Fairfax County increases efficiency by putting land use data online

January 29, 2012 By Leave a Comment

For state and local governments, the storing and dissemination of records, information and data is an enormous but essential daily undertaking. From birth certificates to driver’s licenses and other important records, citizens, government employees and private enterprises need to be able to access the records that government agencies keep.

Unfortunately, for citizens, county employees and land developers in Fairfax County, Va., the ability to access the land use data that the county had on record was, until recently, a convoluted and difficult process.

This was a problem when you consider just how important land use data can be. From developers looking to identify the overall costs to purchase and develop a piece of land, to potential homebuyers looking for additional information on a home they’re considering purchasing, land use data is vital for many constituents.

The problems accessing land use data stemmed from records being kept in disparate, distributed systems and in a wide variety of formats. According to a recent article in Government Computer News, records were being stored in a variety of Oracle databases, 30-year old mainframe applications, and PDF files. This resulted in government workers and citizens scouring multiple databases and Web sites to find the information they were seeking.

To help alleviate the issue caused by disparate systems filled with a myriad of differing records, the county began creation of a new repository for land use data. This database consolidates all data, and ingests and analyzes both structured and unstructured data, to ensure that all county land use information is entered and stored in one place.

This new online repository also is searchable in multiple ways, including by address or keyword. This makes it significantly easier for county employees to find the information they’re seeking.

So far, the system has been so successful that the agencies are switching over and pulling the plug on existing mainframes months ahead of schedule. In fact, the repository is expected to be made available to the public next month.

By consolidating the existing, mainframe-based and disparate systems storing land use data, Fairfax County has helped to greatly increase the efficiency of their workforce. By moving this information online, they’re also making it easier for developers, builders, homebuyers and other constituents to find the records and information they need.

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Wave of healthcare innovation to be followed by tsunami of big data

January 24, 2012 By 5 Comments

For many Americans, the thought of growing old and being unable to take care of themselves is a real and persistent fear.

They worry about being a burden to children or loved ones. Being forced to leave homes bought and paid for with years of hard work and practically painted in memories. Having healthcare bills and frequent doctor and hospital visits drain bank accounts. It’s enough to keep many people awake at night.

However, a wave of innovation has delivered new healthcare technologies that will soon be helping to assuage these fears.

Telemedicine solutions are enabling patients to have instantaneous contact and interaction with doctors, specialists and other healthcare providers without ever having to leave their home. Monitors, sensors and other systems that can identify and report vital signs and other important information to healthcare professionals are now available.

Today’s new technologies are making it so that patients don’t need to be monitored, supervised or otherwise cared for by loved ones or healthcare professionals 24/7. They’re enabling elderly and sick patients to stay in their homes instead of moving to assisted living facilities. It’s eliminating the punishing cost of having home health aides.

Unfortunately, adoption has been slow in the places where the technology currently exists, for example the UK. According to a recent article in the Register, the government purchased advanced telehealth solutions to help reduce healthcare costs, only to see doctors and patients initially shun them.

That’s not entirely unexpected. Older generations currently in need of telehealth and telemedicine solutions aren’t people that have been raised around or otherwise become comfortable with modern healthcare technology. For them, the benefit of not having to leave the house doesn’t outweigh the fear that a video visit to the doctor may be inferior to seeing the doctor in person.

However, as baby boomers and other more tech-savvy generations reach this same point in their life, they will likely be far more open to these healthcare innovations. People who have embraced video teleconferencing in their jobs will be less hesitant to use it for a check-up. Younger generations of doctors and healthcare professionals will also see these technologies as ways to expand their practices and provide better care. These innovations will see increased adoption, and create another problem altogether.

The monitoring and transmission of vital signs, the electronic health records and the rest of the digital information generated by these new healthcare technologies will create a massive tsunami of data. This information will need to be stored, accessed, searched, analyzed and even shared between healthcare providers, government agencies and insurance companies.

This phenomenon is often referred to as “big data.” As an ever-increasing sea of electronic records and data flows into networks from a constantly-expanding number of endpoints, storing, managing, sharing and analyzing the data becomes a major challenge. Also, the sensitive nature of this data means that it needs excellent security.

