-----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] on behalf of Todd Berman Sent: Thu 9/22/2005 3:10 AM To: [email protected] Cc: Subject: RE: [Hardhats-members] Re: CMS NEWS: ELECTRONIC HEALTH RECORD,SOFTWARE DELIVERED TO, PHYSICIAN OFFICES On Thu, 2005-09-22 at 00:02 -0600, Cameron Schlehuber wrote:
[KSB] <...snip...> My understand of VOE (which could be very wrong) is that CMS is developing it with the help of outside contributors. Because there are outside contributors involved, it could be considered software that is not a 'work of the U.S. Government' and not required to be under the public domain. This last bit I am not clear on, but it does seem like the intent is to release it into the public domain. [KSB] Whether the changes made by the outside contractor to VistA to create VOE would eventually be required to be released into the public domain depends on the contract. If it is treated as intellectual property created and copyrighted by the contractor that is being licensed to CMS, then there would be no requirement to release the changes into the public domain under FOIA. If the changes were bespoke software development for CMS, they would be a requirement to release them under FOIA (unless they are covered by an exemption). Given statements made that the changes would find their way back to the VA and be part of FOIA VistA, I surmise that the contract is of the latter type. -- Bhaskar
<<winmail.dat>>
