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HHS Issues Breach Notification Rules
The administration on Wednesday announced safeguards intended to protect consumers from health information technology breaches, as the White House moves forward on its healthcare overhaul.
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McClure to Lead Office of Citizen Services
GSA just confirmed that they will be naming David McClure will be named an associate administrator, heading up the Office of Citizen Services and Communications. OCS manages all of GSA's public outreach efforts, including the federal web portal <a href=http://www.usa.gov>USA.gov</a> and the Federal Web Manager's Council.
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Who's on Board for Windows 7?
Software giant Microsoft will release the latest version of its Windows operating system in October, and the company can only hope that this go around is smoother than the last.
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Birthers and Transparency
Programmers may extract data from a White House-led online discussion about transparency to analyze the influence of participants who are out to prove that President Obama is not a natural born U.S. citizen.
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Stimulus Reporting Process Starts
Stimulus money recipients can start on Monday the process of reporting their spending and job creation statistics to the public.
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The Facts On Kundra's College Records
I'm hesitant to address this topic, since I don't really want to draw additional attention to an erroneous report. But this <a href="http://www.dvorak.org/blog/2009/08/12/special-report-is-us-chief-information-officer-cio-vivek-kundra-a-phony/">piece</a> from <em>PC Magazine</em> columnist John Dvorak on his blog Dvorak Uncensored has been creating enough buzz this morning that I felt it necessary to clear up a few points Dvorak raises.
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Take Responsibility for Your Cookies
The Cato Institute's Jim Harper on Tuesday <a href="http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2009/08/11/all-hail-the-demise-of-a-bad-policy/" target="_blank">blogged</a> that a recent White House proposal to reverse a long-standing ban on cookies is an acknowledgment that Americans can control their own cookie intake. No, this was not a commentary on the administration's healthcare overhaul plan.
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Another Cyber Guru Leaves
The same week that the acting White House cyber chief stepped down, the Homeland Security Department has lost one of their cybersecurity officials. <em>The Washington Post</em> <a href=http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/07/AR2009080702805.html>reported</a> that Mischel Kwon submitted her resignation after five years as the director of DHS' U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team, or US-CERT, which was established in 2003 to coordinate the government's response to cyberattacks.
Ideas
Hackers Silence Political Speak
The latest reports about Thursday's denial-of-service attack that brought down Twitter and slowed Facebook point to a Georgian blogger as the hacker's primary target. Allegedly, the attack was intended to silence his pro-Georgia commentary posted on multiple social media sites.
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Chopra and Silicon Valley: The Video
Federal Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra was in Silicon Valley this week, where he spoke to the Churchill Club, the valley's premier business and technology forum. They liked what he had to say, according to some news reports.
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GSA Issues RFQ for Cloud Services
A <a href="https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=84317cbecb74c1f08471a130fc61933e&tab=core&_cview=0&cck=1&au=&ck=">special notice</a> posted by the General Services Administration on FedBizOps contains the first set of requirements for vendors interested in offering cloud computing services through GSA's <a href="http://www.nextgov.com/nextgov/ng_20090715_3532.php?oref=search">online cloud storefront</a>.
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More Find EHRs a Hot Investment
The market for electronic health records is heating up, according to the <em>Wall Street Journal</em> blog Digits. Salesforce.com has bought a stake in a small EHR company. The company joins Google, Microsoft and even Wal Mart -- which this year "said it had partnered with Dell and . . . eClinicalWorks to sell an EMR from its Sam's Club stores," Digits <a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2009/08/05/salesforcecom-dips-its-toe-into-electronic-medical-records/">reported</a> -- in the market, which has been fueled by President Obama's stimulus package.
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IT Dashboard Updates Reviews
The government's IT shop on Wednesday announced it has updated a recently-launched White House Web site with reviews of all major federal IT investments.
Ideas
This is Your Budget on Stimulus
To learn just how the nearly $800 billion in stimulus spending is affecting agencies, consider this graph below. This is one slide from a presentation that Christine Shafik, director of the Office of Internal Review at the Energy Department, gave back in June at a conference for top federal executives. It shows just how much the budgets for certain offices within the Energy Department grew this year due to the stimulus bill -- money that federal employees must give out in grants and contracts.
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Hathaway Resigns from White House
The <em>Wall Street Journal</em> <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124932480886002237.html?mod=googlenews_wsj">reported</a> this afternoon that acting cybersecurity czar Melissa Hathaway has resigned from her post for personal reasons.
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What's the Deal with Medicaid Systems?
One of the most complicated networks to assemble has to be a Medicaid claims processing system. Numerous states -- <a href="http://www.cio.com/article/20133/Maine_s_Medicaid_Mistakes">Maine</a>, <a href="http://www.newsobserver.com/news/story/558169.html">North Carolina</a>, <a href="http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2009/07/13/ap6647246.html">Indiana</a> and many others -- have reported during the past several years that the development of modern Medicaid claims processing systems are over budget, behind schedule and simply don't work.
Ideas
Updated: Recovery.gov Contract
The government is behind in posting the potential $18 million contract for the redesign of Recovery.gov because of the work involved to ensure the disabled can access it, said officials at the General Services Administration and the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board.
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Godwin's White House Tenure Ends
Bev Godwin, who helped bridge the digital divide between federal Luddites and Obama administration tech whizzes, is leaving her post at the White House's new media office.
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A Lesson from Al Gore to Obama?
Regardless of your party affiliation, it's hard to deny that President Obama has raised the profile of information technology and cybersecurity issues significantly since taking office. Along with appointing the nation's first chief information and chief technology officers, Obama has personally delivered a <a href="http://www.nextgov.com/nextgov/ng_20090529_1893.php">major speech</a> on cybersecurity and promised to deliver unprecedented transparency via the publishing of government data online.
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