The Firsthand Report ⌗9

In this issue: 500+ NYC workers request Mamdani meeting, NY social media age verification law, HHS marks year 1 of Health Tech Ecosystem with mock-funeral, Senate fast-tracks national Archivist

☞ MORE THAN 500 NEW YORK CITY WORKERS HAVE SENT AN OPEN LETTER TO MAYOR MAMDANI requesting a meeting to discuss reinstating municipal employees who were fired and forced into retirement under the 2021 COVID-19 vaccine mandates.

The letter follows an email last week from FDNY to fired workers saying that they would not be reinstated under the plan announced by former mayor Eric Adams because the Mamdani administration had not followed through on a personnel rule change required for reinstatements.

The July 27 letter is the latest in a long-running open letter campaign by New York workers seeking reinstatement and redress for COVID-19 vaccine mandate firings. You can find all of them in this tracker. Jump to the bottom for the letter to Mamdani.

☞ Ready to get carded on social media? New York State Attorney General Letitia James has issued the final rule for the STOP ADDICTIVE FEEDS EXPLOITATION (SAFE) FOR KIDS ACT, WHICH WILL REQUIRE SOCIAL MEDIA COMPANIES TO VERIFY USERS’ AGES.

Governor Kathy Hochul signed the SAFE Act into law in June 2024, but it’s taken a couple years for the AG’s office to hash out the details of how it will work. The law will prohibit social media companies from providing feeds that are algorithmically personalized to be addictive to people under the age of 18 without parental consent. They will also not be allowed to send notifications to minors between midnight and 6 a.m.

The rules do allow some flexibility in how companies can verify your age. It can be done with a video, a photo, or personal details like an email address or phone number that the company can match to evidence that you’re a grown-up, instead of with a government-issued ID.

In fact, the range of verification options is broad enough that the law might just end up demonstrating that social media companies won’t need to card you at all, because they already know all about you.

Still, the SAFE Act will take anonymous doomscrolling off the table for adults in New York when it goes into effect in January. Here’s a more detailed critique from NetChoice, one the act’s main critics.

☞ RFK Jr., Dr. Oz, and other Health and Human Services OFFICIALS CELEBRATED THE FIRST YEAR OF THE HEALTH TECH ECOSYSTEM rollout, a.k.a. the “kill the clipboard” initiative, on Monday (they mean the one you fill out every time you see a doctor). The initiative led by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is spearheading the shift to fully digital health systems.

After a rundown of first-year accomplishments and some second-year goal setting, the event concluded with a mock funeral for the clipboard. You can watch the whole thing in this video (jump to 1:13:30 for the “funeral”). If you were a fan of The Office, you’ll love the grand finale.

The list of achievements touted at the event included new CMS-approved apps, increased use of the national TEFCA system to share electronic medical records, digital ID verification for Medicare recipients to access their records, and SMART Health Links that let patients share their medical records with a QR code. Amy Gleason also announced the new Office of Health Technology and Products that I reported on last time, which she’s heading.

RFK Jr. and Dr. Oz repeated their usual rhetoric about patients owning their medical records (we don’t), and speakers talked about the importance of patients being able to trust the new health tech. Here’s an idea for Health Tech Ecosystem year 2: Stop glossing over privacy and security concerns with “you own it” fairy tales and get serious about updating HIPAA.

ICYMI, you can see demos of some of the CMS-approved apps at the April Health Tech Ecosystem app launch event in the video below. If you’d like to see how digital ID works to give Medicare recipients access to their medical records, there’s a demo of that an hour in.

☞ SENATORS ARE FAST-TRACKING BRADFORD PENTONY WILSON’S NOMINATION TO RUN THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES AND RECORDS ADMINISTRATION (NARA) by including it in Senate Resolution 817, which advances 74 nominations as a group.

As I reported previously, the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs gave Wilson’s nomination for Archivist the green light after asking him only four questions, including one about his grandkids.

Federal records management expert Don Lueders published a list of 20 substantive questions for him and the Society of American Archivists put out a list of five, but it’s looking unlikely that he’ll have to answer any of them before starts his new job.