COMPUTING RESEARCH POLICY BLOG

The President’s budget request for FY 2007 has just been released and we’ll be dissecting it and providing our analysis as we get through it. But I wanted to post a quick snapshot of the Networking and Information Technology Research and Development program, the federal government’s multi-agency IT research and development effort, because 1) it’s the number of greatest concern to the computing research community and 2) it highlights the near-fruitlessness of trying to track the federal investment in IT R&D on a year-to-year basis.
For FY 07, the President is requesting $3.09 billion in aggregate funding for NITRD, an increase of $930 million over the FY 06 budget request — a huge increase. However, in that peculiar DC way, that’s only a 2 percent increase over FY 06 actual. That’s because the baseline budget has changed significantly since the Administration last calculated its IT R&D expenditures. The Department of Defense apparently discovered it was funding a lot more IT R&D than it previously thought — $851 million more in FY06 than it spent in FY05 an increase of more than 400 percent.
How can this happen? Well, each agency is responsible for determining what its own contribution to the NITRD program actually is. If the criteria that agency uses to determine whether a particular expense is IT R&D related or not changes, the department’s contribution can change dramatically. Does it mean that there actually will be $851 million more available to researchers in FY06 than there was in FY05? Not likely, but I’d sure like to get my hands on the spreadsheet used to produce that number. Perhaps we’ll get a better look when the NITRD coordinating office releases its annual “blue book” report for FY07.
Anyway, the good news is the NITRD program is slated for continued growth in FY07 (despite the widely fluctuating baseline numbers). Overall, the program will increase 2 percent, higher than any of the other government-wide “crosscutting” research programs (Nanotechnology will actually see a 2 percent decline, though that’s subject to some of the same odd DOD accounting changes; and the Climate Change program is flat). NSF would see a 12 percent increase in its NITRD funding, and DOE would see an increase of 23 percent.
Update: (2/7/06 9:45pm) – I really should just trash this entry and start over, but it seems somehow more appropriate to leave the big strikethrough section for posterity.
After consulting with Simon Szykman, who heads the National Coordinating Office for NITRD, I’ve got a little better information on what is actually going on with the widely fluctuating budget numbers in the NITRD cross-cut. I can’t say I completely understand all the reasons, but I at least have some sense of what’s going on. Apologies to Simon if I screw this explanation up. This is likely uninteresting to all but the most hard-core federal funding geeks, but to me, it’s a great lesson in how tricky it is to rely on aggregate funding totals for any insight into federal policy.
In the early ’90s the decision was made — for reasons I don’t yet know — to exclude a number of programs in DOD from being counted as part of what would become the NITRD “cross-cut.” In particular, IT R&D investments at the DOD service labs — Air Force Research Lab, Army Research Lab, Naval Research Lab — weren’t included in the “Defense” line and weren’t calculated as part of the overall NITRD program.
For the FY 07 budget, the White House Office of Management and Budget (the gatekeepers for the budget process in the executive branch) reviewed the program accounting and decided that the legacy way of reporting the NITRD cross-cut was no longer accurate. To describe the full breadth of the federal government’s NITRD investments, R&D spending in the DOD service labs had to be included. So OMB produced this chart — which ran in the original version of this post — and included it in the Analytical Perspectives (pdf) supplement to the FY 2007 Budget Request. (Though I added the first column, “FY 05 (est),” just for comparison’s sake.)

Networking and Information Technology Research and Development Program dollars in millions OMB version
	FY05 (est)1	FY05 (actual)	FY06 (est)	FY07 (request)	$ change FY06-FY07	% change FY06-FY07
Defense	277	775	1128	1018	-110	-10%
NSF	795	811	810	904	94	12%
HHS	573	571	551	541	-10	-2
Energy	383	377	384	473	89	23%
NASA	192	163	78	82	4	5%
Commerce	58	60	60	65	5	8%
EPA	4	4	6	6	0	0%
Total	2282	2761	3017	3089	72	2%
1Estimated expenditures in the FY 06 Budget Request.

Obviously, we’ll have much more as we get a little more time to dive into the budget. Stay tuned…
Now, as we’ve figured out, this spread of numbers isn’t very useful for year-to-year comparisons. The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy realized this, too, so they now keep a second set of numbers which uses — roughly — the same set of agencies and programs that had been the norm until FY 07. Here’s the OSTP version:

Networking and Information Technology Research and Development Program dollars in millions OSTP Version
	FY01 (actual)	FY05 (actual)	FY 06 (est)	FY07 (request)	$ change FY06-FY07	% change FY06-FY07
Defense	310	775	743	790	47	6.3%
NSF	636	811	810	904	94	11.6%
HHS	277	571	563	548	-15	-2.7
Energy	326	377	291	387	96	33.0%
NASA	177	163	78	82	4	5.1%
Commerce	38	60	53	66	13	24.5%
EPA	4	4	6	6	0	0%
Total	1768	2761	2544	2783	239	9.4%

