Send up the white smoke! We have a new agency! Or at least what's new is old and old is new. The king is back!
The long-alluded and expected reversion of the ASTP back to the ONC dropped in the Federal Register today. This is an important move only insofar as precise nomenclature is important when dealing with the federal government. Beyond that, this is largely a cosmetic reorganization. The core statutory authorities (HITECH, Cures Act, information blocking enforcement, the Certification Program, HITAC support) all remain explicitly intact and allocated across the same functional lines.
Hill-to-die-on Alert
Before we get into the deep wonk lore and analysis, I want to just take a stand here: ONC is objectively a better name than ASTP, but the ASTP logo is significantly cooler than the ONC star. My petition to Keane and Posnack is to use this moment for a bit of a sexy rebrand: revert the name but cop the bird. That is all.
ONC's organizational lineage traces back to Executive Order 13335, signed by President Bush in 2004 - a three-page document that created the National Coordinator position and gave it four duties:
Advise the Secretary on health IT
Coordinate across federal agencies
Engage public and private stakeholders
Advise OMB on request
ONC’s own self-description has evolved across quite a few Federal Register reorganization notices since then, so let’s take a stroll down memory lane (including an interactive tool for reviewing the history):
Continue reading this post for free, courtesy of Brendan Keeler.