Although today’s technologies can help to increase access to care while cutting its cost and improving quality of life for patients, they can also create serious problems for the healthcare system. Government agencies and organizations, healthcare providers, payers and other entities involved in the delivery and payment of healthcare services need to begin to prepare for the big data tsunami that is quickly approaching our shores.

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Businesses to see benefits from consolidated government Web presence

January 17, 2012 By Leave a Comment

From international trade issues to tax codes, businesses of all sizes and across every market and industry are impacted by the decisions, regulations and legislation enacted by the federal government.

Unfortunately for many enterprises, finding information about the government rules and programs that impact their business can be a convoluted and difficult process. That’s because many disparate agencies have missions that impact different aspects of business.

For example, there are agencies that influence, regulate and police international trade, such as the U.S. Trade and Development Agency (USTDA) and the United States International Trade Commission (USITC). There are agencies that influence and execute programs designed to help small businesses such as the Small Business Administration (SBA). And then there’s agencies such as the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), which handles tax policy and collection.

And that’s just a small sample of the different agencies and organizations that monitor, regulate and otherwise impact business. Each of these agencies owns information that businesses need and programs to help businesses thrive, and each has its own unique Web presence where the information is available.

The Obama Administration is currently working to make this convoluted system a little less complicated. One of the ways they’re looking to accomplish this is very aggressive and involves reorganizing and consolidating the agencies whose main mission impacts trade and business.

The other step that the administration is taking is standing up a centralized Web application and Web site that aggregates the information that businesses need from multiple agencies and makes it available in one place. This has less of a direct impact on the agencies itself, but should pay huge dividends for businesses.

This new Web presence, which will be called Business.USA.gov, is expected to go live in a matter of weeks and make the information and programs that businesses rely on easier to access. With the nation’s unemployment rate still over 8 percent, this Web presence is expected to empower businesses and be a tool that can help drive the economy towards recovery.

According to a recent article in NextGov, the content of the site is expected to include resources and information from multiple trade agencies, the business divisions of the Department of Commerce, and the SBA. The new site will also be constructed with some advanced capabilities to help make navigation and search easier. For example, the site will ask users to provide basic information about their businesses, such as the legal status or size of the business, and will then display only the information and resources important and applicable to that business based on the information provided.

By building a new online portal for businesses, the Obama Administration is taking an important step in making the information, programs and other resources that businesses need easier to find and more readily available. By moving these resources online and into a place that is intuitive, centralized and easy to navigate, the Administration is helping to ensure that the programs accomplish their missions and that the resources and information that the government makes available to help businesses of all sizes can be found and used to help enterprises grow and Americans get ahead.

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Thinning out the overgrown forest of dot-gov

January 5, 2012 By Leave a Comment

If you’re a fan of folk music played by an ensemble of forest rangers, well, we have some bad news for you. The Fiddlin’ Foresters, by far the nation’s most famous and beloved group of folk singing forest rangers, has been forced to shut down their dot-gov Web presence. The same can be said for deserttortoise.gov and a handful of other dot-gov Web sites (sorry arid climate reptile fans).

But why this crackdown on dot-gov domains?

As part of his larger crackdown on government waste, President Obama has charged his administration with hunting down and eliminating programs and other federal expenses that have been made obsolete by today’s advanced technologies or otherwise fail to deliver the ROI necessary to justify the expenditure of taxpayer dollars.

According to a video issued by the Obama Administration (embedded below) and a recent article by NextGov, the crowded, complicated and otherwise overgrown dot-gov ecosystem is one arena where the administration is targeting to cut costs.

Many of the 18,000 dot-gov Web sites that were created and maintained by the federal government are costing taxpayers money while ultimately providing very little value.

On some of these sites, the content just doesn’t justify the expense, like in the case of the Fiddlin’ Forester’s Web presence. Other sites were designed without search engine optimization being a priority, which means that even valuable information was being buried at the bottom of search results, never to be found by Americans that were looking for it. Others were simply stood up and unofficially retired or were never truly used or updated.

This is an important initiative for the federal government for many reasons, aside from just the need to drastically cut government expenses. There are many online applications, databases and Web presences being created by government agencies that provide important and necessary information for American citizens. Unfortunately, many of them are getting lost in the dot-gov crowd and becoming difficult for people to find.

