December 2014

New federal health IT strategic plan sets stage for better sharing through interoperability

Following collaboration with more than 35 federal agencies, the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) issued the Federal Health IT Strategic Plan 2015-2020.

The Strategic Plan represents a coordinated and focused effort to appropriately collect, share, and use interoperable health information to improve health care, individual, community and public health, and advance research across the federal government and in collaboration with private industry. The Strategic Plan, which is open for comments, serves as the broad federal strategy setting the context and framing the Nationwide Interoperability Roadmap that will be released in early 2015. The Nationwide Interoperability Roadmap will help to define the implementation of how the federal government and private sector will approach sharing health information.

Was Apple's FairPlay worse for the record labels than for consumers?

The recent lawsuit against Apple offers a valuable reminder of what happens when content companies embrace proprietary anti-piracy technology.

The risk is that a company such as Apple will use "digital rights management" (DRM) tools to protect its market share, not content, at the expense of innovation and opportunity. It's impossible to know where the numbers of subscribers to services such as Spotify and Rhapsody would be had Apple embraced an interoperable DRM, or if Apple's DRM, FairPlay, had been friendly to music subscriptions, but they certainly wouldn't be lower. It's tempting to think that had iPods supported the likes of Rhapsody and Napster (the legitimate, paid version) in their infancy, the music industry wouldn't have been so badly damaged by piracy.

Los Angeles weighs trade-offs in billboard removal

After five years of deliberations, Los Angeles (CA) City Council members are weighing a new package of billboard regulations. The proposal would dramatically reduce the number of locations where new billboards, in "sign districts," could be installed. But some neighborhood leaders see the proposed ordinance as too favorable to real estate developers and outdoor advertising companies. One crucial question: If the city allows new digital signs -- and some argue they should not -- what should lawmakers demand in return?

Celebrating Computer Science Education Week, Kids Code at the White House

President Barack Obama is welcoming approximately 30 middle-school-aged students from Newark (NJ) and Brooklyn (NY) to roll up their sleeves, get online together, and participate in an “Hour of Code” at the White House.

The Obama Administration also announced more progress in their efforts to give millions of students access to computer science education, which include:

Commitments by more than 60 school districts, including the seven largest school districts in the country, to offer computer science courses
Over $20 million in philanthropic contributions to train 10,000 teachers by Fall 2015 and 25,000 teachers
New partnerships by the National Science Foundation (NSF) including a new Advanced Placement (AP) Computer Science course
New steps to increase the participation of women and under-represented minorities in computer science.

2016 rivals woo Silicon Valley

[Commentary] Contenders for the White House are cozying up to Silicon Valley ahead of the 2016 elections. Potential candidates on the Republican side are cultivating allies in the tech sector at a frenetic pace, making frequent trips to California for fundraising dinners, company tours and bull sessions. With the presidential race expected to be a multi-billion dollar endeavor, the well-heeled executives of the tech world are in high demand -- not only for their campaign cash, but also their ability to recruit the high-skilled talent needed for a modern campaign.

FCC Seeks Nominations For Two Vacancies On The Intergovernmental Advisory Committee

By this Public Notice, the Federal Communications Commission solicits nominations to fill two vacancies on its Intergovernmental Advisory Committee (IAC).

These vacancies were created by the electoral defeat of Gov Pat Quinn (D-IL) on November 4, 2014 and the appointment on September 18, 2014 of New Jersey Assemblyman Upendra J. Chivukula as a Commissioner on the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities. Nominations are due January 12, 2015. The mission of the IAC is to make recommendations to the FCC on communications issues affecting local, state and Tribal governments that are within the jurisdiction of the FCC.

Andy Carvin launches social-media reporting team for First Look

Former National Public Radio [and Benton Foundation] staffer Andy Carvin says he has been hard at work hiring social-media “anchors” for an innovative global reporting team at First Look.

The venture is called Reported.ly, and it will be doing an expanded version of what Carvin did for NPR during the Arab Spring uprisings in Egypt and subsequent news events: the half dozen staff he has hired will be embedded in a variety of social platforms like Twitter, Facebook and Reddit and using them to report in real-time on breaking news stories and other important events. As Carvin put it: “So many media organizations just use social media as a way to promote their content. Not many people are thinking of these places as living and breathing spaces where they can discuss the news directly with the people who are there. We want to try to serve those readers where they are, and do native journalism on those platforms.”

German Chancellor Angela Merkel speaks out against network neutrality

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that some key services for the digital economy would require reliable transmission quality and should therefore be treated differently than other data. She called for a splitting of services, "one for free Internet, and the other for special services", adding that it was up to the European Union to negotiate how it would work. "An innovation-friendly Internet means that there is a guaranteed reliability for special services," she said. "These can only develop when predictable quality standards are available".

National Security Agency's surveillance a 'trade barrier' for EU companies

A top European Union official said the National Security Agency's mass surveillance is a trade barrier for European Internet companies trying to provide services in the United States.

US citizens are deterred from using European e-mail providers because they do not get the same protection as they would by using US providers, said Paul Nemitz, a director in the European Commission's justice department. An American in the United States using a European service does not have the same level of protection as he would if he used an American service. Using a European service, his communication is transmitted outside the United States, so it is subject to interception.

European Privacy Debate on Display in Paris

European Union policy makers are demanding greater controls over how companies like Google and Facebook use personal information. At the same time, others would like to use those same laws to help European companies compete against their American rivals as a way to jump-start a sluggish economy.

That debate over how best to leverage the regulations was on show during a meeting as local privacy regulators gathered to discuss the growing public outcry over how governments and tech giants gather and use people’s data. Europe is now completing a new round of privacy rules, expected to be made final in 2015, that will give greater power to individuals over who has access to their data and how it is used. European policy makers are also considering fines of up to 5 percent of a company’s annual revenue, or $125 million, whichever is greater, when the strict privacy rules are breached.

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