Recruiters have long used video games to sell military service to young people. The armed forces also use games -- er, "computer simulations" -- to train troops for battle. Now the Veterans Affairs Department plans to join the fun by sending its nurses to Second Life.
According to its open government plan, VA health care providers will "virtually practice patient safety techniques" in Second Life's online world, using alternate identities called avatars. The idea is to have providers work through scenarios before they encounter them in the real world.
Local officials say they’re in the dark on dangerous freight rail traffic
Sixty-two cities in the United States have been deemed "high threat urban areas" by the Department of Homeland Security, meaning they’re susceptible to attack by terrorists targeting railroad tank cars loaded with chlorine gas or other deadly poisons. Under a 2007 law, freight rail companies were ordered to analyze their operations in these and other areas and select the "safest and most secure practicable" routes for hazardous cargo.
The analysis is complete, according to the Federal Railroad Administration. But some elected officials and emergency responders say they’re being kept in the dark. "Regulations issued last year give the ...
“Heart of the Matter” Finalist for Journalism Award
We're honored to announce that our investigative piece, "The Heart of the Matter: How Congress and Special Interests Kept Crucial Clinical Trial Data Secret," is a finalist for the NIHCM Foundation's Sixteenth Annual Health Care Journalism Award.
In "Heart of the Matter," we reported on the story of Bray Patrick-Lake, who participated in a clinical trial to test a heart device. After she had the device implanted, the manufacturer canceled the trial. Thanks to a successful lobbying campaign a few years before, the medical device industry had weakened legislation that would have required them to release clinical trial ...
Treasury department holding back on details of mortgage modification program
Just how effective is the Obama Administration’s effort to help homeowners stave off foreclosure? It’s hard to know, in part because detailed data that could provide part of the answer is not available to the public.
The Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) started in February 2009. To date, the $75 billion program has helped about 170,000 homeowners avoid foreclosure by reducing mortgage payments, but the nuts and bolts of how loan modifications are structured, the criteria used to deny and approve modifications, and the documentation used to evaluate the original loans are unknown. The special inspector general ...
Continue readingOGD: Food access mapping tool provides more than just its title
As part of the First Lady’s campaign to combat childhood obesity, the Department of Agriculture in February launched the Your Food Environment Atlas – an online mapping tool of the nation’s access to food at the county level.
The tool, developed by the USDA Economic Research Service, also happens to serve the dual role of becoming one of three datasets that Agriculture plans to add to its contributions to Data.gov as agencies continue to comply with the White House Open Government Directive.
While the tool is labeled as a method for the public to access information about their ...
Washington Post cites Russian role in Kyrgyzstan unrest
The Washington Post reports that "Kremlin-friendly television stations and newspapers" and Russian economic sanctions played a key role in the toppling of Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev.
Though Bakiyev fled the country on April 7, he has refused to resign his post.
Kyrgyzstan provides a key air base to U.S. forces engaged in Afghanistan. Allegations of corruption in supplying the base by officials figured in the toppling of both the previous government and that of Bakiyev, according to the New York Times.
The effort to topple Bakiyev, the Post reported, "...was a sharp departure from Russia's traditional support for ...
OGD: Future Medicare data looks promising
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services appear to be on to something with their promised new datasets. It's a leap for an agency whose previous offerings were a confusing mishmash of poorly-labeled files. If they continue to add granularity as they roll out more features, journalists could have a useful and innovative set of tools on their hands.
The “Dashboard” CMS intends to create, a demo of which is currently online, looks at Medicare spending on services. It's a good tool for quickly grasping the big picture; you can view data as a bubble chart, for example ...
Hawaii Superferry: An ulterior motive?
Was the Hawaii Superferry project conceived of as a means of securing a military contract? Speculation in Hawaii among activists that the ferries might have eventually been used for interisland transport of the Army’s Stryker brigade and other military equipment fueled conflict between protestors and Superferry supporters.
In March 2005, John F. Lehman, a former Navy Secretary during the Reagan administration and the company's principal investor, told Pacific Business News that there was a possibility the ferries would be used to move military cargo. In 2008, the former CEO and President of HSF, Inc., Thomas Fargo, said that ...
Government agency with a history of taxpayer losses keeps at it
Between 2004 and 2009, the U.S. Maritime Administration, or MARAD, a federal agency that supports the U.S. shipbuilding industry and merchant marine, made just one loan from its troubled Federal Ship Financing Program, also known as Title XI. The borrower was Hawaii Superferry Inc., a politically connected company that hired a former chief counsel and deputy administrator of MARAD, among others, to lobby the agency. In 2005, Hawaii Superferry got a taxpayer-guaranteed loan for $139 million to build and operate a pair of high-speed ferries in the fiftieth state. Just four years later, the company filed for bankruptcy ...
Continue readingOGD: Labor releases five enforcement datasets
"I now realize that I must have had my first glimmer of the need for
preventive journalism as a young West Virginian who would hear of a
mine disaster, then read heartbreaking stories of weeping widows and
indignant editorials demanding effective safety regulations. But in the
years that followed, no reporter went down into the mines to see if
they were safer. We only found out they were not after the next
disaster when a new round of heartbreaking articles and indignant
editorials would appear." -- Charles Peters, Understanding government.com
This week the Labor Department began releasing data that reporters ...
59063
