GSA Regional General Management and Administration - Personnel: 47: 53: FSS, Customer Supply Cen. National Gambling Impact Study Commission: 48: 51. GSA partners with the lodging industry to provide federal travelers with Federal Travel Regulation (FTR) compliant accommodations that are at or below per diem, both within and outside of the Continental United States. New Blockchain Committee Formed by the Gaming Standards Association The GSA, Gaming Standards Association formed a new blockchain committee. The new technical committee is solely dedicated to the blockchain for address technologies and advise on different areas of potential development standards. The blockchain is becoming widely popular at a faster rate with the current digital. Gaming Standards Association (GSA) is an international trade association that was founded in 1998 to develop standards for the gaming industry.GSA brings together the many different stakeholders in the industry to develop standards.

Scenario: College basketball teams are playing in their respective league championship tournaments and soon the “NCAA March Madness” brackets will be announced. Many sports fans are accustomed to placing a friendly wager on a favorite team. Your office colleagues decide to set up a little game. It does not harm anyone, and participation is totally voluntary. Is it permissible?

Answer: While betting a few dollars on sports is often viewed as a harmless social pastime, if done at work it violates the Federal regulations that prohibit gambling for money or property in the Federal workplace. Predicting teams that will advance in a college basketball bracket purely for fun or picking winners to claim bragging rights in the office are not the types of conduct that generally raise concerns.

Federal rules on gambling prohibit employees from gambling while on duty, or while on government-owned or leased property, unless necessitated by their official duties. These restrictions apply not only to Federal employees, but also to members of the public at large, contractors, vendors, and exhibitors when on GSA-controlled property. The rules are found at 5 CFR section 735.201 and 41 CFR section 102-74.395. (CFR = Code of Federal Regulations)

Violations of the regulations may be cause for disciplinary action by the employee’s agency, which may be in addition to any penalty prescribed by law.

The only authorized exception is for activities and games that take place during the time period of the annual Combined Federal Campaign (CFC), in accordance with Executive Order 12353. However, CFC raffles are not synonymous with gambling when conducted in accordance with part 950 of title 5 of the Code of Federal Regulations.

Legally defined, gambling requires 3 elements:

• A game of chance,
• Consideration for the opportunity to play the game, and
• An offering of a prize.

A game of chance includes, but is not limited to, a raffle, lottery, sports pool, game of cards, the selling or purchasing of a numbers slip or ticket, or any game for money or property. Consideration includes a participation fee, a wager of money, and something of value in return for the possibility of winning a reward or prize. A prize would include a monetary award, or a tangible or intangible item. Examples include meals, drinks, administrative leave, gift certificates, tickets to events, or cash.

In addition to the OPM and GSA regulations, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Office of the Chief Information Officer (OCIO), Policy for Personal Use of Information Technology Resources, HHS-OCIO-2006-0001, section 5.4.3 (2/17/06), prohibits the use of government equipment, such as computers and e-mail, for illegal gambling activities. This includes related e-mails sent from a personal account if done using a government computer.

Violations of this policy may be cause for loss of use or restricted use of government equipment, disciplinary action, or financial liability.

Note that the Randolph-Sheppard Act which covers the existence of the convenience stores on campus permits them to sell state lottery tickets.

During the successful Online Gaming Committee meeting hosted by Playtech in London last April 08 and 09, 2014, members of the Gaming Standards Association (GSA) were able to come up with protocols that will be recognized as standards for multiple third-party integrations.

Asaf Doron, one of the chair members of the GSA Online Gaming Committee and also Head of Integrations and Architecture at Playtech, is quite pleased with the progress they made. The association sees third-party integration as a natural part of online gaming, which makes it fundamental for the gambling industry to institute standards that will do good to all constituencies.

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The GSA members in attendance at the PlayTech-hosted meeting, namely Bally Technologies, ComTrade Gaming, Gaming Laboratories International, GTech, IGT, Intralot, Playtech and Random Consulting, covered various areas of discussion pertaining to relationships between iGaming firms, game content providers and suppliers, regulators and land-based operators and made progress with the areas concerning TPGI in particular.
Playtech Consultant, Valery Gelfman and a chair member of the GSA Online Gaming Committee mentioned that a successful online remote gambling operation necessitates multiple combinations of third party products and services including external gaming content providers, regulatory authorities and, in most cases, the land-based gambling operation.

According to GSA Protocol Director Ethan Tower, they expect to publish the first draft of the set of rules by the end of summer. To which Tower provided definition of Third-Party Games Interface (TPGI) as one that “allows games from third-party game providers to be integrated with an online gaming platform in a standard manner.” After which, the GSA’s next agenda is to develop additional standards that deal with external interfaces, such as geo-location services, online payment processing and central monitoring systems for regulatory purposes.
The committee’s next meeting is on April 30, which will be an informal gathering via teleconferencing and open to all GSA members. The agenda for discussion will focus on the “failure scenarios” related to TPGI, as well as the issues and concerns regarding communication between game content and game consoles.

About the Gaming Standards Association (GSA)

GSA is an international trade association of a diverse group of gaming manufacturers, operators, suppliers and regulators participating in the global gaming industry. It was established in 1998 as a way of facilitating the identification, characterization, development, promotion and execution of standards to allow interoperability, innovation, education and communication for the benefit of the gaming constituency as a whole.
However, participation and involvement in technical committees tasked with creating and managing the GSA standards implemented in the gaming industry, is exclusive to GSA platinum, gold and silver members only. The number of committee participants allowed for each type of member differs; to which a Platinum member enjoys unlimited representation, while a Gold member is entitled to three participants and a Silver member is limited to only one.

Since inception, the GSA has earned numerous recognitions, which include Global Gaming Business Magazine’s “Best Productivity-Enhancement Technology” for its Game to System (G2S) Protocol. The association was also named as one of the “Top 3 Most Innovative Products” and “Top 10 Slot Floor Technologies” by Casino Journal Magazine and Casino Enterprise Management, respectively.

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