Back in December we introduced you to the 3 most influential technology guys our government has ever seen. They were picked to bring us into the 21st century cyber world. They came bearing the gifts we needed to get us there. So how and what are they doing?
Howard Schmidt the White House Cybersecurity Coordinator – 5 months in.
May 29th marked one year since the national cyberspace Policy Review was unveiled and recommended the creation of a Cybersecurity Coordinator in the White House. Howard Schmidt became the first coordinator. Mr. Schmidt tells us there are “two themes that are vital to our nation’s cybersecurity efforts:  partnerships and transparency. These two themes go hand-in-hand. You cannot have one without the other, and they form the foundation of nearly all of the action items outlined in the President’s Cyberspace Policy Review.”
To help facilitate the private-public partnerships, portions of the Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative (CNCI) have been declassified. View or download the CNCI and the 12 initiatives outlined.
Together with Aneesh Chopra, Schimidt launched a new forum to gather the best and most feasible cybersecurity ideas in the country. They say they want to “change the game”. Read their blog post and announcement.
It has also been one year since Obama spoke on cybersecurity and its importance to our countries economic prosperity. Read Jim Garrettson’s Cybersecurity: A Year in Review.
Aneesh Chopra the nation’s first Chief Technology Officer – 18 months in.
Continuing on the theme of transparency and openness, Gov 2.0 wants to bring you “Government as a Platform”. Mr. Chopra is all on board. Data is the key to public innovation, it just needs to be available. One year ago in May, the open data initiative and www.data.gov were launched. The government made available 47 of their datasets which now is more than 250,000 datasets. And as they expected the public, innovators, and entrepreneurs have not let them down. Hundreds of applications have been developed for using this information and state and local governments are following their lead.
Mr. Chopra is no stranger to the ONC either. Along with his leadership on the Implementation workgroup for the Standards Committee he will also chair the newly created Enrollment workgroup. Like his call for ideas with Schimidt he wants to hear from you on your HIT implementations opportunities and challenges. Read his posts in the FAC blog. Together with Todd Park they are proposing enabling the Internet to be used for secure exchange of health information to improve health and health care.
Todd Park the chief technology officer of HHS – 9 months in.
Parks also continues the openness theme at HHS. Taking a cue from how the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration provides 98% of all weather data for commercial use, HHS can deliver our national health data. While most of this data is and has been in the public domain, few knew of it or how to find it. Now in a usable and easy format you can find the data on www.hhs.gov/open. Parks thinks the “data can help raise awareness of the state of community health and trigger action by community leaders, healthcare providers and consumers about where and how to improve it”. Look for the HHS Health Indicators Warehouse debut in December which will include Medicare community-level indicators.
With the launch of the CHDI website Parks also announced the Health 2.0 Developer Challengeconsisting of a series of code-a-thons and team competitions to build apps with the CHDI data. Final challenges will be held at the 4th Annual Health 2.0 Conference in San Francisco.
Along with Aneesh Chopra, Parks has a hand in the NHIN and NHIN Direct. The first and foremost is educating on the subject. “This is not a parallel network.” NHIN is a set of policies, standards, and services that enable the Internet to be used for secure and meaningful exchange of health information to improve health and health care. NHIN Direct is an open transparent collaborative process to evolve the NHIN.  And by setting his up the private sector will take over and make it work.
And what computer guy these days can be at all credible if they aren’t using YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Apps, or widgets? From public service announcements to food safety widgets, HHS has them all. You can read Todd’s blog at the HHS Open site.
We will continue to keep you updated on their journeys and progress of changing the way the government uses technology. Stay tuned.