Cloudipedia – Cloud News

Jul 28, 2010

(Health and Human Services Department Documents and Publications/ContentWorks via COMTEX) — SUMMARY: The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is issuing this final rule to complete the adoption of an initial set of standards, implementation specifications, and certification criteria, and to more closely align such standards, implementation specifications, and certification criteria with final meaningful use Stage 1 objectives and measures. Adopted certification criteria establish the required capabilities and specify the related standards and implementation specifications that certified electronic health record (EHR) technology will need to include to, at a minimum, support the achievement of meaningful use Stage 1 by eligible professionals, eligible hospitals, and/or critical access hospitals (hereafter, references to “eligible hospitals” in this final rule shall mean “eligible hospitals and/or critical access hospitals”) under the Medicare and Medicaid EHR Incentive Programs. Complete EHRs and EHR Modules will be tested and certified according to adopted certification criteria to ensure that they have properly implemented adopted standards and implementation specifications and otherwise comply with the adopted certification criteria.

DATES: Effective Date: This final rule is effective August 27, 2010. The incorporation by reference of certain publications listed in the rule is approved by the Director of the Federal Register as of August 27, 2010.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Steven Posnack, Director, Federal Policy Division, Office of Policy and Planning, Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, 202-690-7151.

News posted by Virtual Global:

Virtual Global, a West Virginia corporation, is a provider of cloud-enabled enterprise IT solutions, including the TeamHost™ cloud platform for creating and deploying SaaS systems without programming; HealthCapsule™, a toolkit for creating secure Health IT solutions; TeamLeader™, a project management 2.0 software for tracking and reporting on virtual teams in real-time; and cloudipedia.com, a website that brings cloud computing information to the masses. Since 1995, Virtual Global’s platform technologies have served commercial and federal customers worldwide with enterprise-class IT needs.

By TOM SPOTH | Last Updated: July 27, 2010

Google’s package of cloud-computing applications is the first to be certified by the General Services Administration as meeting federal cybersecurity standards, the company announced Monday.

http://www.federaltimes.com/article/20100727/IT01/7270305/1035/IT01

By Stephen Cass :  Technology Review

       According to its advocates, cloud computing is poised to succeed where so many other attempts to deliver on-demand computing to anyone with a network connection have failed. Some skepticism is warranted. The history of the computer industry is littered with the remains of previous aspirants to this holy grail, from the time-sharing utilities envisioned in the 1960s and 1970s to the network computers of the 1990s (simple computers acting as graphical clients for software running on central servers) to the commercial grid systems of more recent years (aimed at turning clusters of servers into high-­performance computers). But cloud computing draws strength from forces that could propel it beyond the ranks of the also-rans.

Rather than running software on dedicated hardware–a mail server here, a database host there–cloud systems can let software run on virtual machines, simulated systems generated at a moment’s notice in massive data centers (see “Water-Powered Computers“). If a customer’s needs expand, more virtual machines can be created and configured with ease, and should those needs later decline, the underlying hardware resources are returned to the data center’s pool.

No elaborate construction or development program is needed to kick-start such technology–the infrastructure is already in place and making money. Existing data centers, built to support the likes of Amazon and Google, can rent spare capacity, creating a collection of services that provide the illusion of infinite computing power and storage on tap. Technologies like virtualization (as explained in “Conjuring Clouds“), combined with growing market pressures to reduce capital spending (see “Virtual Computers, Real Money“), could revolutionize the software industry, enabling startups to offer online applications or services without investing much in storage, Web, or e-commerce infrastructure. End users could have seamless access to applications and data anywhere, on any device.

As reported in “Making Art Pay“, eliminating the need for infrastructure investment allows rapid development of applications. An ecosystem of startups has sprung up to provide platforms, tools, and expertise–recently joined by companies such as IBM and Intel (see “Companies to Watch“). As a still-maturing technology, however, cloud computing has yet to overcome certain challenges, such as guaranteeing the integrity and security of users’ data, providing a seamless user experience, and establishing standards to allow companies to move from provider to provider (see “The Standards Question“). A number of key players are driving many of the industry’s responses to these challenges, and open-source efforts and academic research consortiums are likely to play a role as well (see “Open-Source Projects and Research Consortiums“).

