Press Room

Fort Lauderdale, FL—August 29, 2001—Spherion Corporation (NYSE:SFN), a recruitment, outsourcing and technology solutions provider, today announced the creation of a Healthcare Center of Excellence to assist healthcare companies required to meet upcoming deadlines for compliance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).

The Center of Excellence serves as a think tank and research data repository for clients and consultants with information and tools to address the various challenges that HIPAA poses to the healthcare community. Through the Center, Spherion chairs local collaboration projects including HIPAA executive roundtable discussions and awareness seminars to help the healthcare community in the knowledge sharing of best practices.

HIPAA regulations require all healthcare providers, clearing houses or health plans to adopt and implement privacy and security policies for individually identifiable health information. The regulations also established new standards for administrative healthcare transactions, procedures and diagnosis coding and national unique identifiers.

“The security and privacy regulations of HIPAA reach far beyond the scope of Information Technology and encompass major changes in the business processes in virtually every department of the affected organization,” said Stuart Emanuel, president of worldwide operations for Spherion’s Technology Business Solutions Group. “With 30 years of experience working with healthcare companies, the Technology Group of Spherion recognizes that the industry is at a pivotal point and we are committed to finding and implementing solutions for these companies.”

Spherion is committed to solving HIPAA issues by reducing the overall cost, facilitating faster compliance objectives and ensuring a high level of confidence among healthcare organizations regarding the completion of the compliance procedures. The company employs and trains very high level, experienced project managers that have a background in large-scale projects across multiple vertical industries.

Spherion’s HIPAA lifecycle services include: Program management office; gap assessment and business impact; quality management, process audit and testing; network integration and security, application integration and remediation; and education and training.

A recent Gartner Group, Inc. study revealed that 85 percent of healthcare providers are not yet prepared to meet the upcoming deadline. According to the Gartner study, 54 percent of providers have either not asked software vendors for remediation strategies or have not received a solution from those vendors. In addition, 84 percent of these companies expect these software vendors to “supply compliance” through existing maintenance contracts.

For more information on how to access the Center of Excellence , please call 888 948-7658 option 8 or log on to www.spherion.com/technology.

About Spherion

For more than 30 years, Spherion’ssm Technology Business Solutions Group has offered a comprehensive suite of enterprise-class technology solutions that help clients solve critical business challenges, realize business value and leverage and retain current infrastructure. Clients choose from full lifecycle solutions—managed projects including strategy to deployment—to stand-alone offerings—project support, staff augmentation and education services. Spherion’s more than 5,000 skilled IT professionals are qualified subject matter experts with the business knowledge and technical expertise needed to implement world-class enterprise application integration, information design, software quality management and vertical industry solutions. Visit our Web site at www.spherion.com/technology.

Spherion Corporation provides Recruitment, Outsourcing and Technology services. Founded in 1946, with operations in the , Europe and Asia Pacific, Spherion helps companies efficiently plan, acquire and optimize talent to improve their bottom line. Visit the Company’s Web site at www.spherion.com.