December 2010

Science funding bill passes US Senate

In a flurry of last minute legislating, the US Senate has passed a version of a bill that would reauthorize the America COMPETES Act.

The bill would keep on track a series of budget increases for key science funding agencies including the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the US Department of Energy Office of Science. The bill has its origins in the landmark 2005 report “Rising Above the Gathering Storm”, recently revised, which raises concerns that US competitiveness is on the decline in a rapidly globalizing marketplace. The report calls for substantial reinvestments in basic research and science education.

It’s Hard To Opt Out Of Behavioral Targeting? Really? Our Experiment

The Federal Trade Commission’s recent report on privacy offered a pretty damning indictment of the ad industry’s efforts to give consumers a say in how and whether data about them is collected.

The report said, in essence, that while there are ways for consumers to opt-out of behaviorally targeted advertising, they are often unclear, and consumers frequently don't know about them. Most publishers don't do a very good job of publicizing opt-out options, there is currently a pretty good one-stop shop for opting out: the Network Advertising Initiative web site, which represents dozens of ad networks.

Push for Safety Oversight of Electronic Medical Records is Moving at a Crawl

Nearly two years after the Obama Administration announced plans to spend $40 billion to help doctors and hospitals adopt electronic medical records, government officials are still grappling with how best to regulate these systems to assure patient safety. And a meeting this week made it clear firm rules are still many months away.

Although federal officials have acknowledged that electronic medical record systems can create new safety concerns, the administration appears content to let the Institute of Medicine (IOM), which it has contracted to study the topic, chart a path through the bureaucratic confusion “on what the federal agencies should do to maximize the safety of health information technology.” The nonprofit institute is part of the National Academies and conducts research on health topics. The directive came Dec 14 from the government’s top e-health official, David Blumenthal, during the first public meeting of an IOM committee tasked by Blumenthal’s office to come up with recommendations on how to improve the safety of electronic health records. Blumenthal asked members to issue their report by next September so that his office could use the material in drafting detailed rules for how and when the federal government will pay doctors and hospitals for using digital health systems to improve patient care.

FCC's Performance Management Weaknesses Could Jeopardize Proposed Reforms of the Rural Health Care Program

The Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) Rural Health Care Program, established in 1997, provides discounts on rural health care providers' telecommunications and information services (primary program) and funds broadband infrastructure and services (pilot program). GAO was asked to review (1) how FCC has managed the primary program to meet the needs of rural health care providers, and how well the program has addressed those needs; (2) how FCC's design and implementation of the pilot program affected participants; and (3) FCC's performance goals and measures for both the primary program and the pilot program, and how these goals compare with the key characteristics of successful performance goals and measures.

FCC has not conducted an assessment of the telecommunications needs of rural health care providers as it has managed the primary Rural Health Care Program, which limits FCC's ability to determine how well the program has addressed those needs. Participation in the primary program has increased, and some rural health care providers report that they are dependent on the support received from the program. FCC has been successful in disbursing over 86 percent of all committed funds. However, FCC has disbursed only $327 million in total over the 12 years of the primary program's operation-- less than any single year's $400 million funding cap. FCC has frequently stated that the primary program is underutilized and has made a number of changes to the program, including the creation of the pilot program. If FCC does not correct deficits in performance management, it may perpetuate the same performance management weaknesses in its stewardship of the new rural health care programs that it has proposed. GAO recommends that the FCC Chairman assess rural health care providers' needs, consult with knowledgeable stakeholders, develop performance goals and measures, and develop and execute sound performance evaluation plans.

(GAO-11-27, November 17.)

Public Health Information Technology: Additional Strategic Planning Needed to Guide HHS's Efforts to Establish Electronic Situational Awareness Capabilities

A catastrophic public health event could threaten our national security and cause hundreds of thousands of casualties. Recognizing the need for efficient sharing of real-time information to help prevent devastating consequences of public health emergencies, Congress included in the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act in December 2006 a mandate for the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), in collaboration with state, local, and tribal public health officials, to develop and deliver to Congress a strategic plan for the establishment and evaluation of an electronic nationwide public health situational awareness capability.

Pursuant to requirements of the act, GAO reviewed HHS's plans for and status of efforts to implement these capabilities, described collaborative efforts to establish a network, and determined grants authorized by the act and awarded to public health entities. HHS did not develop and deliver to congressional committees a strategic plan that demonstrated the steps to be taken toward the establishment and evaluation of an electronic public health situational awareness network, as required by PAHPA. GAO is recommending that HHS develop and implement a strategic plan to guide and integrate efforts to establish electronic situational awareness capabilities.

(GAO-11-99, December 17.)

