FTC CIO Huskey steps down

FedScoop has learned Federal Trade Commission Chief Information Officer Jeff Huskey recently stepped down after more than two years at the agency.

Huskey led a number of key projects at the FTC, namely converting the agency to Microsoft Windows 7 and rolling out Office 2010, enterprise storage, desktop refresh and a virtual desktop infrastructure.

“I believe in the Boy Scout Motto … to leave it better, then I found it,” he said in an email to FTC staff. “I hope I did that here.”

He did not mention future plans in his email.

Prior to joining the FTC in 2010, Huskey served as the U.S. Navy chief information officer for the Commander Navy Installation Command.

The agency posted an opening for the CIO position on USAjobs. Applicants interested in applying have until April 4 to do so.

FedScoopTV: IBM’s Todd Ramsey

Todd Ramsey, general manager of U.S. Federal for IBM, discusses agility in government in this interview with FedScoopTV.

GSA’s OCSIT continues innovation momentum

In the past month, the U.S. General Services Administration’s Office of Citizen Services and Innovative Technologies has released a set of baseline social media metrics for the federal government, a social media application programming interface and is looking into privatizing parts of FedRAMP.

And if you ask Kathy Conrad, OCSIT’s principal deputy administrator, that’s just the beginning.

In an interview with FedScoop, Conrad said the Office of Management and Budget is nearing the release of an open data policy that will take agencies beyond being open and transparent, but allow them to make more of an impact with citizens as released data becomes more organized.

“It will create a different dynamic in citizen engagement unlike what we’ve seen before in government,” Conrad said.

Conrad is also eagerly awaiting the second round of the Presidential Innovation Fellows Program.

During the first session, OCSIT had five fellows (there were 18 in all) who worked on the MyUSA – originally called MyGov – project.

MyGov created a rapid prototype of a streamlined online system that citizens will be able to use to easily access the information and services that are right for them from across the federal government.

Conrad said the next batch of fellows will continue to work on MyUSA along with a number of other innovative projects.

“We had such a great first group that it showed what the Presidential Innovation Fellows Program is all about,” Conrad said.

All of the above, but don’t forget about GSA’s recent announcements as well.

Two weeks ago, OCSIT released a baseline of social media benchmarks for the rest of the federal government. Conrad said the goal is to give the rest of the federal government a way to measure their social media performance to get the most from their efforts.

OCSIT also released an request for information that seeks input on privatizing the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program’s third party authorization process. Conrad said the privatization is aimed at making FedRAMP run more efficiently.

“FedRAMP is built on trust and we want to find ways to make the system work better as we continue to build it up,” Conrad said. “We see this as an opportunity to do that.”

Dempsey speaks on sequestration (VIDEO)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jb-bHLLvYcA&feature=em-uploademail

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey promises the military will protect the nation despite deep budget cuts.

Sequester to impact DOD schools, commissaries

Schools within the Department of Defense Education Activity, which serves 84,000 students at 194 schools, will struggle to maintain an accredited school year because of sequestration, a Pentagon official said.

DOD spokesman George Little said summer school will not be impacted by civilian-employee furloughs, but the first month of the 2014 school year could be.

“We’re mindful that we need to protect the education of military children,” Little said, but added that DODEA teachers and support personnel are subject to the furlough.

DOD civilian personnel will be furloughed one day a week from April through the end of September, unless Congress intervenes.

Little said sequestration will also impact the Defense Commissary Agency with 247 commissaries around the world to be closed an additional day per week. Furloughs will cut into commissary workers’ paychecks at the same time furloughs begin, around the end of April.

HHS names new members to IT advisory boards

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services named new and continuing members to the Health Information Technology Policy and Health Information Technology Standards Committees, the department announced.

The members of the committees will advise National Coordinator for Health Information Technology Farzad Mostashari.

“The role the Policy and Standards Committees play in helping guide the nation’s health IT policy is immeasurable,” Mostashari said. “HHS relies on their input and guidance because of each member’s broad and diverse perspectives that have been informed by their real-world experience.”

