COMPUTING RESEARCH POLICY BLOG

The Boston Globe has a piece on the apparent disposition of some TIA-related (DARPA .pdf) work in the wake of Congress’ move last year to eliminate DARPA funding for the controversial program. The program, an attempt to “design a prototype network that integrates innovative information technologies for detecting and preempting foreign terrorist activities against Americans,” came under fire from a number of groups, including CRA, who saw the eventual deployment of such a system as a serious threat to American civil liberties and security. (However, CRA also argued, in a letter to the House and Senate negotiators, that while a prohibition on deploying the technology might be appropriate, prohibiting research into these areas would not be in the national interest.)
Though Congress cut funding at DARPA for TIA-related research at DARPA and eliminated the office at the agency that housed the project, language in the FY 2004 Defense Appropriations bill did allow related research to continue at unspecified intelligence agencies. The article notes that this work is apparently going forward, though parallel work DARPA had undertaken to insure there were privacy protections in any TIA-related system is apparently not.
It’s difficult to know with any certainty whether privacy-related research is actually being funded by any of the intelligence agencies (though it’s clear from the article that work that had been funded by DARPA in the area has not been continued). This lack of transparency is an unfortunate consequence of the research moratorium imposed by Congress, and one of the reasons CRA opposed it….

Business Week is running a special report on US R&D policy and how America may be slipping down the curve compared with other countries. Some choice quotes:

For anyone concerned about strengthening America’s long-term leadership in science and technology, the nation’s schools are an obvious place to start. But brace yourself for what you’ll find. The depressing reality is that when it comes to educating the next generation in these subjects, America is no longer a world contender. In fact, U.S. students have fallen far behind their competitors in much of Western Europe and in advanced Asian nations like Japan and South Korea.
This trend has disturbing implications not just for the future of American technological leadership but for the broader economy. Already, “we have developed a shortage of highly skilled workers and a surplus of lesser-skilled workers,” warned Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan in a March 12 address at Boston College. And the problem is worsening. “[We're] graduating too few skilled workers to address the apparent imbalance between the supply of such workers and the burgeoning demand for them,” Greenspan added.
As a result, “the future strength of the U.S. science and engineering workforce is imperiled,” the National Science Board warned in a sweeping report issued last year.
– from “America’s Failure in Science Education
William Harris spent most of his career in the U.S. teaching chemistry or working at the National Science Foundation, where he was responsible for doling out $750 million a year in federal grants. But three years ago, Harris, now 59, moved to Ireland, the land of his forebears, to help turn it into a technology power.
He became director general of Science Foundation Ireland (SFI), which since its founding in 2000 has attracted dozens of internationally renowned scholars from the U.S., Britain, Germany, and Russia. The newcomers get labs, promises of fast response to requests for assistance, and, most important, money for research into cutting-edge areas such as nanotechnology. SFI has $1 billion to play with — an enormous resource for a country of just 4 million people.
FERTILE CULTURES.  The intent is to emulate America’s success as a worldwide technology leader — a transformation that not just Ireland but China, South Korea, India, and Israel, among others, intend to replicate. As these countries make their run for glory, they could eat into America’s dominance, experts say. “The U.S. has more aggressive competition than it has had in the past decade or so,” notes Erich Bloch, a principal at Washington Advisory Group, management consultancy in Washington, D.C.
Already, the European Union has outstripped the U.S. in the number of scientific papers it publishes in major journals every year. That’s a key barometer of a region’s reputation in the scientific world, says R.D. Shelton, president of technology assessment for the nonprofit World Technology Evaluation Center in Baltimore. And the international pressure will only grow as other governments support their domestic companies with ambitions in telecommunications, semiconductors, and nanotechnology, among other initiatives.
- from Challengers to America’s Science Crown

Though the articles note (and the interview with White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Director John Marburger also mentions) that information technology R&D has been a focus of US federal R&D efforts, it’s also worth pointing out that the Bush Administration request for IT R&D in FY 2005 is for a reduction of 1 percent in spending vs. FY 2004. And that level is still $685 million below the funding level recommended by the President’s Information Technology Advisory Committee way back in 1999.
Here’s more detail from CRA’s Computing Research News Online.