According to the blog post, the GitHub project will have plug and play tools that agencies and offices can use to meet the requirements of the new open data policy quickly, and with the help of developers who make changes to the tools there. One of the tools automates database conversion to APIs.

The project has been live on GitHub for over 24 hours and so far a few dozen downloads have been requested by the public. Anyone can create an account and view projects listed on GitHub, they then download the tools, and can alter project code to make improvements. Once those changes are made, they submit their own work to the project.

Adding a government policy announced only one week ago to a repository like GitHub with early stage tools demonstrates a commitment to both timeliness and policy we don’t often see from government. According to the blog post, changes will be reviewed on a regular basis by government officials and added to the newest versions of the tools. Meatier requests with substantial changes will be reviewed as part of periodic “stand ups.” Specific timelines for those were not offered, but frequency will have an impact on the success of the project.

Project Open Data is managed by the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP).

Online learning is also helping minorities in Tennessee get ahead. Data in the report shows that half of the minority population in Tennessee goes online for e-learning, that number is significantly higher than caucasians in the state. Hard to reach populations like rural residents are also getting online, 39% of rural residents in the state go online for coursework or work related activities.

Tennessee has made online learning a priority. For college aged users, more than one-half (53%) of Tennessee Internet users ages 18 to 24 go online for education. Now state officials are working to extend that reach into K-12 education. Tennessee recently changed its education laws to allow full-time online schooling. The state has one full-time K-8 school, the Tennessee Virtual Academy and Metro Nashville Public Schools also offers a virtual school option.

“Education is finally embracing and recognizing that technology through mobilization – smartphones, iPads, and tablets – can be used as an effective teaching tool,” Dr. Robbie K. Melton, Associate Vice Chancellor for Mobilization and Emerging Technologies for the Tennessee Board of Regents says in the report.

60% of Tennessee children with broadband access in their home reported accessing the internet to do to school work. And the state along with federal funding help is also providing computers to schoolchildren through their “Computers 4 Kids” program. The program is designed to support broadband adoption, technology training and provide computers to disadvantaged youth populations in the state.

As CivSource has previously reported, rural and academic demand for broadband in the states continues to climb as citizens and public officials rush to find the tools to compete in the technology driven economy. The skills gap in the American workforce has made recovery difficult as few have the appropriate training for job openings today, and those factors have also pushed science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education programs to the forefront as parents and educators try to help future generations before they enter the workforce.

State officials and Connected Tennessee note that more can be done to increase the use of online learning and help the state’s population achieve the education and training needed to be productive members of the high-tech workforce. To that end, Connected Tennessee recently held a broadband summit with stakeholders from across the state to look at successes and current needs. Initiatives discussed during the summit included increasing support for women-owned businesses in Tennessee and providing subsidized broadband access to low-income populations. “By providing more opportunities for online education, including increasing access to home broadband service for all Tennessee families, Tennessee policymakers can help the state’s children secure a brighter and more prosperous future,” report authors write.

The suspension will go into effect on May 17. This will allow the Treasury to continue paying all of the governments bills until early September. In January, lawmakers agreed to suspend the borrowing limit until May 18 while budget negotiations were going on. However, no deal has been reached, leaving Treasury to react to the possibility of default.

On May 19, the day following the budget deal deadline, the debt limit will be raised to its previous level with the additional debt incurred since the beginning of this year. If Congress passes a deal to raise the debt limit, state and local governments will be able to resume using slugs.

The Treasury department is now well-practiced at implementing what used to be extraordinary measures to avoid default, as members of Congress are no longer sufficiently concerned about the damage to the creditworthiness of the United States. The last time slugs were suspended was December 28, adding cyclical if not structural uncertainty around state and local government spending and tax compliance.

Other measures that will follow include halting investment in government employee retiree accounts. Should Congress fail to pass a deal, Treasury will have to pay bills with cash on hand. In that instance, payments to earned benefits such as social security, and medicare would be endangered as would military payments. State and local governments would likely also see a significant drop in federal aid which is already at low levels.

