Federal C.T.O. Track History of Public-Private Partnershp

Aneesh Chopra is a now well known as the new Federal CTO. But now he has a new legacy to deal with in his track record as a technologist, and currently it doesn't look to good for him or the president. Aneesh Chopra is well know in Virginia as Governor Tim Kaine's Secretary of Technology. For the Commonwealth, he was charged with leading the state's strategy to effectively leverage technology in government reform. If his strategy for the state can be used as an indicator for his plans in President Obama's administration, you should take a look at Virginia's Strategic Plan for Information Technology.

One of the state's most recent innovations was the Virginia Information Technology Agency (VITA), the Commonwealth's consolidated information technology organization. The 10-year, $2 billion public-private partnership between VITA and Northrop Grumman is transforming state government's IT infrastructure technology and providing the expertise and resources to support improved delivery of government services. It is believed to be the first and the largest of its kind in the nation, the IT Infrastructure Partnership will deliver state-of-the-art technologies with significant resources for the benefit of citizens and consumers.

Our nations first Federal C.T.O. only has two outstanding problems with this innovation that he was responsible for as CTO for Virginia.

First is the that Virginia is now accusing the contractor with breach of contract. You can read about this in the Richmand Times article "State Accuses Northrop of Breach of Breach" So, the state is pretty much locked into the technology of a single contractor for the next 10 years, and already there is a problem.

The second is the plague of security breaches. Most worrisome is the one that relates to Health Care. The one that had the $10M ransom posting on the home page and all of the backup reportedly erased. You can read about this in the Washington Post article "Hackers Break Into Virginia Health Professions Database, Demands Ransom" The system is supposed to prevent people from fraudulently filling the same prescription multiple times. According to the DEA, "Prescription drug monitoring programs are being used to deter and identify illegal activity such as prescription forgery, indiscriminate prescribing and 'doctor shopping."

So Virginia lawmakers have intensified their scrutiny of the six-year-old agency created to consolidate the state's diverse and far-flung computer systems after the Prescription Monitoring Program was hacked on April 30 and after the dismissal of former VITA chief Lemuel Stewart. With the prescription database still offline two months after it was accessed because of FBI and state criminal investigations and work to upgrade the system, "some doctors are reluctant to prescribe highly addictive painkillers such as Oxycodone, Vicodin, morphine and Valium", said Sandra Whitley Ryals, Virginia's director of the Department of Health Professions. Among the information accessed were names, birth dates and addresses of people who received the prescriptions and, in an undetermined number of cases, Social Security numbers, the single bit of data most valuable to an identity thief.

In his weekly address, Obama said that Chopra's job would be to "promote technological innovation to help achieve our most urgent priorities, from creating jobs and reducing health care costs to keeping our nation secure." Before joining state government, Chopra was managing director of health care consultancy The Advisory Board Company. That experience could be useful since the administration is promoting a plan to establish electronic health records for all Americans.

I certainly hope that this is not the technology that will be applied to Obama government health care.