14. Department of Health and Human Services · Minor · Needs Congress
Require HHS to modernize electronic public health data collection
Printed page 454 14. Department of Health and Human Services
“Congress should require HHS to prioritize the electronic collection and dissemination of robust, privacy-protected data that better leverages existing systems while reducing burdens on clinicians.”
What has happened
- Not started
Congress enacted nothing requiring HHS to prioritize electronic public health data collection, and the rulemaking moved the other way: on 2025-12-29 ASTP/ONC withdrew the unfinalized proposals of the HTI-2 rule, whose subject was precisely public health interoperability, and proposed on the same day to remove certification criteria and regulatory provisions in the name of deregulation. No 119th-Congress bill addresses HHS public health data infrastructure. **What the executive did do, read on 2026-09-03 and recorded here as moved nearby rather than as delivery.** CDC's Data Modernization Initiative is running and quantified — 85% of the nation's emergency department visits available for situational awareness, most within 24 hours; 60,000+ facilities sending electronic initial case reports; 360,000 commercial laboratory results daily across 167 conditions; 69% of provisional mortality data within 10 days, up from 10% in 2010 — with the One CDC Data Platform as its centrepiece and six core sources live. That is substantially the electronic collection and dissemination the Quote describes, and CMS's health technology ecosystem (see #1214) adds the burden-reduction limb. It does not move this ask for two reasons that belong together: the ask is that **Congress require** it, and Congress did not; and the DMI predates the window, which under §3b makes standing machinery "moved nearby", not delivery. A reviewer could read the DMI-plus-ecosystem record as executive action routing around the missing statute and level `attempted`; it is left at `not-started` because the machinery is inherited rather than new and because the HTI-2 withdrawal is a real contrary fact the ecosystem does not erase.
- CDC: Data Modernization at CDC — the One CDC Data Platform, six core sources live, 85% of emergency department visits available for situational awareness most within 24 hours
- ASTP/ONC withdrawal of the HTI-2 proposed rule, including its public health interoperability proposals
- ASTP/ONC proposed rule: Health Data, Technology, and Interoperability - Deregulatory Actions To Unleash Prosperity
Research log
What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence
Research notes
- Among the bills we keep and search, from congress.gov, there is no HHS public health data bill in the 119th Congress; the three bills matching “data modernization” are about forests and fisheries.
- CDC’s Data Modernization Initiative pre-dates the window. Its status pages were once recorded as unreadable; that was wrong on two counts. cdc.gov can be read, and the live DMI pages sit under cdc.gov/data-modernization/php/ — the addresses tried earlier (cdc.gov/data-modernization/index.html and cdc.gov/surveillance/data-modernization/index.html) do not exist. The hub and its About page were read on 2026-09-03 and are cited in the Status note. The About page also concedes CDC “still face[s] challenges like outdated technology, complicated processes, and systems that don’t work well together.”
- One shared search covered the p. 454 CDC data, guidance and vaccine safety asks, #1211–#1215.
- Action
- other
- Object
- HHS public health data infrastructure
- ID
- 1213