Members:

• Jeremy Delinsky, small innovative provider representative; senior vice president and chief technology officer, Athenahealth, Natick, Mass.
• Lorraine Doo, M.S.W.A., M.P.H., federal representative for Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS); senior advisor, CMS, Baltimore, Md. * continuing
• James Ferguson, health plans representative; vice president of health information technology strategy and policy, Kaiser Permanente, Oakland, Calif. * continuing
• Keith J. Figlioli, purchaser/employer representative; senior vice president of healthcare informatics, Premier Inc., Charlotte, N.C.
• Lisa Gallagher, B.S.E.E., C.I.S.M., C.P.H.I.M.S., HITsecurity representative, senior director of privacy and security, HIMSS, Washington, D.C.
• John D. Halamka, M.D., M.S., chief information officer representative; Harvard Medical School, Boston, Mass. * continuing as vice chair
• Taha A. Kass-Hout, M.D., M.S., federal representative for Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC); director of the division of informatics solutions and operations, CDC, Atlanta, Ga.
• Anne LeMaistre, M.D., chief medical information officer representative; senior director clinical information systems and chief medical information officer, Seton Healthcare Family, Ascension Health, Austin, Texas
• Deven McGraw, privacy and security representative; director, Health Privacy Project, CDT, Washington, D.C.
• Kim Nolen, pharmacy representative; medical outcomes specialist, Pfizer Inc., Peachtree City, Ga.
• Nancy Orvis, federal representative for Department of Defense (DoD); director, National Health IT Standards Participation and IM/IT Integration, DoD, Falls Church, Va. * continuing
• Wes Rishel, HIT representative; vice president and distinguished analyst, Gartner, Mckinleyville, Calif. * continuing
• Charles H. Romine, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST); director information technology laboratory, NIST, Gaithersburg, Md. * continuing
• Eric Rose, M.D., provider/HIT implementation representative; director of clinical terminology, Intelligent Medical Objects, Seattle, Wash.
• Christopher Ross, M.B.A., chief information officer representative; chief information officer, Mayo Clinic, Minneapolis, Minn. * continuing
• Andrew Wiesenthal, M.D., S.M., provider/hit implementation representative; director of health care practice, Deloitte Consulting, San Francisco, Calif.

Obama makes three major personnel announcements

President Obama made three major personnel announcements on Monday.

Sylvia Mathews Burwell will be nominated to lead the Office of Management and Budget; MIT physics professor Ernest Moniz will be nominated to lead the Department of Energy; and veteran Environmental Protection Agency executive Gina McCarthy will be nominated to head EPA.

Burwell previously served as OMB’s deputy director in the Clinton administration and was the chief of staff to former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin. She most recently has led the Walmart Foundation as its president. Burwell also previously served as president of the Gates Foundation’s Global Development Program.

“As the granddaughter of Greek immigrants, she also understands that our goal when we put together a budget is not just to make the numbers add up,” Obama said Monday during an announcement ceremony at the White House. “Our goal is also to re-ignite the true engine of economic growth in this country, and that is a strong and growing middle class – to offer ladders of opportunity for anybody willing to climb them.”

Moniz served as under secretary of Energy in the Clinton administration and has since lead MIT’s Energy Initiative.

Prior to her confirmation, McCarthy served as the commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection.

How sequestration could impact Interior (VIDEO)

The Department of Interior discusses some of the possible impacts of sequestration on the department, including reductions to be made at the nation’s national parks.

House bill aims to soften sequestration

A spending bill introduced to the House on Monday allocates an additional $10.4 billion to the Department of Defense to help soften the blow of sequestration.

The House Appropriations Committee introduced the $982 billion bill that would fund the government through the end of the fiscal year and prevent a government shutdown on March 27 when the current spending bill expires.

The bill takes the $85 billion in sequestration effects, but allocates extra money into the Pentagon’s operations and maintenance account. It includes $518 billion for defense, $2 billion more than President Obama requested in this year’s budget.

“The legislation will avoid a government shutdown on March 27th, prioritize DoD and Veterans programs, and allow the Pentagon some leeway to do its best with the funding it has,” Chairman Hal Rogers said in a statement.

White House hosts open data hackathon

The White House held its first Open Data Day Hackathon last month where a team of civic hackers developed tools and applications for its online petition site “We the People.”

Twenty-one developers built applications based on the new “We the People” application programming interface, set to be made available to the public in its next release.

“By letting this group of smart people work with an early version of the API, by helping them come up with their own ideas and bring them to life, we found ways to make both We the People and its API better,” wrote White House Deputy Director of Online Platforms Peter Welsch on the White House blog.

According to Welsch, during the hackathon, U.S. Chief Technology Officer Todd Park spoke about the value of collaboration by invoking Joy’s Law. “No matter who you are,” he said, “you have to remember that most of the smartest people in the world work for somebody else.”