos. The report's data underscores the importance of a number of policy issues that are critical to small telcos.

Rate of Return regulation: The report challenges the notion that rate of return regulation gives small rural telcos some sort of cushy existence. One of the most eye-opening findings of the report was that on average, small telco operating margins comprised just 10.3% of their average revenues for 2009. This was driven by a decrease in operating margins of 17.3% on the regulated side of the business, where 2009 operating margins averaged 10.2%. The idea behind the ROR system is to help ensure that small rural carriers earn a specific profit margin, with interstate access revenues distributed to carriers on that basis. The target number is higher than 10.2%.
The National Broadband Plan: The plan proposes to revamp access charge system to more accurately reflect the costs of terminating calls and eliminating ROR regulation. Small telcos oppose eliminating the ROR system, arguing essentially that the current system is not broken, so there's no need to fix it. Considering that the regulated part of telcos' business is declining as voice subscribership declines, and considering that's the part of the business where ROR comes into play, the possibility that ROR might be eliminated might not seem to be such a big deal. But some of the costs of building and maintaining broadband networks are shared with the regulated side of the business, helping to enable carriers to earn a reasonable return on those expenses. The majority of small telcos have been able to deploy broadband thanks, in no small part, to the ROR system. Small telcos are open to the idea of revamping the access charge program, but they'd like to see that happen without eliminating ROR regulation.

Media Companies May See Ad Recovery Continue

Diversified media companies are expected to post quarterly results close to year-earlier figures, although the advertising market continues to improve from a sharp downturn during the recession. Prices in the broadcast television ad market were reported to be up 30% in September, at the start of the fall season, from two months earlier, as political-ad demand has been strong. Ad-revenue growth is likely to be especially stout at cable-television networks. Even the number of ad pages in long-struggling U.S. magazines inched up in the third quarter, the second growth period in a row.

Argument preview: Kids and video games

The Supreme Court returns on November 2 to the question of whether to create a new exception to the First Amendment -- this time, to give state legislatures and Congress more authority to regulate the kinds of video games that can be sold or rented for playing by those under age 18.

A clash of perceptions about video games dominates the briefs. Like much else in the Digital Age, video games have changed enormously over the past three decades — from simple batting of a virtual tennis ball across a virtual net to highly sophisticated narratives and images that can be creatively manipulated for different outcomes. Now, for the first time, the Supreme Court is poised to clarify just what forms of expression in that medium are entitled to protection as free speech under the First Amendment, and how far such protection might extend.

Creating Online Games That Educate and Instruct

In 2007 the British government turned to Kati London, a producer at game-design studio Area/Code in New York City. London is a leader in the small but growing field of people "interested in games for engagement rather than escape," as she puts it.

A recent winner of Technology Review's 2010 Young Innovator award, she uses real-world data in online games that are meant to educate or change off-line behavior. For the U.K., London and her team built a game called Code of Everand, which launched in 2009. Everand's 170,000 users play as Pathfinders navigating a dangerous fantasy world. The game is filled with subtle cues to encourage street safety. Pathfinders crossing a road-like "spirit channel" must look in both directions to check for monsters with outlines that resemble those of some autos; the Mossy Zichlid, for instance, looks like a cement truck in profile. The monsters' speed and frequency are derived from traffic data recorded at U.K. intersections. The idea is to "mimic the natural rhythms of traffic," says London, "and train the brain to adopt the same look-and-wait behavior in real life." The government has commissioned an independent evaluation of the game's impact that is due in spring 2011.

Big telework savings trumps butts in the seats

Despite years of official support and the promise of huge returns on investment, routine telework remains a goal in most agencies, relegated to pilot programs and special situations.

"A lot of the resistance in government is from managers who want to see their employees every day," said Rod Turk, chief information security officer of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, one of a handful of agencies that is making telework work. But the butts-in-the-seats paradigm has to change, said John Berry, director of the Office of Personnel Management. "We've got to start practicing what we're preaching." Berry, speaking recently at a Washington conference hosted by the Telework Exchange, said that like it or not, telework already is happening. In a recent OPM survey of government employees, 22 percent said they were teleworking without formal agreements, doing at least some of their jobs from home or elsewhere away from the office. Managers are beginning to respond to this new de facto standard, Berry said. "We see that telework is starting to take root. Our managers are starting to see that this is a major culture shift."

White House pushes more telework paid leave

The White House issued a statement Oct. 25 reiterating the president's strong support for more telework, among other alternative, more flexible workplace arrangements such as more paid leave, as a means to make the federal government more productive and also to attract some of today's most desirable workers to federal agencies.

"There are steps we can all take to help -- implementing practices like telework, paid leave, and alternative work schedules -- and my administration is committed to doing its part to help advance these practices across the country," President Barack Obama said Oct. 26. "And within the federal government, we have followed the lead of many private sector companies when it comes to increasing workplace flexibility." The President reiterated that permitting and pressing for more telework from federal employees is needed, in order to attract and retain "employees who are more productive and engaged through flexible workplace policies." "[It's] not just good for business or for our economy -- it's good for our families and our future," he said.

Google now second-largest ISP, carries 6.4% of Internet traffic

Google is now the second-largest carrier of Internet traffic, according to data released this week by Arbor Networks. Google carries an average of 6.4% of all Internet traffic -- a figure that has grown by more than one percentage point since January. Only one tier 1 provider -- a wholesaler to other ISPs -- carries more Internet traffic on its backbone network than Google does, and this wholesaler (Arbor declined to identify the provider) carries a lot of Google traffic, too. The Arbor data shows that overall Internet volumes are increasing at a rate of 40% to 45% per year, and that Google is growing faster than that. Most of Google's data is video from its popular YouTube site. Arbor Networks conducts ongoing analysis of Internet traffic housed on the networks of 110 ISPs around the world.

But should corporate network managers care about this news? Yes, says Arbor Networks Chief Scientist Craig Labovitz, who argues that savvy IT managers need to understand how macro Internet traffic trends will affect the design and management of their own network backbones. "The way we think about the network is changing," Labovitz says. "We're going through a transition where the value of the network was about connectivity ... the ability to reach thousands of people and tens of thousands of other Web sites. But now there's a shift from connectivity to content. Increasingly, whether you're a consumer or an enterprise, you care not about reaching thousands of different Web sites. You care about the 20 social networking, cloud vendor and partner sites that you do business with."

Benton

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