This page explains website policies, procedures, and required links for the Northwest Mosquito Abatement Website.
Accessibility Statement
Implementation of the Information Quality Act
The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) issued governmentwide guidelines under section 515 of the Treasury and General Government Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 2001 for ensuring and maximizing the quality, objectivity, utility, and integrity of information disseminated by federal agencies. View the OMB section 515 guidelines (PDF). The OMB directs agencies, including Northwest Mosquito Abatement District (NWMAD), to issue their own information quality guidelines, outlined below.
General Requirements
These general information quality guidelines apply to all types of information disseminated by NWMAD.
- NWMAD will strive to ensure and maximize the quality, objectivity, utility, and integrity of the information that it disseminates to the public.
- NWMAD will review the quality (including objectivity, utility, and integrity) of information before it is disseminated to ensure that it complies with the standards set forth in these Guidelines.
- NWMAD will treat information quality as integral to every step in their development of information, including creation, collection, maintenance, and dissemination.
The following information quality criteria comprise procedures that NWMAD employs to assure the quality of its information products, including their objectivity, utility, and integrity prior to disseminating information to the public.
- NWMAD will strive to ensure that the information they disseminate is substantively accurate, reliable, and unbiased and presented in an accurate, clear, complete, and unbiased manner.
- To the extent possible, consistent with confidentiality protections, NWMAD will identify the source of the information so that the public can assess whether the information is objective.
- NWMAD will assess the usefulness of the information they disseminate to its intended users, including the public.
- When transparency of information is relevant for assessing the information’s usefulness from the public’s perspective, NWMAD will ensure that transparency is addressed in their review of the information prior to its dissemination.
- NWMAD will ensure that disseminated information is accessible to all persons pursuant to the requirements of Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act.
- NWMAD will protect information they maintain from unauthorized access or revision to ensure that disseminated information is not compromised through corruption or falsification.
- NWMAD will secure their information resources by implementing the programs and policies required by the Government Information Security Reform Act.
- NWMAD will maintain the integrity of confidential information and comply with the statutory requirements to protect the information it gathers and disseminates. These include: The Privacy Act of 1974, as amended; The Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995; The Computer Security Act of 1987; The Freedom of Information Act; and OMB Circulars A-123, A-127, and A-130.
Information that IS NOT subject to the Information Quality Guidelines includes:
Personal Information:
- Personal information received as a result of agency decisions, such as notices.
- Information within an individual’s NWMAD records.
Other Excluded Information:
- Procedural and policy manuals, and other information pertaining to basic agency operations.
- Management information that is produced primarily for internal use.
- Reports clearly identified as not representing NWMAD positions.
Information that IS subject to the Information Quality Guidelines includes:
- Statistical or actuarial information prepared for public dissemination.
- Reports, studies and summaries prepared to inform the public about the impact of NWMAD programs or for use in formulating broad program policy.
How to seek corrections under section 515 information quality guidelines:
If you want to seek correction of information from us that is subject to section 515 Information Quality Guidelines, please email [email protected]. Based upon your submission, NWMAD will determine the need for correction of information. To assist NWMAD in processing your request in a timely manner, your request for correction of information should include the following:
- Description of Information To Correct
- Explanation of Noncompliance With the Information Quality Guidelines (Find NWMAD guidelines here)
- Explanation of the Affect of the Alleged Error
- Recommendation and Justification for How the Information Should Be Corrected
Government Initiatives
Open Government
On Jan. 20, 2009, the White House issued the Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government. Open government involves the active participation of the public and community engagement. Northwest Mosquito Abatement District welcomes community engagement and collaboration, and aims to build trust with members of our district.
For more information on open government, visit the U.S. General Services Administration’s U.S. Open Government initiative page.
If you have specific suggestions about the priorities for making information available, or our open government plans, please email us at [email protected].
Plain Writing
The Plain Writing Act of 2010 promotes clear government communication that the public can understand and use. The Office of Management and Budget issued final guidance to implement the law on April 13, 2011.
At Northwest Mosquito Abatement District (NWMAD), we are committed to writing in plain language and using the Federal Plain Language Guidelines:
- View NWMAD’s Compliance Report (PDF)
We have assigned staff to oversee our plain language efforts:
- James Thennisch is the senior agency official for plain writing. Contact him at [email protected].
- Patrick Irwin is the plain writing coordinator. Contact him at [email protected].
- Ewa Migacz is the plain writing contact. Contact her at [email protected].
We train our employees and have created our oversight process. We must use plain language in any document that:
- is necessary for obtaining any federal government benefit or service or filing taxes
- provides information about any federal government benefit or service
- explains to the public how to comply with a requirement that the federal government administers or enforces
Give us feedback
We need your help to comply with this Act! Let us know if you see something on our website or in our materials that isn’t written in plain language.
