They are boldly going where no one has gone before to catch criminals in cyberspace. Now members of the Utah Cybercrime Task Force are blazing new trails to bring federal, state and local law enforcement agencies together to combat Internet crimes. The U.S. State Department is offering the multi-jurisdictional task force as a case study on how to fight a crime that has no borders.

In the October volume of Issues in Democracy, the Electronic Journal of the U.S. Department of State, Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff is credited with creating a task force that could have "ramifications that extend to global terrorism." The task force includes Attorney General's Office investigator and Task Force Director Terry Powell, Assistant Attorney General Polly Samuels and representatives from the Department of Defense, FBI, Salt Lake City Police, West Valley City Police and other state and local agencies.

"We didn't feel enough was being done on the state level to combat what we knew to be one of the fastest-growing types of crime in the world today," Shurtleff says in the article. The National Association of Attorneys General appointed Shurtleff as its representative to the International Association of Prosecutors to bring prosecutors around the world together to combat cybercrime. He recently met with his counterpart in Israel to discuss the growing problem.

How big is the problem? The U.S General Accounting Office received about 750,000 Internet fraud complaints last year involving approximately a billion dollars in losses. Last year the Utah task force received 1,000 complaints involving $3.5 million. The article can be found at http://usinfo.state.gov/journals/itdhr/1003/ijde/ijde1003.htm.

The Utah Department of Health (UDOH) is pleased to announce the appointment of Michael Hales as Director of the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) and the Primary Care Network (PCN) in the Office of Children’s Insurance and Access Initiatives. This position was previously held by Chad Westover, who left the UDOH in July for a job in the private health insurance industry.

"Providing access to health care is a top priority for the Utah Department of Health and it is my pleasure to appoint such an accomplished individual to lead these important programs," says Scott Williams, M.D, Executive Director, UDOH.

According to the 2001 UDOH Health Status Survey, 8.7 percent of Utah’s population lacks health insurance coverage. "CHIP and PCN currently cover more than 48,000 people who would have otherwise gone uninsured. However, there is still work to be done to cover the 199,000 Utahns who lack health insurance while managing our  resources efficiently," says Hales.

Hales served previously as Associate Actuary for CHIP and PCN. He has worked for three years as a consultant for healthcare and financial service companies. Hales has prior experience in public health and health care access, having spent five years at the UDOH in the Division of Health Care Financing (DHCF). In addition, Hales will lend his expertise and experience to DHCF as Assistant Director. Hales’ received a Master of Public Administration degree from Harvard University and Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from Brigham Young University.

Providing access to affordable quality health care is part of the mission of the UDOH. DHCF and The Office of Children’s Insurance and Access Initiatives are components of the UDOH that work to do this. DHCF administers Medicaid while The Office of Children’s Insurance and Access Initiatives houses CHIP, the Primary Care Network, and PCN Covered at Work. More information about these programs can be obtained at www.health.utah.gov