Mr. Fanning is a Senior Policy Analyst in the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. He serves as Privacy Advocate of the Department and as Chair of the Department's Privacy Committee.

Mr. Fanning has long been involved in the development of privacy policy for health and research records. He served on the staff of the Advisory Committee (to the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare) on Automated Personal Data Systems. Its report Records, Computers, and the Rights of Citizens led to the Federal Privacy Act of 1974. Mr. Fanning was an advisor to the committee that drafted the Uniform Health-Care Information Act. He developed the administration's medical record privacy bill in 1979 and was a key participant in developing confidentiality policy for information systems for the proposed health care reform plan in 1993 and in developing policies that led to current health information privacy regulations.

In the past Mr. Fanning managed the development of the annual legislative program of the Public Health Service and helped develop policies to update the criteria in the Immigration and Nationality Act for the exclusion of aliens on health grounds. Earlier, he was an attorney (advising on health and welfare grant programs) in the Office of the General Counsel of the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. Before that he spent two years as a lieutenant in the U.S. Army, including a year as an intelligence advisor to the Vietnamese Army.

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