October 2013

House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) issued a subpoena for all correspondence between government officials and the contractor picked to lead the repair process for the government’s troubled online health insurance marketplace.

Chairman Issa also demanded the contract between Quality Software Services, or QSSI, and the Health and Human Services Department along with the total value of government payments the contractor has received for building and repairing Healthcare.gov. Officials believe the site will be operating without glitches by the end of November 2013, in time for most people to purchase insurance before a Dec. 15 deadline, Marilyn Tavenner, administrator of the Centers for Medicare or Medicaid Services, told lawmakers. That tight time frame for repairs, coupled with earlier contractor testimony that HealthCare.gov underwent minimal testing before its public launch, raises serious questions about whether the site can securely manage citizens’ data, Chairman Issa said in his letter to QSSI.

President Barack Obama huddled with the chief executives of Visa, MasterCard, Bank of America and other top companies in a renewed bid to sell businesses on voluntary improvements to their digital defenses.

The meeting, held in the Situation Room, occurred as the Obama Administration continued working alongside Wall Street and the nation’s top power plants, water systems and other forms of critical infrastructure on baseline cybersecurity standards -- a program President Obama authorized through an executive order signed in February 2013 after Congress failed repeatedly to pass a law. The new White House program, however, is voluntary by nature, and its success or failure depends on businesses’ confidence in the final cybersecurity standards the administration produces. Work is far from finished, but President Obama himself certainly has become its early salesman in chief.

The President specifically tasked the National Institutes of Standards and Technology with developing a so-called Cybersecurity Framework, a draft unveiled by NIST. Those standards won’t be finalized until 2014, at which point the Department of Homeland Security will turn them into a voluntary program. Already, though, President Obama is trying to make the pitch to businesses. Republicans argued that the Democrats' cybersecurity bill would have imposed burdensome regulations on critical infrastructure companies, but Democrats worry that without mandatory regulations -- or at least strong incentives -- critical computer systems will be vulnerable to attack.

Every day young startups and large companies are using open government data to build new products and services that address real challenges for Americans. Fueled by open data, these enterprises are hiring people in cities and towns across the country. Open data are also helping the Federal Government to be more efficient, effective, data-driven, and transparent.

We’ve seen the power of open government data in action—and it pays off. McKinsey & Company released a new report that reinforces the importance of the Obama Administration’s work to make government data more accessible and useful for citizens, companies, and innovators, while continuing to ensure privacy and security. According to the new report, open data can generate more than $3 trillion a year in additional value in seven key sectors of the global economy, including education, transportation, and electricity. In another important step, the Open Data Institute announced the creation of a new international open data network. As a part of this, the Knight Foundation also announced it will be seed-funding a US Open Data Institute modeled after the nonprofit Open Data Institute in the United Kingdom, which aims to promote collaboration among governments, organizations, and businesses to catalyze the adoption of open data.

The Obamacare website has more than annoying bugs. A cybersecurity expert found a way to hack into users' accounts. Until the Department of Health and Human Services fixed the security hole, anyone could easily reset your Healthcare.gov password without your knowledge and potentially hijack your account. The glitch was discovered by Ben Simo, a software tester in Arizona.