December 2012

The Federal Communications Commission posted the official vacancy announcement for a Director of Health Care Initiatives.

In September, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski announced that the FCC would soon undertake a search for a new position to coordinate the agency’s numerous health care technology related initiatives, in response to a recommendation by the mHealth Task Force. Filling this position is an important step in the FCC’s ongoing mission to expand access to health care applications through wired and wireless broadband. The Director of Health Care Initiatives will lead the agency’s efforts in facilitating and promoting communications technologies and services that improve the quality of health care for all citizens and help reduce health care costs; facilitating the availability of medical devices that use spectrum; and ensuring hospitals and other health care facilities have required connectivity.

Fulfilling an additional Task Force recommendation, the FCC is launching a new website fcc.gov/health to serve as a central repository for all the FCC’s health care-related work. For the first time in one place, you will be able to find links and information to each of the FCC’s health programs, as well as instructions on how to submit comment and get involved with the FCC. We hope this will be a valuable resource for industry, policymakers, and anyone who wants to learn more about our programs.

[Commentary] As partners with the Campaign for Grade-Level Reading, a national coalition examining reading problems, scanned the technology and literacy landscape examining new products and programs. What we found was a digital Wild West, especially in the teeming app marketplace.

Tens of thousands of apps are labeled educational and marketed to parents who receive little to no information about whether and how they work. Most of the top-selling reading apps appear to teach only the most basic of literacy skills. They lean toward easy-to-teach tasks, such as identifying the ABCs, but don't address higher-level competencies that young children also need to become strong readers, such as developing vocabulary and understanding words in a narrative. A snapshot of the iTunes App Store's most popular paid literacy apps showed that 45 percent targeted letters and sounds and half focused on phonics. Only 5 percent covered vocabulary, and none addressed comprehension or the ability to tell stories. Many “reading” apps are essentially flashy flashcards: Click on a set of letters and the audio kicks on, uttering the letter's sounds. Move to the next set and repeat. This imbalance comes as research shows that knowing the ABCs and other basic literacy skills, while important, are not enough to help children become strong readers. Children need background knowledge and vocabulary, too. With the advent of new technologies, we are at an opportune moment for harnessing digital media to support parents, educators, and children in building the next generation's reading skills. But technology's potential to be a game changer will not be reached unless technology is tapped to provide vital new supports for parents and educa­tors. At its best, the technology complements the work of trained teachers and parents. It doesn't replace it.

[Lisa Guernsey is director of the Early Education Initiative at the New America Foundation. Michael H. Levine is executive director of the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop.]

[Commentary] Blink and you're left behind in the online-marketing world. That's the dilemma facing the Federal Trade Commission, which is considering catch-up fixes to a 1998 law designed to protect children's privacy on the Internet.

The big firms - Facebook, Apple, Google, Microsoft and Twitter - are opposed to tighter laws. User habits and tastes are the real gold mine in the social-media world, where viewers freely trade personal information as they correspond, search and amuse themselves. If the laws are changed to protect children, then it won't be long before consumer advocates want the same guarantees for everyone, these firms worry. For starters, the federal agency should investigate the extent the problem, a task that likely will show how extensive data mining has become. Then the harder task of devising better rules should begin. Is there an effective way that balances privacy with the cost of running websites that draw young viewers? Apps and online outlets remain free only as long as advertisers believe they're worthwhile, business advocates say. If too many privacy regulations are added, this industry will be damaged. California is pushing ahead on a parallel course. Attorney General Kamala Harris has sent out notices to app developers and websites to better display privacy agreements for all users. In the case of children, Washington's intentions should be clear: A vulnerable and less sophisticated audience needs nearly ironclad privacy protections. It's time to strengthen rules that protect children in the online world.

The European Commission settled its antitrust case against Apple and four book publishing groups over e-book price fixing, in what was described as a victory for the leading online seller, Amazon, and a setback for publishers fighting for the ability to set prices for electronic literature in the digital marketplace.

The European Union’s competition commissioner, Joaquín Almunia, said he was ending his office’s investigation after Apple and the publishers — Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins, Hachette, and Holtzbrinck, the owner of Macmillan — agreed to end their attempt to set prices for e-books through a series of preferred selling agreements. Under those agreements, made in 2010, publishers could set their own prices on e-books, with the retailer acting as an agent taking a commission. Apple championed this agency model. For print books, by contrast, publishers act as wholesalers, charging retailers about half the cover price for a book and then allowing retailers to set their own price to consumers. Amazon built a huge business by offering consumers discounts under this wholesale model. Publishers fear that under the wholesale model, Amazon can sell e-books for less than it pays, taking a loss in the short term to drive smaller competitors out of business, thus gaining a monopoly, to the detriment of the publishers. European Union officials, however, see things differently: that collusion by publishers would lead to higher prices for consumers.