The Internet opens the door to increased participation in government, but innovative new tools won’t be effective without wider broadband adoption, White House and other government officials said Thursday at the FCC’s first broadband workshop. “Everything flows from civic engagement,” said FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, introducing the workshop. “An active public offering its best ideas is the foundation of the solutions to all of our challenges, and in the 21st century there’s no excuse for not finding ways to connect all Americans to each other and to their government through high-speed Internet.”

The RUS won’t change the definition of “remote area” in the notice of funds availability, the agency said late Friday on broadbandusa.gov, the official Web site tracking the broadband stimulus. The agency said it won’t delay applications with changes in the current notice but will consider modifying the definition for future ones. At a July 9 hearing of the House Rural Development Subcommittee, Cheryl Cook, the Agriculture Department’s under secretary for rural development, indicated that the agency was considering adjusting the definition (CD July 10 p13).

Fighting over whether there’s a need for new FCC broadband regulation raged on in reply comments this week on the commission’s development of a national broadband plan. The argument pits big broadband providers and conservative think tanks against Internet companies and public interest groups, and it highlights continuing tension over proposed net neutrality regulation. It’s unclear whether the full commission or just the chairman’s office will write the final report, FCC officials said Wednesday.

Fighting over whether there’s a need for new FCC broadband regulation raged on in reply comments this week on the commission’s development of a national broadband plan. The argument pit big broadband providers and conservative think tanks against Internet companies and public interest groups, and highlights continuing tension over proposed net neutrality regulation. It’s unclear whether the full commission or just the chairman’s office will write the final report, FCC officials said Wednesday.

Fighting raged on in reply comments this week over whether there’s a need for new FCC broadband regulation on the commission’s development of a national broadband plan. The argument pit big broadband providers and conservative think tanks against Internet companies and public interest groups, and highlights continuing tension over proposed net neutrality regulation. It’s unclear whether the full commission or just the chairman’s office will write the final report, FCC officials said Wednesday.

China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said it will delay the mandatory installation of the “Green Dam” filtering software, the official Xinhua agency reported Tuesday. The government’s move toward PC filtering of pornographic, violent and other frowned-upon content raised the hackles of the U.S. Trade Representative and Commerce Department, as well as Internet security researchers (WID June 25 p6). Computer makers conveyed that “such massive installation demanded extra time” before the Wednesday start date, though the software is already available for download and the government will go forward with school and Internet cafe installations, Xinhua said. “This shows that when U.S. trade officials get involved, they get results,” said President Ed Black of the Computer and Communications Industry Association in a written statement. But the group wants to see the U.S. “negotiate issues of Internet openness and freedom in a broad, systematic way as part of trade and other international agreements,” he said. Center for Democracy and Technology President Leslie Harris also credited “the open disapproval of Chinese users and the unambiguous, collaborative response from industry” for the delay.

Standards are needed to ensure that Internet users feel safe about how their information is used, House Commerce Committee members said Thursday at a hearing. But the standards remain under discussion, and there’s uncertainty over which agency should enforce them. The Communications and Consumer Protection subcommittees held a joint hearing, interrupted several hours by floor votes. Consumer Protection Subcommittee Chairman Bobby Rush, D-Ill., said his data breach bill (HR-2221) may provide some guidance as Congress deals with behavioral advertising.

Standards are needed to ensure that Internet users feel safe about how their information is used, House Commerce Committee members said Thursday at a hearing. But the standards remain under discussion, and there’s uncertainty over which agency should enforce them. The Communications and Consumer Protection subcommittees held a joint hearing, interrupted several hours by floor votes. Consumer Protection Subcommittee Chairman Bobby Rush, D-Ill., said his data breach bill (HR-2221) may provide some guidance as Congress deals with behavioral advertising.

Loosening the strict rules surrounding persistent identifiers on federal agency Web sites would allow the sites to improve while still protecting privacy, said a draft white paper from the Center for Democracy and Technology and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Alissa Cooper, CDT chief computer scientist, said the organizations chose to focus on the term “web measurement” rather than analytics to emphasize that the paper focuses on data reported in the aggregate and used to optimize the site, rather than data at an individual level. She spoke during a panel discussion introducing the paper, which she said is open to feedback.

Members of the Health IT Policy Committee appeared attracted to an iterative approach to defining “meaningful use” and certification standards for health IT during the committee’s inaugural meeting Monday. How they'll reconcile a step-by-step approach with the statutory mandate that any doctor seeking incentive payments beginning in 2011 have certified products in use will be part of the committee discussions, said David Blumenthal, the National Coordinator for Health IT. The committee was established to advise Blumenthal’s office at the Department of Health and Human Services.