Image Credit: DonkeyHotey (Flickr)

The MTA and AT&T are offering new APIs to help developers build their submissions. Developers can also email both organizations through the ChallengePost page to request other data or APIs.

The wish list has several requests for apps including: the use of data and transit information for all subway and train lines in one application; the use of crowdsourced location services to report changes and alerts; mapping; integration of social networks and transit data; and, notably, investment visualization.

In its request for data visualization applications, the MTA is looking for help to present its capital investment and current construction plans in a way that will be helpful to transit riders. MTA is also looking for visualizations and applications that bring in auxiliary transit programs like NYC BikeShare and the new Citibike program.

The winner will get a $20,000 prize and runners up will receive smaller awards. The judging panel includes officials from the transit system in New York, along with AT&T of New York President Marissa Shorenstein and members of the local venture capital and academic communities. Developers can submit both new and existing transit applications. The deadline is August 20, 2013.

This support role is included in federal health care reform and are meant to serve as customer support for citizens trying to make decisions based on the information presented on health insurance exchanges. Other pilot programs are also in process that will bring navigator services to at risk populations helping them physically get to appointments and follow up care.

Vermont is bringing in MAXIMUS to fill its health insurance exchange support role. Vermont’s exchange will serve approximately 260,000 consumers when it opens later this year. The one-year amendment is valued at an estimated $12.5 million, starts on May 1, 2013, and runs through June 30, 2014. Thereafter, the contract has an additional one-year option period that the state may exercise.

MAXIMUS already provides this service in New York and Connecticut. MAXIMUS will also provide level-one eligibility and enrollment support for the state’s Medicaid and CHIP programs and assist consumers with determining their eligibility for subsidized premium assistance under the Affordable Care Act.

According to the data, the greatest percentage decrease in carbon dioxide emissions occurred in Delware which cut 27.9% or 4.5 million metric tons from their emissions between 2000 and 2010. Texas posted the greatest absolute decline of 58.8 million metric tons or 8.3%. (Percentage changes reflect the difference in landmass and population between the two states.

Some states however, are seeing increased emissions. The greatest percentage increase was in Nebraska at 16% or an increase of 6.6 million metric tons. Colorado posted the greatest absolute increase of 11.8 million metric tons or 13.9%.

As expected, states exhibit different emissions profiles based on their local energy mix. West Virginia is a leader in coal consumption, and it accounts for over 80% of its emissions profile. Whereas most of California’s emissions (over 60%) come from petroleum.

States with greater populations also tend to emit more without a strict policy of limitation. New York for example which has introduced a number of initiatives aimed at cutting back on emissions has the lowest rate of emissions per capita of 8.8 metric tons. According to the report, the type of economy New York has also helps keep emissions low. “The New York economy is oriented towards high-value, low-energy-consuming activities such as financial markets. For example, in 2010 New York contained 6.3 percent of the U.S. population, but consumed only 1.1 percent of the country’s industrial energy,” the administration writes.

The EIA is offering all of this data in both PDF and machine readable formats. It has also included monthly data and year-long energy outlook.

The Governor made this announcement at a panel discussion hosted in conjunction with the Future of Information Alliance (FIA) – a transdisciplinary partnership between the University of Maryland, College Park and 10 founding partners. The panel featured “futurists” and over 120 students, entrepreneurs and public servants who spoke about the importance of big data to better serve and inform the public.

Governor O’Malley and the State of Maryland joined the Future of Information Alliance in February 2012.

Prior to the launch of the portal, Governor O’Malley launched StateStat based on the same model he used for his first program CitiStat. These initiatives are designed to provide greater awareness to the public and foster more efficient deployment of state resources. Notably, the portal launched with the inclusion of several high value datasets including budget data, a welcome addition as many open data portals have launched with data of limited value and limited use.

“Big Data is forever changing the way we manage, market, and move information, and in Maryland, it is also changing the way we govern with better choices and better results,” said Governor O’Malley.

