Letter to the Editor: License Portability for Occupational Audiologists is Essential

Occupational audiologists have a crisis in their profession and need advocates. These audiologists are primarily responsible for industrial hearing conservation programs and their compliance with multiple regulations, such as Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) and the Federal Railroad Administration.  Occupational hearing programs, for the most part, are multi-state programs as companies and corporations are national organizations. Also, companies may contract services across state lines as local services may not be desired or available. Individual state telepractice regulations require audiologists who are professionally supervising these programs via the internet and phone, to secure licensure in each state. For this licensure redundancy, the cost in time and tracking are enormous.  It is imperative that the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA), secure multistate licensure for speech-language pathologists and audiologists. For the profession of occupational audiology, it is essential.Keywords: Licensure, Occupational audiologists, Telehealth, Telepractic

Presidents Leading: The Dynamics and Complexities of Campus Leadership

While the work of academics—teaching, research, and service—is the core of an institution, they need someone who can attend to the following: 1. Manage their finances and budgets and provide key services, such as payroll, and health and retirement benefits 2. Serve as a go-between to the scholars from different disciplines and coordinate individual course offerings to create a coherent curriculum 3. Act as a conduit to outside councils, government agencies, alumni, donors, and communities when representing, as well as defending, the academics 4. Steward, but more importantly increase, the available financial resources 5. Oversee facilities and ensure their maintenance 6. Serve periodically as a target for academic ardor and aggression The nature of this position requires a single individual to be a leader, academic, planner, mediator, politician, advocate, investment banker, conductor, showman, church elder, supporter, cheerleader, and, of course, manager. These roles, and many more functions-including providing leadership; setting institutional strategy; planning; financing; and ensuring compliance with multiple regulations, laws, and policies (and politics)—are the domain of a campus head, a position labeled president or chancellor, vice-chancellor or rector, depending on the continent and system

The Design and Implementation of an Automated Security Compliance Toolkit: A Pedagogical Exercise

The demand, through government regulations, for the preservation of the security, integrity, and privacy of corporate and customer information is increasing at an unprecedented pace. Government and private entities struggle to comply with these regulations through various means—both automated and manual controls. This paper presents an automated security compliance toolkit that is designed and developed using mostly open source tools to demonstrate that 1) meeting regulatory compliance does not need to be a very expensive proposition and 2) an undertaking of this magnitude could be served as a pedagogical exercise for students in the areas of collaboration, project management, software engineering, information assurance, and regulatory compliance

Data Processing Model for Compliance with International Medical Research Data Processing Rules

In addition to traditional clinical research, advances in information communication technologies facilitates new medical research using internet of things devices and other cutting-edge technologies. Such medical research also simplifies the collection of data on research subjects in their daily lives internationally. In this context, medical research is increasingly required to comply with rules protecting patients’ personal data. This study proposes a model to enable researchers and other stakeholders including ethics committees in such international medical research to easily verify whether the planned processing of patient data complies with relevant legal and ethical rules. The model proposed in this study consists of (1) how patient information is pro-cessed, (2) the rules that are relevant to the processing, and (3) the analysis of whether the processing complies with the rules. This study suggests that the model should describe the aspects of data processing that are sub-ject to many rules, such as the location of the processing, categories of data, purposes of the processing, and the storage period. Thus, using the information described in the model as a guide, stakeholders can determine which national and international legal/ethical rules apply to the planned processing. Then, they can use the model to verify and document whether the processing complies with the specific regulatory rules. The use of the model in this study enables stakeholders in medical research to comply with the rules related to patient data more effectively than without using the model

Holding on to Compliance While Adopting DevSecOps: An SLR

The software industry has witnessed a growing interest in DevSecOps due to the premises of integrating security in the software development lifecycle. However, security compliance cannot be disregarded, given the importance of adherence to regulations, laws, industry standards, and frameworks. This study aims to provide an overview of compliance aspects in the context of DevSecOps and explore how compliance is ensured. Furthermore, this study reveals the trends of compliance according to the extant literature and identifies potential directions for further research in this context. Therefore, we carried out a systematic literature review on the integration of compliance aspects in DevSecOps, which rigorously followed the guidelines proposed by Kitchenham and Charters. We found 934 articles related to the topic by searching five bibliographic databases (163) and Google Scholar (771). Through a rigorous selection process, we selected 15 papers as primary studies. Then, we identified the compliance aspects of DevSecOps and grouped them into three main categories: compliance initiation, compliance management, and compliance technicalities. We observed a low number of studies; therefore, we encourage further efforts into the exploration of compliance aspects, their automated integration, and the development of metrics to evaluate such a process in the context of DevSecOps.publishedVersio

Policymakers’ Perceptions of the Benefits of Citizen-Budgeting Activities

Citizen budgeting has become an increasingly common practice in municipalities across the United States. It offers an alternative to traditionally technocratic budgeting processes, and can connect and engage citizens in decisions about services and funding. Little research has been conducted on how local policymakers perceive citizen budgeting and outcomes. This study examined the benefits local policymakers identified following two successive years of a citizen-budgeting process in a mid-sized Midwestern city. Interviews with 23 local policymakers (a mayor, city council members, and city department heads) identified nine types of benefits produced by the citizen-budgeting process. The study demonstrates that identifying perceived benefits of citizen budgeting processes can shed light on the question of the extent to which such budgeting methods are citizen-driven, leader-driven, or a combination of both

Fortieth annual report town of Sugar Hill, New Hampshire year ending December 31, 2001.

This is an annual report containing vital statistics for a town/city in the state of New Hampshire

Delayed and Denied: Toward an Effective ERISA Remedy for Improper Processing of Healthcare Claims

The healthcare reform effort culminating in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) has focused, to date, on the plight of the uninsured and on barriers to insurance such as pre-existing condition exclusions. Reform efforts focus less often, however, on threats to healthcare benefits for people who do have health insurance. When insured individuals suffer a serious illness, does their insurance live up to its promise? One overlooked threat to the insured concerns administration of employer-sponsored health insurance plans. Specifically, participants\u27 benefits are threatened by the lack of consequences when administrators of such plans improperly process claims for healthcare benefits by delaying the decision, failing to conduct a complete review, or simply denying the claim incorrectly