President Obama Announces Intent To Nominate Davita Vance-Cooks As Public Printer
Press Release:
President Obama Announces Intent To Nominate Davita Vance-Cooks As Public Printer
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: May 9, 2013 No. 13-21
PRESIDENT OBAMA ANNOUNCES INTENT TO NOMINATE DAVITA VANCE-COOKS AS PUBLIC PRINTER
WASHINGTON - The White House has released the following announcement:
Today, President Barack Obama announced his intent to nominate the following individual to a key Administration post:
Davita Vance-Cooks, Nominee for Public Printer, Government Printing Office
Davita Vance-Cooks is currently Deputy Public Printer of the Government Printing Office (GPO), a position she has held since December 2011. Ms. Vance-Cooks has served in a number of other roles at GPO since 2004, including Chief of Staff, Managing Director of the Publications and Information Sales Business Unit, and Deputy Managing Director of Customer Services. Prior to joining GPO, she was the General Manager at HTH Worldwide Insurance Services from 2001 to 2004. Previously, she served as the Vice President of Consumer Services at Digital Insurance from 2000 to 2001. From 1993 to 2000, Ms. Vance-Cooks served in several roles with NYLCare Health Plans of the Mid-Atlantic, which was purchased by Aetna during her tenure. Ms. Vance-Cooks received her B.S. from Tufts University and an M.B.A. from Columbia University.
Link to White House announcement: http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/05/08/president-obama-announces-more-key-administration-posts
Link to Davita Vance-Cooks' bio: http://gpo.gov/pdfs/about/Vance-Cooksbio.pdf
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2013 Legislative Data and Transparency Conference in DC next week
For those of you that willl be in Washington DC next week, please consider attending the 2013 Legislative Data and Transparency Conference (RSVP required). There will be several interesting panels with House and external stakeholders like the Sunlight Foundation and the Cornell Legal Information Institute -- including a panel on electronic archiving and one on "missing data" and what to do about it ("missing" meaning not effectively on-line and digital, etc.).
The 2013 Legislative Data and Transparency Conference will take place on Wednesday, May 22, 2013, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. in the Capitol Visitor Center Auditorium. The conference brings together legislative branch agencies with data users and transparency advocates to discuss the use and future of legislative data. Topics include: --Electronic legislative archiving --XML and metadata standards --Updates on beta.congress.govContinue reading
U.S. to Delete Data on Life-Threatening Mistakes From Website
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services will be removing statistics on potentially life-threatening" mistakes made in hospitals from its Hospital Compare website. See the "Readmissions, Complications, and Deaths" tab when you choose hospitals to compare.
- U.S. to Delete Data on Life-Threatening Mistakes From Website, By Charles R. Babcock, Bloomberg (May 2, 2013). Two years ago, over objections from the hospital industry, the U.S. announced it would add data about "potentially life-threatening" mistakes made in hospitals to a website people can search to check on safety performance. Now the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is planning to strip the site of the eight hospital-acquired conditions, which include infections and mismatched blood transfusions, while it comes up with a different set. ...The statistics were first posted in October 2011. CMS officials have said they’ll be removed during the website's annual update in July, according to Binder and the American Hospital Association. Binder estimated it could be two years before data from the new HACs appear on Hospital Compare.
U.S. Labor Dept. Website Hacked, Serves Malware
The U.S. Department of Labor website was hacked Tuesday evening so that the computers of visitors to the web site would be infected with malaware. The malware infections appeared to have been stopped by late Wednesday morning, and the site has since been fixed. Details here:
- U.S. Labor Dept. Website Hacked, Serves Malware, by Mathew J. Schwartz, Information Week (May 01, 2013). If a system was successfully compromised by the malicious code running on the Department of Labor's website, it would "phone home" to a command-and-control (C&C) server that's disguised as a Microsoft update server.
States free to limit access to public records
"The Supreme Court on Monday said states are free to allow public records access only to their own citizens, delivering a blow to freedom of information advocates who had challenged a Virginia law.... Various other states, including Tennessee, Arkansas and Delaware, have similar laws, although some do not enforce them."
- Justices say states can limit access to public records, By Lawrence Hurley, Reuters (April 29, 2013). In the ruling, Justice Samuel Alito said the provision of the Constitution in question, known as the "privileges and immunities clause," does not extend a sweeping right to all the information made available via freedom of information laws.