By moving the content from these small, niche Web presences onto large government agency Web sites, it is helping to eliminate some of these excess dot-gov presences and making the content easier to find. It’s also enabling the integration of advanced capabilities such as easier search functionality and the integration of social media and social networks.

We applaud the Obama Administration and the Office of Management and Budget, which is working to cut back on the amount of dot-gov Web sites by 25 percent, for working to both reign in government waste and make the crowded dot-gov space easier for constituents to navigate.

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CMS looks to virtually improve its IT infrastructure

December 20, 2011 By Leave a Comment

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has an enormous, imperative and difficult mission to accomplish; providing healthcare services and coverage for millions of Americans that need it. And with new healthcare legislation and demands to increase quality of care, this mission is only going to get more difficult moving forward.

The importance and wide scope of this mission requires a large and distributed organizational structure and IT infrastructure. Unfortunately for CMS, this distributed IT infrastructure has created significant challenges for the agency.

According to a recent article in Government Computer News, CMS currently operates multiple data centers, each owned by the agency but built and operated by different technology vendors. This disparate infrastructure has led to interoperability between data centers, an inability to oversee operations and difficulty ensuring all data centers comply with CMS standards.

Considering the impetus to share and analyze healthcare data to help ensure quality care and battle fraud, interoperability is a major issue for the agency. What’s worse, these initiatives are causing the agency’s existing IT infrastructure to become taxed.

To support current and future legislative requirements, the agency’s Baltimore Data Center (BDC) resources were rapidly being depleted. Additional computing power and new technologies were going to be needed, but would put the agency at risk of completely occupying the facility within a couple of years.

To mitigate this risk, CMS implemented the Enterprise Data Center (EDC) contract in 2005 to help ease the strain on the BDC. The contract was awarded to three companies: Companion Data Services (CDS); International Business Machines (IBM); and Hewlett Packard/Electronic Data Services (EDS). This contract gave CMS experience with operating multiple data centers under one contracting vehicle.

CMS has used the knowledge they gained through the EDC contract to build the Virtual Data Center (VDC) contracting model. The model will enable the agency to begin construction on a virtual data center that will increase interoperability and allow the agency to pool IT resources from across the country.

The virtual data center constructed under the VDC contract will have many benefits for CMS. First, it will be contractor owned and contractor operated (COCO). Under this COCO model, CMS will establish its expected outcomes and, for a price, the contractor will provide all the resources required to satisfy those expectations. This model transfers risk from the government to the contractor.

This is starkly different from the EDC contract and other, past data center endeavors that used a government owned and contractor operated (GOCO) model. Under the GOCO model, the government provided the hardware, software and data center facility while the contractor managed those resources on the government’s behalf.

Secondly, the selection of multiple world-class data center providers to support the VDC will give CMS access to some of the best IT facilities and staff available to support its ever growing and expanding mission. These facilities and staff would simply be unavailable to the agency in today’s tight federal budget environment.

By creating new, virtual data center infrastructure, CMS is getting a better, more flexible IT environment. They’re also getting access to world-class equipment and talent while eliminating existing issues with oversight and interoperability and reducing their risk. The incredible benefits of this virtual datacenter will make CMS, an agency with an exceptionally important mission, more efficient and effective and help to ensure better care for constituents.

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Data sharing and analytics driving improved law enforcement

December 7, 2011 By 1 Comment

Law enforcement agencies are under extreme pressure to solved crimes, protect citizens and otherwise apprehend individuals who skirt or directly violate the rules which govern our country. Unfortunately, the nature of law enforcement makes it an extraordinarily reactive undertaking. After all, you can’t exactly know when and where a crime is going to be committed. Or can you…?

According to a recent article in Government Computer News, local law enforcement agencies are starting to utilize advanced technologies and systems to consolidate, analyze and interpret the mountains of data that they and other state and local agencies collect.

The data is shared between agencies, such as prison systems, police forces, departments of motor vehicles and others, and is then analyzed to help identify trends that allow police to better distribute their resources. This is extremely important in today’s economic environment where state and local governments are fighting to make ends meet and often have to cut already limited police forces.

In addition to saving money, these systems can help to better protect citizens. According to the article, these systems are enabling police to track individuals that are of interest to the police. Should they be arrested in other regions, be released from prison or otherwise have a change in their status, the local authorities are notified.

