Nebraska state government is using data analytics to make decisions about broadband upgrades, and it needs the public's help. The Nebraska Public Service Commission (PSC) is asking Nebraskans to participate in an online test that will capture their current Internet speed to help the state identify unserved and underserved areas. According to the McCook Daily Gazette, the data will be used to update the state broadband map.
Few analysts would describe the recent elections as an upheaval. President Obama’s election to a second term, accompanied by Republicans retaining control of the House and Democrats maintaining the majority in the Senate, means the government will look much like it did pre-election.
During a webinar on November 19, TechAmerica public policy analysts offered up their assessment of how the nation-wide contest on November 6, deemed the “status quo” election, will impact technology policy. Technology was called “transformational” in the 2012 election, as evidenced by the sharp spike in election-related social media activity, cited as a critical voter outreach tool. Not surprisingly, 2012 was the most tweeted U.S. election to date, with 327,000 tweets per minute on election night. TechAmerica analysts noted that official party platforms from both Republicans and Democrats devoted more space than ever before to technology and telecommunications policy. Technology issues are expected to continue as a major focus area in Obama’s second term. Technology priorities are expected to remain fairly consistent over the next two years, since the election did not bring a major shift in power for the executive or legislative branches. Divided government, however, will continue to hamper the passage of major policy changes related to technology.
Access to broadband Internet saves all of us money, according to the Internet Innovation Alliance, which recently released an infographic called Access to Broadband Internet: Top Ten Areas of Saving 2012.
Each year, according to the alliance, consumers with broadband Internet save more than $8,500 (before factoring in the cost of connection). The area where the most money is saved? Entertainment. And we save about $45 per year thanks to billpay. In what other areas does having broadband save us money? Entertainment ($2,497), Travel ($1,659), Housing ($1,736), Food ($994), Apparel ($1,047), Automotive ($444), Newspapers ($175), Gasoline ($161), Non-prescription drugs ($110), Bill Pay ($47).
Telework has grown dramatically across the federal government, and thus far, it’s having a positive impact. Teleworkers at all pay levels say they experience higher engagement and job satisfaction, according to the results of the 2012 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey.
The survey, released by the Office of Personnel Management, found that the number of telework-eligible employees has grown significantly in the past year, from one in four to one in three federal employees. Almost one-quarter of the more than 687,000 federal employees surveyed reported that they have teleworked in some form. Telework satisfaction also has increased slightly in the past year, up from 70 percent in 2011 to 73 percent in 2012, the survey found. In addition, employees who telework also had higher global satisfaction and engagement scores when compared to their non-teleworking counterparts, a difference of seven percentage points in both cases.
A new study indicates that the vast majority of online content sharing occurs via copy-and-paste. The report, which was published in November by web advertising firm 33Across, says that 82% of all content sharing is conducted via copy-and-paste. This will likely surprise many web publishers who have been focusing on adding share buttons, badges, and social network applets to their pages to boost readership.
The Community Connect broadband grant program administered by the Department of Agriculture’s Rural Utilities Service could have a broader impact on local communities as the result of proposed changes to the program.
Traditionally that program has provided grants for small scale broadband network projects that also include two public computer terminals and wireless computer connectivity in communities that cannot get broadband today. Under proposed changes, funding recipients would be able to use their 15% matching funds toward the operating costs of broadband projects – something they can’t do today—and would be able to use grant funds for larger geographic areas rather than for a single community. In addition, the application process would be streamlined and funding applications would be prioritized based on a variety of factors.
Were patient records lost or destroyed during Superstorm Sandy? Are these documents floating around Southern Manhattan or along the Jersey Shore somewhere? How did health information technology systems fare? The answer is, unfortunately, paper patient records were another casualty of the storm.
Health information technology, meanwhile, held up well. Administrators at a recently-acquired Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC) in Queens had begun the lengthy process of transferring from paper records to an electronic health record (EHR) system when Hurricane Sandy interrupted the upload. According to officials at the Community Health Care Association of New York State (CHCANYS), the Queens FQHC lost 1,500 paper records as the water levels rose. Lawrence Armenti, a Newark primary care doctor, said the process for rebuilding a lost or destroyed paper record is difficult and time consuming. Doctors are legally required to keep patient records for seven years, so it has to be done. To start, Dr. Armenti suggested notifying the insurance companies involved so they can record that the file is lost. Physicians can try and rebuild the record using data from labs, hospitals or other providers. Information from the past 6 to 18 months should be included, he said. The health IT system, however, was not affected because the data was being stored offsite, the official said.
Even as unemployment remained stubbornly high and the economy struggled to emerge from the recession’s shadow, the ranks of computer software engineers, including app writers, increased nearly 8 percent in 2010 to more than a million, according to the latest available government data for that category. These software engineers now outnumber farmers and have almost caught up with lawyers.
Much as the Web set off the dot-com boom 15 years ago, apps have inspired a new class of entrepreneurs. These innovators have turned cellphones and tablets into tools for discovering, organizing and controlling the world, spawning a multibillion-dollar industry virtually overnight. The iPhone and iPad have about 700,000 apps, from Instagram to Angry Birds. Yet with the American economy yielding few good opportunities in recent years, there is debate about how real, and lasting, the rise in app employment might be. Despite the rumors of hordes of hip programmers starting million-dollar businesses from their kitchen tables, only a small minority of developers actually make a living by creating their own apps, according to surveys and experts. And programming is not a skill that just anyone can learn. While people already employed in tech jobs have added app writing to their résumés, the profession offers few options to most unemployed, underemployed and discouraged workers.
Web site privacy policies are usually long, vague and notoriously neglected by most of us. Or as Alex Fowler, chief privacy officer at Mozilla, put it, “We have long upheld that privacy policies suck.” Now, an experiment is under way to make those privacy policies somewhat more palatable.
The idea is to have lawyers and coders muddle through thousands of words of legalese and distill their meaning into a set of graphic icons. In effect, the pros will read those notoriously unreadable policies, so the rest of us don’t have to. The experiment began Nov 16 in Mozilla headquarters in San Francisco, under aptly dark clouds overhead. It was fueled by chicken-and-bacon sandwiches supplied by disconnect.me, a start-up that offers Web users tools to control how and with whom their personal data is shared. The assignment was to vet the policies of 1,000 Web sites.
Rep Ed Markey (D-MA) urged House Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-MI) in a letter to pass a bill aimed at securing the nation's electrical grid from cyberattacks.
In the letter, Rep Markey underscored the rising cyber threat the electric grid faces and described how it could take months to restore electricity after a crippling cyberattack. He cited a recently declassified National Research Council report published five years ago that warned how a cyberattack could result in thousands of deaths if it disabled the power grid during a heat wave or cold spell. Rep Markey also noted that Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and the Department of Homeland Security have sounded alarm about the havoc a cyberattack could wreak on the nation's critical infrastructure.
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