You’ll note that when the military services are pulled from the numbers, DOD actually appears to receive an increase in the request versus FY06, which seems to indicate that the service labs don’t fare particularly well in the President’s budget. Szykman indicated that the DOD numbers for FY06 and FY07 in this chart also include, for the first time, funding from the DOD High Performance Computing Modernization Office. This isn’t new money.
Finally, you’ll note that some of the non-DOD numbers have changed in the second chart. According to Szykman, that’s likely due to further refinement as the chart worked its way through OMB to final release. Apparently the OSTP version is the “newer” version, and therefore its numbers are likely to be more accurate.
Presumably, we’ll have the final word when the NITRD NCO releases its FY07 Budget Supplement (the “Blue book,” which is now — of course — red) sometime in the next few weeks.
So what’s the take-away from all of this? I don’t really know, honestly. OSTP indicates that NITRD is up 9.4 percent in the President’s request over last year, but that includes additional funding in the calculation for FY07 that isn’t really new money. The OMB numbers indicate it’s more like 2.0 percent, but those numbers include a whole bunch of funding that’s apparently never been considered before.
Update: (2/8/06 8:39 am) – Ok, final update to this post. After some additional clarification from Szykman, it does appear that the OSTP-indicated increase of 9.4 percent is an accurate estimate of the status of the NITRD “legacy” programs OSTP is tracking. We’ll have further details in future posts about what exactly that 9.4 percent increase includes. But for now, maybe what’s most important for computing researchers is the knowledge that the traditional three big supporters for fundamental computing research — NSF, DOE and DOD/DARPA — all would see increases in the coming year under the President’s plan.
From OSTP:

High-end computing (HEC) continues to be a major focus of NITRD. DoE’s Office os Science (DoE SC), NSF and NASA are all engaged in developing and/or operating leadership class computing systems as recommended in the 2004 Federal Plan for High-End Computing, with the goal of deploying petascale computing systems by the year 2010. The DoE SC 2007 investment of $103M in leadership class computing, coupled with NSF’s investment of $50M in their Office of Cyber Infrastructure, will ensure that U.S. scientists and researchers have access to the most powerful computational resources in the world. Similarly, NASA continues to emphasize high-end computing within its NITRD portfolio through the operation of the Project Columbia supercomputer. All three agencies have pledged to make a portion of their leadership class computing systems available to other Federal users and the larger research community.
A 9% increase in support for advanced networking research in 2007, primarily by NSF, DARPA and DoE SC, will ensure that large-scale networking technologies will keep pace with the rapid development of petascale computing systems, so that the results of petascale computations are immediately accessible for analysis.
The 2007 Budget also includes significant increases in long-term fundamental research in cyber security and information assurance, as recommended by the President’s Information Technology Advisory Committee. Budget increases in cyber security and information assurance for NSF (+28%), DHS (+43%) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (+11%) will support substantial new research activities to help secure the Nation’s information infrastructure, including fundamental research, and support for large-scale cyber security test beds and data sets.

We’ll have more on some of the agency-by-agency specifics as we get a chance to pour through the budget documents a little closer. As this episode points out, even a close reading of the documents isn’t always enough. And to think, if it’s this difficult to figure out the dollar amounts involved in this cross-agency program, imagine how difficult it is to coordinate research priorities and research activities….
Stay tuned.

We have so much to catch up on in the wake of the President’s State of the Union speech and his introduction of an American Competitiveness Initiative that I’m feeling a little overwhelmed. So let me start to wade through the torrent of new material.
First, the White House has posted the supporting documentation for ACI online. I’m still working my way through the document, but figured I should get the word out as soon as I could.
One interesting aspect of the document is that includes the FY07 budget numbers for NSF, NIST and DOE Office of Science, so we don’t need to wait until Monday to see how each of the agencies fared. In it we learn that NSF will see a 7.8 percent bump to $6.02 billion, an increase of $440 million over FY 06.
DOE Office of Science actually does a little better, growing 14 percent to $4.10 billion in FY 07, an increase of $500 million.
NIST “Core” (Labs + Construction…not ATP or MEP) will decline $30 million from FY 06, but in twisted Washington DC logic, that’s actually an increase of 24 percent. The White House claims to have stripped $137 million in earmarks to the NIST budget from FY 06, so it’s actually an increase of $100 million in NIST core R&D.
Here’s a handy chart showing not only the proposed increases for next year, but the 10 year commitment the President is proposing (chart stolen from the President’s proposal).