Utilizing this technology, police can even analyze whether particular kinds of crime increase or decrease when individuals are incarcerated or released. If a particular type of criminal activity increases when an individual is released, there could be a correlation.

And these Web-based applications are working. In Santa Cruz, Ca., a program designed to predict which geographic region is susceptible to criminal activity at a particular time is enabling police to alter their patrols accordingly.

The system is helping the police determine the kind of crime and potential target so they know where to look and what to look for. As a result, they’ve seen a significant decrease in crime in those areas, and in the immediate surrounding areas. That’s important since it means that the criminal activity wasn’t simply displaced.

When it comes to law enforcement, it appears that the more data that local authorities have and the more they can analyze it, the more likely they are to prevent crime, instead of just react to criminal activity. But that’s not only true in law enforcement. Analyzing and sharing data via Web-based applications is helping government agencies avoid other forms of criminal activity.

In a previous post, we discussed a program that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) runs that assigns star ratings to health plans and rewards the plans with the highest ratings financially. By creating a Web application where health plans are required to upload patient-level data about the services they are providing, CMS is ensuring that the information they provide is accurate and that the ratings aren’t fraudulently inflated.

Web-based applications are enabling civilian and law enforcement agencies to properly aggregate, share and analyze utilize the mountains of data that they are perpetually storing. When utilized properly and shared between agencies, this data can help to ensure that criminal activity is reduces, fraud is eliminated and citizens are protected, proactively.

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Online system driving better preventative care for Medicare subscribers

November 22, 2011 By Leave a Comment

There’s an old saying that people tell others when something goes wrong or things aren’t going well. They say, “Well, at least you still have your health.” Ultimately, it never makes anyone feel better, but the thought is that people need to put things in perspective. Money, material processions, none of these things are as important as being vital, healthy and alive.

People shouldn’t mess around when it comes to their health, and the government isn’t either. In an effort to ensure that health plans were offering quality service to their members, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) introduced their star rankings for health plans. These ratings are designed to rank health plans based on the quality of care they provide for their members and areposted on Medicare.gov so that Medicare members can reference them when selecting a plan.

How are the star rankings calculated? Well, health plans are required to submit Healthcare Effectiveness Data and Information Set (HEDIS) information, which measure care and service. This information is then carefully vetted by the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) for accuracy and passed on to CMS, whose vendor partners, like Edaptive Systems, utilize algorithms to assign the star ratings.  Other measures of health care are also included in the final analysis.

Although this system has been in place for years, the stakes have recently been upped to drive health plans to embrace higher-quality care. CMS has instituted bonuses to provide an incentive for health plans to improve their star ratings thus improving the quality of care that they offer to their members.

Obviously, with budgets being tight and government spending being slashed due to the ongoing economic downturn, it’s important to ensure that these bonuses are truly going to health plans that are providing the type of quality service and preventive medicine that is reflected in their submitted HEDIS information. Checks and balances have to be in place to ensure that this information is accurate and true-to-life.

To help provide an additional layer of analysis in addition to the rigorous systems in place, CMS is working to establish a Web application where health plans will be required to submit patient-level data which is checked for accuracy. Essentially, they’re being required to provide the actual data about the patient, the tests or treatments they received and other information that can back up the summary data that they submitted originally. By analyzing this patient-level data against the summary data, CMS can better analyze the information they receive from health plans and ultimately ensure that the star ratings that they’re assigning are accurate.

This results in two very positive outcomes. First, the bonus incentives being given to health plans with high star ratings are accurate and the government is giving money to plans that are truly working to deliver high quality of care and preventive medical tests and procedures. Second, by eliminating any waste and providing a tough set of checks and balances, the program can truly drive lower performing health plans to improve their quality of care.

One shouldn’t mess around with their health, and a big part of preserving health is high quality healthcare. CMS’s star ratings can ensure that people are receiving quality care and the preventive medical tests and procedures that ensure they’ll stay vital and healthy. By creating this online system, CMS is enabling an incentive program that will drive improved care for Medicare patients. They’re also simultaneously preventing inaccurate claims by health plans and working to reduce government waste.

