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After the Office of Special Counsel intervened on their behalf, two federal whistleblowers won a 45-day stay on personnel actions taken against them.
Federal contractors may be getting away with fraud or shoddy work, according to a Government Accountability Office study of five years\' worth of federal contracts. GAO found that most agencies are not using enforcement tools meant to cut off the flow of public funds to bad contractors.
Several agencies and other countries are using the The National Information Exchange Model framework to create common vocabularies for everything from orange juice production to cybersecurity and health care. Kshemendra Paul, the program manager for the Information Sharing Environment, said the U.S., Mexico and Canada have signed an agreement to run pilots using standards based on NIEM for pandemic and public safety information sharing.
The Department of Health and Human Services wants to use information technology to give patients greater access to their own health records. The agency is proposing new rules that would allow Americans to get direct, secure, electronic access to their own test results, directly from laboratories. HHS is also creating a template for electronic personal health records. The idea is to standardize the information in simple way, similar to nutrition facts labels. HHS thinks they\'ll help build public trust in the systems set up by personal health record companies.
Agencies have stepped up the pace of their data center consolidation efforts, leading to predicted data center closures numbering well above what the Office of Management and Budget predicted earlier this year.
States need to help CMS fight fraudulent claims, says Sen. Claire McCaskill.
A GAO report recommends that GSA review the criteria it used for HHS office space bid.
\"Patients using portals or EHRs that have implemented MedlinePlus Connect can access easy-to-understand health information on MedlinePlus that is directly related to their diagnoses, medications, and lab tests,\" according to HHS in a press release.
Building your relationship with other agencies. Get advice from GAO\'s Marsha Crosse, director of Health Care Issues.
HHS CIO Michael Carleton will retire at the end of July, ending a 35-year federal career.
HHS and ATF are among the agencies preparing for a much lower budget in 2012 and beyond. Officials said short-term savings have been found, so now they must consider cuts to everything from real estate to personnel to non-critical functions.
Falling budgets have agencies considering extreme measures.
Office of National Coordinator for Health IT gives $5 million to two companies to work on new services.
The Office of Management and Budget has gotten preliminary plans for regulatory reform from 30 executive branch agencies after President Obama\'s January executive order calling for a review of unneeded or unjustified regulations. The White House also is encouraging independent federal agencies to submit their own plans, but OMB has gotten just a single page back so far.