TeleTracking Technologies, Firm Running Coronavirus Database, Refuses to Answer Senators' Questions

[Nevilledog]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/teletracking-technologies-firm-running-coronavirus-database-refuses-to-answer-senators-questions/ar-BB17Z72h

WASHINGTON — The health care technology firm that is helping to manage the Trump administration’s new coronavirus database has refused to answer questions from Senate Democrats about its $10.2 million contract, citing a nondisclosure agreement it signed with the Department of Health and Human Services.

In a letter dated Aug. 3 and obtained Friday by The New York Times, a lawyer for the Pittsburgh-based TeleTracking Technologies cited the nondisclosure agreement in declining to say how it collects and shares data. The lawyer refused to share the company’s proposal to the government, its communications with administration officials and other information related to the awarding of the contract.

That contract has come under scrutiny in the wake of an abrupt decision last month by Alex M. Azar II, the health and human services secretary, who ordered hospitals to stop reporting coronavirus patient data to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and instead send the information to TeleTracking for inclusion in a new centralized coronavirus database. The order raised alarms about data transparency and the sidelining of C.D.C. experts.

Later Friday, the Department of Health and Human Services official in charge of the new database, José Arrieta, abruptly resigned after only 16 months on the job, according to a report in the Federal News Network. On a conference call with reporters last month, Mr. Arrieta, the agency’s chief information officer, defended the TeleTracking contract, saying he envisioned it as a “central way to make data visible to first responders at the federal, state and local” levels. He also said the department was considering giving Congress access to the database.

*snip*

[gratuitous]

1. A non-disclosure agreement for a government contract?

Sounds like premium grade bullshit to me.

[crickets]

6. Absolutely. nt

[Squinch]

2. Day 2 (after the kids are let out of the cages) of Joe's administration: new law

that governmental contractors are not permitted to sign non-disclosures. And if they refuse to answer Congress's questions about their contracts with the American people, they will be immediately fired, no further moneys will be owed, and all moneys already paid will be garnished to be returned to the American people.

[Jarqui]

3. Why would they not request the data be sent to both?

(Rhetorical question)
The CDC is more than a data depository

[Midnight Writer]

4. Why would they answer Senator's questions? Trump has turned oversight into a joke.

And our Courts are not vigorously enforcing the power of Congress. Even in an extraordinary emergency such as impeachment, our Federal Courts
signaled that it would take months to make even a preliminary ruling on Congressional subpoenas.

[Vinca]

5. Wrong answer, TeleTracking. We, the people who are paying the bill, get the info.