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Getting the government online and ready for tablets

November 18, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Tablet computers, like the Apple iPad, Samsung Galaxy Tab, Motorola Xoom and Kindle Fire, are all of the rage in households across America. With a wide range of applications, from games to video communication, available in online app stores, tablets are ushering in a new age of advanced capabilities, connectivity and mobility.

It was only a matter of time before these tablets began to find their way into the workplace. As employees began demanding the same advanced, mobile capabilities on the job as they did in their homes, government agencies began to look at tablets and identify ways that they could be utilized to increase efficiency and help accomplish their mission more effectively.

In fact, it was recently reported that the VA would acquire up to 100,000 tablet computers for use in their health centers. Also, according to a Nextgov article that was published today, the Android operating system that runs on tablets and other mobile devices is expected to win approval for use on military networks by April 2012. All proof that mobile devices and tablets are coming en force to the federal government.

However, the mobility and flexibility that mobile devices, such as tablets, bring to the federal government is wasted if the information and data that agencies need isn’t available outside of the office.

For many government agencies, records are stored either physically as paper, or in secure networks. This makes it impossible to access the data stored within unless one is physically in the office. If agencies are going to truly take advantage of the mobility that tablets provide, Web applications that make data available from anywhere are essential.

The ability to pull up records and requisite information from anywhere is one of the largest draws of tablets. By moving records and data into systems where they can be accessed online, and requiring authentication to ensure only government employees can access them, government agencies can bring everything an employee needs right to their tablet, regardless of their location.

Whether it is Department of Agriculture employees in the field, or Veterans Affairs doctors in examination rooms, the applications are almost limitless.

There’s no doubt that tablets are making a huge push into government agencies. The mobility and advanced capabilities that tablets can deliver are certainly worth the investment, but to truly make tablets a mission-critical technology for agencies moving forward, government records and data need to be available and need to be online.

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Embracing telework requires a government online

November 8, 2011 By Leave a Comment

For the longest time, working from home and teleworking were viewed as new-age, trendy workplace concepts reserved for the private sector. However, over the course of the past decade, the federal government has begun to look at telework in a completely new light.

In fact, in 2010, the Telework Enhancement Act was passed, which required agencies to establish telework policies, assign a telework managing officer to oversee telework programs and incorporate telework into continuity-of-operations (COOP) planning. But why is telework so important in the federal government today that agencies would be required to implement it?

Ultimately, telework can benefit both the employee and the employer – federal agencies in this case – when executed properly. Employees that are allowed to work on their own terms can become significantly more productive. Teleworking can enable time spent on trains, in cars or on buses getting to offices to instead be spent on accomplishing an agency’s mission. And eliminating commutes can have a positive impact on workplace morale and employee satisfaction, which can also help to increase retention.

By enabling telework, agencies can also ensure COOP by enabling employees to work from home when weather, or other situations, make it unsafe or impossible to get into the office.

But those aren’t the only benefits of telework. Employees that are out of the office consume less resources and utilities, such as electricity and water, at a savings to the government. They also require less workspace in the office, which can help reduce the amount spent on real estate. Simply put, telework equals savings. And that’s incredibly important in light of today’s ongoing federal budget and economic issues.

Although the benefits of telework are staggering, it does create some challenges. Having a distributed workforce can lead to issued with collaboration, communication, data sharing and access to information.

For example, how can a federal employee work outside of the office if the information, data or files they need to do their job are only available inside the office, either physically stored as paper or saved on government networks? How can they work collaboratively with others if they can’t easily share data between individuals? And how can they access the applications and systems that they use everyday in their jobs?

There is a solution. Through proper records management and the creation of online applications, government agencies can make all of the information, data and records needed for an employee to do their job available from anywhere via a simple Internet connection.  By enabling data and records to be entered and accessed online, government employees can store, search and share data as effectively outside of the office as inside of the office.

The same can be said for mission-critical applications as well. Traditionally, government applications were built and hosted in datacenters and only available on government networks. By building and hosting these applications in the cloud, they can be available online to all employees and in any location.

Telework is making “work” something that federal employees do, not somewhere they go. But for telework to ever truly be successful and effective, agencies need to ensure that the data, records and applications that are integral for employees to do their jobs are available regardless of where these employees are located. By moving these systems online, the government can embrace telework and the many benefits it delivers.

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