COMPUTING RESEARCH POLICY BLOG

Tom Kalil has a nice column that explains the importance of federal support for fundamental research in the creation of Google (and makes the case that current US policy is hurting the environment that allows companies like Google to spawn and grow). The Google story is just one of the more recent examples of long-term, government-supported fundamental research helping develop and grow billion dollar industries and markets. It’s a story that has been repeated a lot in information technology. The National Academies Computer Science and Telecommunications Board even put together this somewhat hard-to-read graphic that shows 19 different IT-related technologies that, with government-support, each grew into billion dollar industries. (Note to self: redesign CSTB chart to make it clearer to read).
Kalil’s article notes some warning signs — we’re not producing enough students with science and engineering degrees, we’re relying too much on foreign students to fill the gap and tighter visa restrictions are affecting the supply, US share of publications in top science journals is declining — but he doesn’t delve into some of the specific causes, other than to note that in the President’s most recent budget “science funding in 21 of 24 science agencies would would be cut over the next five years…including NSF, NIH, and DOE Office of Science.” I’d add that I think the problems go beyond raw funding levels. I think we’re approaching the funding of fundamental research in a way different than in years past, especially in IT R&D, and especially at the Department of Defense. DOD and DARPA have always been crucially important to the development and advancement of computer science, and university researchers, in turn, have been crucially important to DOD and DARPA. However, changes in the way DARPA does business — from its moves to classify most of its computer security research, to its recent move to a ‘milestone’ based approach to funded research, where programs are evaluated on a 12 to 18 month cycle with ‘go/no go’ decisions at each step — have had the effect of discouraging university researchers from participating in DARPA-sponsored research. This is significant for a couple of reasons. First, it means some of the brightest minds in the country won’t/can’t work on DARPA’s important research problems. Second, it means university researchers have a hard time participating in maybe the most important aspect of DARPA-sponsored research, the community building around particular problems.
Computing research (and the country as a whole, I’d argue) has been well-served historically by having a two significant, diverse sources of funding in NSF and DARPA. NSF continues to be primarily a place for the single investigator — modest grants for small numbers of individual researchers. DARPA’s real strength historically, however, was different. DARPA program managers could identify a particular problem, then bring together and nurture communities of really smart people devoted to working on the problem. It was a very successful approach — DARPA is credited with between a third and a half of all the major innovations in computer science and technology (according to Michael Dertouzos). Between the two of them, the NSF and DARPA models have led to everything from graphical user interfaces, the Internet, and, well, Google.
So it concerns me that DARPA’s is discouraging (intentionally or unintentionally) university-based researchers from participating in their programs…maybe even more than the declining share of basic research in the DOD science and technology portfolio concerns me. And I think Kalil is right to be concerned with what we may reap in the future as a result of these policies today.

Coinciding with yesterday’s House Science Committee hearing on HPC (see entry below), the White House released the latest report of the High-End Computing Revitalization Task Force (HECRTF), spelling out the Administration’s “forward looking plan” for high-end computing with three components:

• an interagency R&D roadmap for high-end computing core technologies;
• a federal high-end computing capacity and accessibility improvement plan; and,
• recommendations relating to federal procurement of high-end computing systems.

The report is available as a pdf from the National Coordination Office for IT R&D.
In theory, this report will help shape the FY 2006 agency budgets, which are already being prepared. It’s hot of the presses, so I haven’t gotten all the way through it yet, but I’d be interested in your thoughts.

In what could fairly be described as a “love in,” Thursday’s House Science Committee hearing on HR 4218, the High Performance Computing Revitalization Act of 2004 (HPCRA), featured witnesses from the Administration, industry, university and federal labs all singing the praises of the committee’s bill to amend the 1991 High Performance Computing and Communications Act. The Committee’s bill, discussed in a previous blog entry, attempts to address concerns within the computing community about interagency coordination in the government-wide Networking and Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD) program generally, and specifically within the high-performance computing community. In essence, the bill tries to do three things:

• Make sure US researchers have access to the best machines available;
• Make sure research moves forward on a broad range of architectures, software, applications, algorithms, etc.; and,
• Assure the interagency planning process really works.

Without exception, the four witnesses called to testify before the committee expressed strong support for the bill. While not going so far as to say the interagency planning process was broken, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Director John Marburger agreed the bill would help strengthen interagency coordination in high-end computing and offered the Administration’s support for the bill.
Administration support will “grease the wheels” of the legislative process a bit for this particular bill, though it’s by no means an easy path to passage. From talking to various committee staff, it appears the biggest hurdle for the bill is actually on the Senate side. Senator Pete Domenici (R-NM), Chair of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, needs to be convinced that the HPCRA doesn’t contain provisions that should be in his Energy bill (S 2095) — otherwise his reluctance to move anything through his committee (to which HPCRA would no doubt be referred) that looks like a piece of the Energy bill will stop the HPCRA in its tracks. On the House side, the path forward for the bill looks relatively clear. The Science Committee plans a “markup” on the bill in early June, and time for consideration on the House floor is already tentatively scheduled in July. Elements of the House Leadership are apparently very interested in making the bill part of a “improving national competitiveness” theme this summer.

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