Things Will Get Busier…

On September 12, 2005, In Events, Policy, Security, By Peter Harsha

Apologies for the dearth of timely updates recently. As many readers familiar with the congressional calendar are aware, Congress disappears for the entire month of August so that members can find their way back to their home districts, partake in a few county fairs and local parades, and generally get a longer-than-usual glimpse of how people outside the Beltway actually live. Consequently, you can see the tumbleweeds blow through the streets of DC until about Labor Day.
Now that Congress is back in town and focused on confirming a Chief Justice, dealing with the aftermath of Katrina, and finishing all the must-pass appropriations bills — ideally before the end of the fiscal year on Sept 30th (they’ve finished just 2 of 12) — things are already heating up quickly, so expect this space to get a bit busier as well.
For example, three events worthy of note are scheduled for this Thursday (September 15th). First, at 10 am, the House Science Committee will revisit federal support for cyber security R&D in a hearing that will focus on the risk cyber vulnerabilities pose to critical industries in the U.S. and what the federal government can do to help. Scheduled to testify are:

  • Mr. Donald “Andy” Purdy, Acting Director, National Cyber Security Division, Department of Homeland Security;
  • Mr. John Leggate, Chief Information Officer, British Petroleum Inc.;
  • Mr. David Kepler, Corporate Vice President, Shared Services, and Chief Information Officer, The Dow Chemical Company;
  • Mr. Andrew Geisse, Chief Information Officer, SBC Services Inc.; and
  • Mr. Gerald Freese, Director, Enterprise Information Security, American Electric Power.

    • Presumably, the committee hopes to hear from the industry representatives how significant the cyber threat is to their industries what the Department of Homeland Security is doing about it. Hopefully the committee and the industry witnesses press DHS about its minimal efforts to engage in long-range research to counter the threats. The hearing, like all Science Committee hearings, will be webcast live (10 am to noon) and archived on the Science Committee website.
    Also on Thursday are two policy lunches on Capitol Hill relevant to federal support for R&D. The Forum on Technology and Innovation, an offshoot of the Council on Competitiveness and co-chaired by Sen. John Ensign (R-NV) and Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR), will hold a policy briefing on “Basic Research — The Foundation of the Innovation Economy.” Scheduled to speak are George Scalise, president of the Semiconductor Industry Association; Carl A. Batt, Director of the Cornell University/Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research Partnership; and Brian Halla, Chairman of the Board and CEO of National Semiconductor. The event is scheduled from 12:30 pm – 2:00 pm, in the Senate Hart building, room 209. Readers in DC can register to attend here. It looks like the forum archives video of their events, so those unable to attend might want to check afterwards for the video stream.
    Over on the House side, unfortunately at exactly the same time, is a briefing put on by the House R&D Caucus (CRA is a member of the advisory committee for the caucus) focused on the R&D tax credit. The event is sponsored by the R&D Credit Coalition, which is chock full of industry representatives. From the invite:

    Microwaves, laptops, car airbags, life-saving medical technologies and even your MP3 player have one thing in common.
    U.S.-based research helped create these innovative products. Research makes our lives better.
    …
    Come learn how we can encourage U.S.-based research through the strengthening and extension of the R&D Credit. See real examples of how research continues to improve America.

    The briefing will be in 2325 Rayburn House Office Building, from Noon – 1:30 pm. DC-area folks wishing to attend can find the RSVP info here (pdf). Apparently attendees can also sign-up to drive “the latest hydrogen fuel cell cars,” which could be fun.
    The presence of so many U.S. manufacturers and companies on the panels and sponsor-cards for the briefings should add a little heft to the message of both events. I only wish that they hadn’t been scheduled for almost exactly the same time….

     
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    Bay Area Industry, University, and Lab Group Urges Increased Fundamental IT Research

    On September 8, 2005, In Policy, By Peter Harsha

    In a letter (pdf) to John Marburger, Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, the Bay Area Science and Innovation Consortium — a group that includes representatives from IBM, HP, SIA, Lockheed-Martin and representatives from Bay Area universities and federal labs — urged the Adminstration to address concerns about federal support for fundamental research in IT. The letter makes a case that should be very familiar to readers of this blog — namely, that “at a time when the U.S. faces enormous challenges to its scientific and technological leadership, U.S. policy is headed in the wrong direction.”

    For example, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is reducing university participation by: (1) classifying research, even in broad, enabling areas such as embedded software for wireless networks; (2) focusing more on shorter-term deliverables, and dramatically reducing its traditional levels of investment in high-risk, high-return research; and (3) evaluating success of projects on one-year time-scales. Between 1999 and 2004, DARPA’s research funding at the top-ranked computer science departments (Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon University, MIT, and Stanford) declined by 38-54 percent. These trends are not limited to IT research, but are evident in a broad range of fields.

    In fact, beyond just the top schools, the overall DARPA investment in university-led IT research has declined precipitously since FY 2001, falling from $199 million to $108 million in FY 2004 (in constant dollars).
    The letter goes on to point out the burden placed on NSF as a result of DARPA’s “retrenchment,” noting the precipitous fall of proposal success rates and the impact that has on the peer-review process — it becomes more conservative, resulting in proposals that tend not to be as high-risk and potentially high-return as we need to be supporting to keep the U.S. at the cutting-edge of technological innovation.
    BASIC makes two specific recommendations:

    1. DARPA should be given a clear mandate to dramatically increase its support of high-risk, unclassified, university-based research.
    …
    2. The National Science Foundation should be given additional funding in the Administration’s FY 2007 budget for a “Pioneer Award” for IT research.

    These ~$500k awards would be for “individual scientists of exceptional creativity who propose pioneering approaches to major contemporary challenges.” The coalition urges an immediate funding increase for NSF to fund at least 25-50 of these pioneer awards, with an eventual “steady state” of 100-150 awards.
    It’s an interesting approach, and it makes essentially the same case we’ve been making about IT research — and many other groups have been making about the physical sciences and engineering generally. But the more groups that make this case — especially groups with significant industry membership like BASIC and the Task Force on the Future of American Innovation and the Council on Competitiveness and the American Electronics Association and the Telecommunication Industry Association and the Business Roundtable and many others, the harder it is for the Administration to ignore the message.
    You can read the full letter here (pdf).

     
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