I’d also like to include a lengthy quote from the President’s speech today at 3M in Minneapolis — the first of his “post-SOTU road show” speeches focused on competitiveness — that I found particularly, well, amazing. It would have been hard impossible to have imagined these words coming from the President even two months ago. (And apologies to History majors for the slight in the speech…hope it doesn’t apply to English majors, too):

I want to talk about another important issue, and I’ve come to 3M to highlight this issue. And the truth of the matter is, in order to stay competitive, we have got to lead the world in research and development, and got to lead the world in having people — scientists and engineers that are capable of helping America stay on the cutting edge of technology. And 3M is a perfect place to come. (Applause.)
There’s an economic reason why we need to do this. The economic reason why we got to stay on the leading edge of technology is to make sure that people’s standard of living here in America goes up — that’s what it is. And there’s a direct correlation by being the most innovative country in the world and how our citizens live.
Secondly, the second practical application to make sure we’ve got young scientists and engineers coming up, is that if we don’t have people that have got the skill set to fill the jobs of the 21st century, because we’re in a global world and a competitive world, they’re going to go somewhere else. And so I want to talk about an initiative to make sure America remains competitive.
The first element is, is that for the federal government to continue its role — oh, by the way, when we went on the tour, so I asked, how you doing? Fine. What do you do? This. Where did you get your education? We met engineers and chemists and physicists. I didn’t meet any history majors. (Laughter.) I met people who are incredibly capable, smart thinkers that are able to take their brainpower and come up with ways to make practical products that changes Americans’ lives. And so — and the federal government has a role in this, and our taxpayers have got to understand a good use of your taxpayers’ money is to promote research and development — research into the physical sciences.
Again, I’d repeat to you that if we can remain the most competitive nation in the world, it will benefit the worker here in America. People have got to understand, when we talk about spending your taxpayers’ money on research and development, there is a correlating benefit, particularly to your children. See, it takes a while for some of the investments that are being made with government dollars to come to market. I don’t know if people realize this, but the Internet began as the Defense Department project to improve military communications. In other words, we were trying to figure out how to better communicate, here was research money spent, and as a result of this sound investment, the Internet came to be.
The Internet has changed us. It’s changed the whole world. It’s an amazing example of what a commitment to research dollars can mean. The iPod — I’m a bike guy and I like to plug in music on my iPod when I’m riding along to hopefully help me forget how old I am. (Laughter.) But it was built — when it was launched, it was built on years of government-funded research and microdrive storage, or electrochemistry, or single compression — signal compression. See, the nanotechnology research that the government is helping sponsor is going to change the way people live.
And so what I said to the Congress was, let’s be wise with taxpayers’ money. Let’s stay on the leading edge of technology and change, and let’s reaffirm our commitment to scientific innovation. I think we ought to double the federal commitment to the most basic critical research programs in physical sciences over the next decade.
This year alone we’re proposing $6 billion go to the National Science Foundation to fund research in physics and chemistry and material science and nanotechnology. We’re proposing $4 billion goes to the Energy Department’s Office of Science to build the world’s most powerful civilian supercomputer. We’re proposing $535 million to the Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology to research electronics information technologies and advanced computers.
I wouldn’t be proposing this if I didn’t believe that there will be tangible benefits for the American people. We may not see them tomorrow, but your children will see them. We’re staying on the leading edge of technology for a reason. If America doesn’t lead, if we try to kind of forget that we’re in a competitive world, generations of Americans won’t be able to realize the standard of living that we’ve been able to realize.

So that’s just the first speech on the topic. He plans to deliver a few more. Also, I wouldn’t get too hung up on the examples of research he mentions for the agencies — it’s not a comprehensive list. I’m far more interested in the overall message of the speech.
Anyway, we sort of need to enjoy this moment while we can. As one congressional staffer put it this morning, “Today is the best it’s going to get.” There are some tactical issues that will make realizing the full extent of the President’s plan problematic. Come Monday and the actual release of the President’s budget, some constituencies will feel slighted and there will be some hurdles to clear in Congress. But that’s a post for tomorrow or Monday.
Today I’m still reveling in what has to be considered one of the bigger wins for the science community, and more importantly, for the nation, in quite some years.
Update: (5:02 pm 2/2/06) — The House Democratic response is great — very positive:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 02, 2006
Pelosi Statement on President’s Competitiveness Speech
Washington, D.C. – House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi released the following statement this afternoon in response to President Bush’s speech on American competitiveness in Minnesota today:
“In September, House Democrats launched the Innovation Agenda: A Commitment to Competitiveness to Keep America Number One.  With this Innovation Agenda, House Democrats laid down a challenge to the President and to Congress to renew our commitment to the public-private partnerships that will secure America’s continued leadership in innovation and unleash the next generation of discovery, invention, and growth.
“I am glad that the President addressed this vital issue in his State of the Union Address, and in Minnesota today.  House Democrats are ready to work with the President to move our country forward and keep America competitive – nothing could be more important.
“We must now go beyond words and speeches and make the commitment in next year’s budget to a sustained investment in technological innovation and educational excellence to ensure that our country remains competitive against formidable international competition and generates high quality jobs throughout the 21st century.  Nothing less is at stake than America’s economic leadership.”