According to data in the survey, 32% of US doctors said that health information technology has increased their productivity. This is notable, because only 15% of doctors in other countries said the same thing. Most significantly, U.S. doctors reported the ­­highest routine use of two IT capabilities: e-prescribing (65%) and entering patient notes into electronic medical records (78%), an increase of 34% combined over last year.

U.S. physicians also have adopted healthcare IT for basic clinical tasks, such as receiving alerts while seeing patients. 45% of physicians get alerts while seeing patients. More than half (57%) of US doctors also said they are using electronic lab orders – an increase of 21% over last year. Their international cohorts, however, saw a decline in the use of this service by 6%.

62% of US doctors also receive their clinical results, such as lab tests, directly into their EMR system, a practice which has increased by 24% since the last survey. Over half of doctors worldwide receive their clinical results on EMR systems.

The cost of implementing EMR and HIE systems still remains a significant barrier, especially in the US. 38% of US doctors said that health IT offered little cost savings, although over 70% of doctors in the survey said that EMR and HIE reduced medical errors and improved their workflow overall.

As CivSource has reported, many health IT vendors are rushing to grab sweeping patents over their technologies which will keep prices high and may limit new vendors from innovating in the space. This may have a chilling effect on some of the aspirations outlined in federal health IT directives which are meant to control the ever increasing costs of health care in the US. States have already posted double digit increases in their use of electronic medical records. Even without cost savings, however, reductions in errors and improvements in productivity may add a slight boost to cost efficiency throughout health care organizations.

“U.S. doctors are increasingly embracing EMR and HIE, which enables virtual integration outside a single medical office,” said Mark Knickrehm, Accenture’s global managing director who leads the company’s health business. “This growing trend strongly supports a patient-centered approach to care and reinforces the progress physicians are making as they prepare to meet the Meaningful Use guidelines required by the Affordable Care Act.”

Writing in the order, the President says, “Decades ago, the U.S. Government made both weather data and the Global Positioning System freely available. Since that time, American entrepreneurs and innovators have utilized these resources to create navigation systems, weather newscasts and warning systems, location-based applications, precision farming tools, and much more, improving Americans’ lives in countless ways and leading to economic growth and job creation. In recent years, thousands of Government data resources across fields such as health and medicine, education, energy, public safety, global development, and finance have been posted in machine-readable form for free public use on Data.gov. Entrepreneurs and innovators have continued to develop a vast range of useful new products and businesses using these public information resources, creating good jobs in the process.”

The two policies included in the order give tight timelines for implementing open data once agencies adopt the policy. Once an open data policy is issued, agencies will have 30 days to create an online repository of open data. Agencies are also mandated to provide regular updates to that open data repository.

Other points in the order call for the creation of success metrics to ensure that information is being released and updated. The order follows another open government directive from last year that saw some effort but not much.

Transparency watchdog, the Sunlight Foundation has also authored a lengthy blog post on the evolution of open data policy in the White House and government in the US overall. They, like us, welcome the push for greater access to high value government data.

According to an update from the US Energy Information Administration, the Obama administration will start taking a look at the role of the federal government in the TVA as the corporation approaches its allowed debt cap of $25bn. The TVA accounts for approximately 3% of the US power supply.

TVA’s plants are primarily hydroelectric, natural gas, nuclear, and coal-fired facilities, including well known locations like the Cumberland Dam in Tennessee. The budget for the corporation in 2014 includes some $25bn in proposed spending, however the TVA already carries about an equivalent amount of debt and is capped at $30bn in total debt.

The TVA supplies power in a wholesale basis to utility providers and that is limiting its revenue. Those utility providers serve nearly 9 million households in the region.

However, some projects have been notoriously troubled. The utility’s largest current project is the completion of the Watts Bar 2 nuclear unit in eastern Tennessee. Construction of this unit began in 1973, was suspended in 1985, and resumed in 2008. The project, which is behind schedule and over budget, is currently expected to be completed by the end of 2015.