A survey of corporate software buyers by the 451 Group showed the use of public cloud computing increasing by more than 60 percent in the last quarter of 2008 over the previous two quarters, and International Data Corporation has predicted that business IT spending on cloud services will rise from $16 billion last year to $42 billion by 2012, setting up cloud computing as one of the few areas of growth in an otherwise gloomy economy.

________

Virtual Global, a West Virginia corporation, is a provider of cloud-enabled enterprise IT solutions, including the TeamHost™ cloud platform for creating and deploying SaaS systems without programming; HealthCapsule™, a toolkit for creating secure Health IT solutions; TeamLeader™, a project management 2.0 software for tracking and reporting on virtual teams in real-time; and cloudipedia.com, a website that brings cloud computing information to the masses. Since 1995, Virtual Global’s platform technologies have served commercial and federal customers worldwide with enterprise-class IT needs.

For Immediate Release: July 21, 2010   Contact: Evelyn Brown  

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has issued draft recommendations for securely configuring and using full virtualization technologies, which, by means of software, duplicate a computer’s operating system and its applications on other machines.

NASA employees use open-source tools to build a site in two days with no budget

By Rutrell Yasin  Jul 21, 2010, Federal Computer Week

IdeaScale Application Programming Interface; Tornado, a lightweight, open-source web development framework; MongoDB, an open-source, document-oriented database; Googlechart, an API for chart generation; Uservoice, a free, Web feedback forum; and Github, a Web-based hosting service for projects that use Git revision control system.

Robbie Schingler, one of the developers of OpenGov Tracker, describes the site as a tiny hack — and in this case, the word “hack” means something good — with immediate value. Schingler, an executive at NASA’s Office for Open Government, and co-developer Jessy Cowan-Sharp, also with NASA, created the Web site in two days during the record-setting snowstorm in February that halted activity around the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area.

“Two developers, two days, no money” — that was Schingler’s description of the project at a recent conference on Web development and new media for government Web managers.

The Open Government Directive, which ordered agencies to open their doors and data to the public, was the motivation for the site. The directive states that each open-government Web page had to incorporate a mechanism to provide input on the agency’s open-government plan.
 
In early February, the General Services Administration offered a citizen engagement tool based on the IdeaScale platform to 24 federal agencies, including NASA. Twenty-three agencies accepted.

The online dialogue tool allowed members of the public to submit, rank and comment on ideas about how agencies could best fulfill the goals of the Open Government Directive by becoming more transparent, participatory, collaborative and innovative.

Schingler and Cowan-Sharp essentially developed a site consisting of one basic page that aggregates 23 of those sites to give the public a quick glance of the best-rated contributions in each of four categories: collaboration, participation, transparency and innovation.

For instance, in the participation category, someone proposed that the Education Department promote funding for open-source textbooks. The idea is to create free textbooks that schools could customize. Another example, in the innovation category, was to let NASA employees set aside time each week for unstructured, creative thinking.

OpenGov Tracker tracked all government ideas, votes and comments. It then highlighted agencies with the most or least ideas, votes or comments. NASA topped the list with the most ideas (470), votes (4,747) and comments (700). Those with the least ideas, votes and comments were organized in another category: Needs More Love.

The developers accomplished the task on their own time using their own server on the NASA Nebula cloud computing platform. In addition to using IdeaScale’s application programming language, open-source software formed the project’s foundation.

The developers used the Python programming language with the Tornado Web development framework and MongoDB document-oriented database. The developers also used Uservoice, which is free Web feedback forum software, and Github, for storage, Schlinger said.

Here are some of their lessons learned.

• Keep it new and fresh. The developers were able to pull in new information without human intervention.
• Keep it simple. The developers only had one function, one page.
• Make it fun.
• Develop quickly. Allow developers to work in sprints and incubate the work, using open-source software and iterations, if useful.

www.opengovtracker.com

______________

Virtual Global, a West Virginia corporation, is a provider of cloud-enabled enterprise IT solutions, including the TeamHost™ cloud platform for creating and deploying SaaS systems without programming; HealthCapsule™, a toolkit for creating secure Health IT solutions; TeamLeader™, a project management 2.0 software for tracking and reporting on virtual teams in real-time; and cloudipedia.com, a website that brings cloud computing information to the masses. Since 1995, Virtual Global’s platform technologies have served commercial and federal customers worldwide with enterprise-class IT needs.