White House Seeks Ideas For Building a 'Solar System Civilization'

   While the rise of the barbarous Islamic State and the spread of the modern day plague of Ebola has many concerned about the state of civilization here on earth, some at the White House are turning their attention beyond our planet. A Tuesday entry on the White House blog Tuesday solicits ideas for "massless exploration and bootstrapping a Solar System civilization" and "how the [Obama] Administration, the private sector, philanthropists, the research community, and storytellers can further these goals."
    "Bootstrapping" is a term employed by Dr. Phillip Metzger, former NASA research physicist now on the University of Central Florida faculty. Metzger explains:

If we want to want to create a robust civilization in our solar system, more of the energy, raw materials, and equipment that we use in space has to come from space.  Launching everything we need from Earth is too expensive.  It would also be too expensive to send all of the factories required to manufacture everything necessary to support a solar system civilization. 

Ultimately what we need to do is to evolve a complete supply chain in space, utilizing the energy and resources of space along the way. We are calling this approach “bootstrapping” because of the old saying that you have to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps.  Industry in space can start small then pull itself up to more advanced levels through its own productivity, minimizing the cost of launching things from Earth in the meantime.  Obviously, this isn’t going to happen overnight, but I think that it is the right long-term goal.

    Tom Kali, Deputy Director for Technology and Innovation at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and author of the White House blog post, says that NASA is already experimenting with 3D printing with the ultimate goal of printing replacement parts for spacecraft on long voyages, and even "self-replicating large structures" in future missions to Mars. The next rover to be sent to explore Mars will attempt to demonstrate something called "In-Situ Resource Utilization," which converts carbon dioxide in the atmosphere on Mars to oxygen to provide fuel and air for future manned missions.
    Anyone with ideas is invited to email the White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy.

Note: A version of this post first appeared at The Weekly Standard.

Audit: IRS Does Not ‘Effectively Track’ Computers That Are ‘Recycled Or Donated’

    The results of a Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) audit released Tuesday found that "[w]hile the IRS is complying with GSA requirements to recycle or donate used information technology (IT) equipment, TIGTA found several areas for improvement." The IRS got rid of more than 100,000 computers between 2009 and 2012 by recycling or donating to schools. However, the agency does not "effectively track which equipment is recycled or donated," which made it difficult for TIGTA to measure compliance to General Services Administration (GSA) requirements.
    The press release from TIGTA reads as follows:

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) needs to improve its processes for disposing of unneeded computers, printers, and servers, according to a report publicly released today by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA). 

TIGTA reviewed the accuracy of the disposal asset inventory and the IRS’s actions taken or planned to fulfill General Services Administration (GSA) requirements. 

While the IRS is complying with GSA requirements to recycle or donate used information technology (IT) equipment, TIGTA found several areas for improvement. According to the report, the IRS needs to: improve documentation to ensure compliance with media sanitization guidelines; report any IT equipment that cannot be located to the Computer Security Incident Response Center as required; and improve documentation of disposal actions. 

The IRS disposed of 63,031 desktop computers and 44,734 laptops between 2009 and 2012 through a combination of recycling and donating to schools. However, it does not effectively track which equipment is recycled or donated, making it difficult to measure compliance with GSA requirements. 

TIGTA made eight recommendations to improve documentation of the removal of all data from IT equipment before it is donated and the equipment’s final destination, and the reporting of lost or stolen equipment. The IRS agreed with TIGTA’s recommendations and is taking actions to implement them.

    The report is dated April 25, 2014, but was released publicly Tuesday.
    The IRS has been under scrutiny lately for missing emails of former Exempt Organizations Unit director Lois Lerner, whose laptop hard drive crashed in 2011.  The IRS released a statement on Tuesday saying that through other methods of recovery, "the IRS has or will produce 24,000 Lerner emails from this 2009-2011 time period, largely from the files of the other 82 individuals. The IRS’s production to Congress of the 67,000 Lerner emails is nearly complete."


Note: A version of this article first appeared at The Weekly Standard. 

Healthcare.gov Quietly Drops Online Chat Customer Service [Updated]

    As consumers race to beat the March 31 Obamacare open enrollment deadline, they will have one less option to get help with the website that has experienced so much trouble over the past five and a half months.  Though it runs counter to the Obama administration's emphasis on   Though it runs counter to the Obama administration's emphasis on technology, typified by the White House's We the Geeks Google+ Hangout Series, Healthcare.gov has eliminated the web chat customer service option.  Sometime around the beginning of March, the online chat feature that has been present since Healthcare.gov was launched disappeared.  Although previous posts on the Healthcare.gov blog still refer to the "live chat" feature, the ubiquitous blue box in the lower right corner of most pages on the site is gone.
    Here is an example of how the "Live Chat" button previously appeared:

    There is even a cached page at Archive.org show the now obsolete chat window.  But the address for the chat window, https://www.healthcare.gov/chat, is now automatically redirected to the Contact Us page.