How America will collapse

[Commentary] The demise of the United States as the global superpower could come by 2025.

Future historians are likely to identify the Bush administration’s rash invasion of Iraq in that year as the start of America's downfall. However, instead of the bloodshed that marked the end of so many past empires, with cities burning and civilians slaughtered, this twenty-first century imperial collapse could come relatively quietly through the invisible tendrils of economic collapse or cyberwarfare. American leadership in technological innovation is on the wane.

In 2008, the U.S. was still number two behind Japan in worldwide patent applications with 232,000, but China was closing fast at 195,000, thanks to a blistering 400 percent increase since 2000. A harbinger of further decline: in 2009 the U.S. hit rock bottom in ranking among the 40 nations surveyed by the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation when it came to "change" in "global innovation-based competitiveness" during the previous decade. Adding substance to these statistics, in October China's Defense Ministry unveiled the world's fastest supercomputer, the Tianhe-1A, so powerful, said one U.S. expert, that it "blows away the existing No. 1 machine" in America. Add to this clear evidence that the U.S. education system, that source of future scientists and innovators, has been falling behind its competitors.

[McCoy is the J.R.W. Smail Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison]

Benton Editorial

Sputnik 2: Time for Broadband

By Charles Benton

Earlier this month, President Barack Obama said our generation’s Sputnik moment is upon us. President Obama likened our recent economic setbacks to a key moment in October 1957 when Americans saw our scientific leadership in the world fall from first to second as a small beeping sphere sped through the night sky. I strongly agree. And I see broadband as a key element in our response to Sputnik 2.

New GOP telecom team decries FCC process

A day after announcing their new roles, the GOP's telecom leaders got straight to business, coming out in force against the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) network neutrality proceeding.

Incoming House Commerce Chairman Fred Upton (R-MI), Communications Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden (R-OR) and Vice Communications Chairman Lee Terry (R-Nebraska) wrote to the FCC with concerns that the agency has not been transparent about its effort to regulate Internet lines. They demanded that FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski release the text of his network neutrality proposal, which the FCC will vote on next week. They said the draft should be subject to public comment, or at least revealed so that stakeholders can meet with the FCC about the proposal. "Your proposal to adopt network neutrality rules is likely the most controversial item the FCC has had before it in at least a decade. It holds huge implications for the future of the Internet, investment, innovation, and jobs," they said, arguing that the process has been cloaked in "secrecy."

Rep Upton went on to promise to "vigorously fight any effort to regulate the Internet, pledging strict oversight of the FCC and hearings early in the 112th Congress."

Google Aims Twin Daggers at Microsoft’s Heart

[Commentary] Forget about Google’s struggle with Facebook for eyeballs and programmers. Pay no attention to its fight with Apple over smartphones, or to any other tech rivalry. The search giant’s war with Microsoft is The Big One, the confrontation that will determine what kind of future Microsoft has, and maybe if it even has a future.

And the two new weapons Google unsheathed last week carry an unmistakable message of mortal peril. First came the Nexus S, the new Google-labeled smartphone and the first to run “Gingerbread,” Google’s latest Android operating system. Then came a plain black laptop called the Cr- 48, the first computer to run the company’s Web-based Chrome Operating System. On the surface, neither seems particularly menacing. The Nexus S, made by Samsung, is the successor to one of the most hyped and least successful products of 2010, the lovely and ill-fated Nexus One. And the Cr-48 isn't even for sale. It’s a generic prototype that Google is making available to thousands of developers, companies and others to get them familiar with the concept of the new operating system before commercial versions from manufacturers show up next year.

Apple has 66% of online music market, Amazon second at 13%

Despite unrelenting competition from numerous online music vendors -- particularly Amazon -- iTunes has managed to actually increase its market share. The music service now makes up 66.2 percent of the online music market, according to new numbers from NPD, with Amazon coming in second with 13.3 percent for the third quarter of 2010.

iTunes has managed to increase its share from 63.2 percent earlier this year, even as Amazon has made aggressive efforts to chip away at iTunes' customer base and artist exclusives. In fact, Amazon was so good at pushing its "Daily Deal" promotions (deeply discounted albums of hot bands) that Apple apparently felt threatened by it -- an anonymous music industry exec said earlier this year that Apple was stepping up pressure on artists to avoid Amazon's music promotions, lest they lose their valuable marketing support from iTunes. It appears that iTunes' growth doesn't seem to have come at the expense of Amazon's, however. Amazon's share of the music market also increased from 11 percent earlier this year, when it was tied with Walmart for second place in the US. Both music stores are pulling ahead, likely because (at least according to a previous NPD report) the two stores cater to their own user bases.

Benton

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