- Email: [email protected]
Linking to External Pages
NWMADIL.gov pages and other NWMAD digital media platforms may link to websites created and maintained by other public and/or private organizations and individuals. When you follow a link to an external site, you are leaving NWMADIL.gov and are subject to the external site‘s privacy and security policies. We do not control or guarantee the accuracy, relevance, timeliness, or completeness of information contained on an external site. We also do not endorse the site’s sponsor, any views they express, or any products or services they offer.
Privacy Policy
Vulnerability Disclosure Policy
Northwest Mosquito Abatement District (NWMAD) is committed to ensuring the security of the American public by protecting their information. This policy is intended to give security researchers clear guidelines for conducting vulnerability discovery activities and to convey our preferences in how to submit discovered vulnerabilities to us.
This policy describes what systems and types of research are covered under this policy, how to send us vulnerability reports, and how long we ask security researchers to wait before publicly disclosing vulnerabilities.
We encourage you to contact us to report potential vulnerabilities in our systems.
If you make a good faith effort to comply with this policy during your security research, we will consider your research to be authorized, we will work with you to understand and resolve the issue quickly, and NWMAD will not recommend or pursue legal action related to your research. Should legal action be initiated by a third party against you for activities that were conducted in accordance with this policy, we will make this authorization known.
Under this policy, “research” means activities in which you:
- Notify us as soon as possible after you discover a real or potential security issue.
- Make every effort to avoid privacy violations, degradation of user experience, disruption
- to production systems, and destruction or manipulation of data.
- Only use exploits to the extent necessary to confirm a vulnerability’s presence. Do not use an exploit to compromise or exfiltrate data, establish persistent command line access, or use the exploit to pivot to other systems.
- Provide us a reasonable amount of time to resolve the issue before you disclose it publicly.
- Do not submit a high volume of low-quality reports.
- Once you’ve established that a vulnerability exists or encounter any sensitive data (including personally identifiable information, financial information, or proprietary information or trade secrets of any party), you must stop your test, notify us immediately, and not disclose this data to anyone else.
The following test methods are not authorized:
- Network denial of service (DoS or DDoS) tests or other tests that impair access to or damage a system or data
- Physical testing (e.g. office access, open doors, tailgating), social engineering (e.g. phishing, vishing), or any other non-technical vulnerability testing
This policy applies to the following systems and services:
- nwmadil.gov
Any service not expressly listed above, such as any connected services, are excluded from scope and are not authorized for testing. Additionally, vulnerabilities found in systems from our vendors fall outside of this policy’s scope and should be reported directly to the vendor according to their disclosure policy (if any). If you aren’t sure whether a system is in scope or not, contact us at [email protected] before starting your research (or at the security contact for the system’s domain name listed in the .gov WHOIS).
Though we develop and maintain other internet-accessible systems or services, we ask that active research and testing only be conducted on the systems and services covered by the scope of this document. If there is a particular system not in scope that you think merits testing, please contact us to discuss it first. We will increase the scope of this policy over time.
Information submitted under this policy will be used for defensive purposes only – to mitigate or remediate vulnerabilities. If your findings include newly discovered vulnerabilities that affect all users of a product or service and not solely NWMAD, we may share your report with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, where it will be handled under their coordinated vulnerability disclosure process. We will not share your name or contact information without express permission.
We accept vulnerability reports through the form below or via [email protected]. Reports may be submitted anonymously. If you share contact information, we will acknowledge receipt of your report within 3 business days.
We do not support PGP-encrypted emails. For particularly sensitive information, submit through the HTTPS web form below. (MAKE FORM)
By submitting a vulnerability, you acknowledge that you have no expectation of payment and that you expressly waive any future pay claims against the U.S. Government related to your submission.
What we would like to see from you
In order to help us triage and prioritize submissions, we recommend that your reports:
- Describe the location the vulnerability was discovered and the potential impact of exploitation.
- Offer a detailed description of the steps needed to reproduce the vulnerability (proof of concept scripts or screenshots are helpful).
- Be in English, if possible.
What you can expect from us
When you choose to share your contact information with us, we commit to coordinating with you as openly and as quickly as possible.
- Within 3 business days, we will acknowledge that your report has been received.
- To the best of our ability, we will confirm the existence of the vulnerability to you and be as transparent as possible about what steps we are taking during the remediation process, including on issues or challenges that may delay resolution.
- We will maintain an open dialogue to discuss issues.
Thank you for your submission.
Questions regarding this policy may be sent to [email protected]. We also invite you to contact us with suggestions for improving this policy.