    That same Contact Us page provides the most obvious evidence of the removal of the chat feature.  A cached version of the page from February 28 appears this way.  The lower left box says that "Online Chat" is a "great way to get quick questions answered. Available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week."  Note the "live chat" button in the lower right corner as well:

    On the next available cached version of the page, March 5, four boxes have become three.  Online Chat is gone:

    While the dropping of the live chat feature passed without mention, Julie Bataille, Director of Communications for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) alluded to a change in a February 27 post at the Health and Human Services (HHS) Digital Strategy blog, saying that "we will transition 1500 service representatives from web chat to direct telephone assistance where they can help consumers with enrollment 24/7."  Bataille did not indicate that web chat was being abandoned altogether.

    HHS further noted in a blog post on March 11 that with 20 days to go in open enrollment, the agency was making "consumer improvements" and "staffing up."  The improvements included streamlining the account creation process, adding new "help text" for common questions, and adding system capacity to handle the expected increase in volume as the deadline nears.  "Staffing up" consisted of adding 2,000 phone representatives to answer calls at the 24/7 customer service number, and increased training for all representatives.  It is unclear if that 2,000 includes the 1,500 transfers from the now defunct live chat service.

    

    The removal of live chat is not the first time Healthcare.gov has made undocumented changes to the site:

• In January 2014, after THE WEEKLY STANDARD identified a security vulnerability on the site, HHS quickly and without notice disabled public access to the "open data" user profiles responsible for the opening.
• In October 2013, we reported that Healthcare.gov was using copyrighted software code without attribution.  Shortly thereafter, the attribution was added to the code despite HHS's failure to respond to repeated email inquiries about the missing lines.
• Also in October 2013, we reported the existence of the phrase "no reasonable expectation of privacy" in the source code of the Terms and Conditions of the site, although the words did not appear visible on the screen to users.  Not until Kathleen Sebelius herself was confronted in a Congressional hearing with the issue was the phrase removed two weeks later.
• In late September 2013, we reported that a reference to "free or low-cost healthcare" was abruptly changed to simply "low-cost."  HHS later described the deletion of "free" as a "routine change."

    HHS has not responded to an email inquiry about the removal of the live chat feature from Healthcare.gov.

UPDATE:  While HHS has not responded to an email inquiry, I found a tweet on the official Twitter account of the Marketplace confirming chat has been dropped.  A customer having trouble getting through on the phone was asking about other options and said, "Calling didn't work last night got disconnected several times. Is there no longer live chat?"  The reply said, "Correct, we transitioned 1,500 chat reps to direct phone assistance where they can help consumers with enrollment 24/7".  Here's the tweet in question:

@YoloELE Correct, we transitioned 1,500 chat reps to direct phone assistance where they can help consumers with enrollment 24/7
— HealthCare.gov (@HealthCareGov) March 12, 2014

Unfortunately, no reason is given for the change.


Note: A version of this post first appeared at The Weekly Standard.

W.H. Touts $30 Million Award for Technology that Led to 3D Gun

    Just this week, news broke that the "world’s first entirely 3D-printed gun" was successfully built and test-fired by an engineer in Texas.  The technology involves a special printer that uses melted polymers to generate plastic components for a variety of uses, now including working firearms.  Today, in a press release announcing a $200 million program for a "Competition for Three New Manufacturing Innovation Institutes," the White House also touted a $30 million award in a similar competition in August 2012 for the National Additive Manufacturing Innovation Institute.  President Obama mentioned the new institute in his February State of the Union speech.  The purpose of the institute is to help develop the very 3D technology used to produce the newly revealed 3D gun:

Pilot Institute 

In August 2012, the Administration announced the winner of an initial $30 million Federal award to create a pilot institute, the National Additive Manufacturing Innovation Institute (NAMII).  Headquartered in Youngstown, Ohio, NAMII consists of a consortium of manufacturing firms, universities, community colleges, and non-profit organizations primarily from the Ohio-Pennsylvania-West Virginia ‘Tech Belt’.  NAMII was selected from amongst twelve teams from around the country that applied for the award.  The members of NAMII will co-invest $40 million against the initial Federal award.  

Additive manufacturing, often referred to as 3D printing, is a new way of making products and components from a digital model, and will have implications in a wide range of industries including defense, aerospace, automotive, and metals manufacturing. Like an office printer that puts 2D digital files on a piece of paper, a 3D printer creates components by depositing thin layers of material one after another using a digital blueprint until the exact component required has been created. The Department of Defense envisions customizing parts on site for operational systems that would otherwise be expensive to make or ship. The Department of Energy anticipates that additive processes would be able to save more than 50% energy use compared to today’s ‘subtractive’ manufacturing processes.

    This announcement comes in the midst of the ongoing gun-control debate led by the White House and spearheaded by Vice President Joe Biden.  Some lawmakers, including New York Senator Chuck Schumer, have already called for legislation to ban the plastic guns and regulate the technology involved.  Rep. Steve Israel, D-NY, renewed a call to pass his recently introduced Undetectable Firearms Modernization Act which renews the current ban on undetectable weapons that expires this year.


Note: This article first appeared at The Weekly Standard.