October 2013

Problems with the federal government’s new healthcare Web site have attracted legions of armchair analysts who speak of its problems with “virtualization” and “load testing.” Yet increasingly, they are saying the root cause is not simply a matter of flawed computer code but rather the government’s habit of buying outdated, costly and buggy technology.

The US government spends more than $80 billion a year for information technology services, yet the resulting systems typically take years to build and often are cumbersome when they launch. While the error messages, long waits and other problems with healthcare.gov have been spotlighted by the high profile nature of its launch and unexpectedly heavy demands on the system, such glitches are common, say those who argue for a nimbler procurement system. They say most government agencies have a shortage of technical staff and long have outsourced most jobs to big contractors that, while skilled in navigating a byzantine procurement system, are not on the cutting edge of developing user-friendly Web sites. “The episode is all too typical of how government creates IT services,” said Tom Lee, director of Sunlight Labs, the research arm of the Sunlight Foundation, which advocates for more government transparency. “The procurement process tends to select for firms that are good at navigating the procurement process, not providing good IT services for the dollar.”

[Commentary] US society depends on open government data. When the government shuts down, that data is at risk, and so are the citizens who rely on it.

Across the government’s data offerings, the now ten-day shutdown has meant disruptions, downtime and confusion. A sampling of what’s available and what isn’t: Data.gov is down; so is the Census. The Bureau of Labor Statistics website (BLS.gov) is up, but it’s not releasing any new data. Federal Register staffers say they’re keeping the system up, and that some new data might come through, but that they can’t correct errors. The Library of Congress said its THOMAS system would be going offline, then decided it would stay up. Regulations.gov is still online, thanks to a technicality about how it’s funded. And it appears that you can still pull historical records about train accidents, for some reason. But countless other data services are down or display vague messages about the possibility of bad data. The Obama Administration needs to take action to restore faith in government data as a civic resource and platform for business. Confusingly, the House Republican majority that has engineered this shutdown has, until now, been among the most reliable and forward-thinking sources of open data leadership in our government. One can only hope that it will soon resolve the internal tensions that have led to this crisis.

[Lee is Director of Sunlight Labs at the Sunlight Foundation]

Liberty Media announced a couple of deals prior to its annual Investor Day meeting:

1) Comcast will give up 6.3 million Liberty shares -- which represent about 5.2% of Liberty's outstanding stock -- in exchange for $417 million in cash, an interest in a Liberty subsidiary that includes lifestyle book publisher Leisure Arts, and Liberty's rights regarding a revenue sharing agreement with CNBC.

2) Sirius XM Radio will purchase $500 million of its shares from Liberty, and has also proposed to initiate a private offering for another $500 million in senior notes. Liberty said it would continue to control a majority (52%) of Sirius XM's stock after the deal is completed.

A national survey conducted in July 2013 shows the percent of American adult Internet users who upload or post video online has doubled in the past four years, from 14% in 2009 to 31% today.

This figure includes online adults who do at least one of the following:

• Upload a video to the Internet so others can watch or download it -- 27% of adult Internet users have done this.
• Post videos to any website online that they, themselves, have taken or created -- 18% of adult Internet users have done this.

Younger adult Internet users are twice as likely as their older counterparts to post and share videos online. While 41% of 18-29 year-old Internet users and 36% of 30-49 year-old Internet users post or share videos online, the same is true of just 18% of Internet users age 50 and older. “Since 2006, we’ve seen consistent increases year-to-year in the percentage of adults who watch videos online, but this survey marks the largest increase we’ve seen in the percent of adults who are posting videos online,” notes Kristen Purcell, Associate Director of Research at the Pew Internet Project and the author of the report. “As the online video culture grows—fueled by video-sharing sites, mobile phones, and online social networking—posting videos online is becoming a mainstream online behavior.” When posting their own videos online, adults most commonly share mundane things such as friends, family, and events they attend. 35% of adults who post or share video online—or 11% of all adult Internet users—have posted a video with the hope it will be seen by many people. The percent of online adults who watch or download videos also continues to increase. Comedy and educational videos continue to top of the list of most widely viewed types of online video, now joined by how-to and music videos. The increasing popularity of social networking sites and the proliferation of cell phones have helped spur the growing online video culture.