President’s Budget is Out: Here are the First Numbers
The budget is out and the numbers, as promised, don’t look very good. Here’s the breakdown for the Networking and Information Technology R&D program — the federal budget crosscut for all agencies involved in funding IT R&D:
| Networking and Information Technology R&D (budget authority in millions) |
|||||
| Agency | 2004 Actual |
2005 Estimate |
2006 Proposed |
$ Change FY05 v FY06 |
% Change FY05 v FY06 |
| Defense | $241 | $277 | $299 | $21 | 7.6% |
| National Science Foundation | $773 | $795 | $803 | $8 | 1% |
| HHS (primarily NIH) | $542 | $573 | $569 | -$20 | -3.4% |
| Energy | $343 | $383 | $341 | -$29 | -7.8% |
| Commerce | $47 | $58 | $62 | $4 | 6.9% |
| NASA | $258 | $192 | $74 | -$89 | -54.6% |
| EPA | $2 | $4 | $6 | $2 | 50% |
| Total | $2,206 | $2,282 | $2,155 | -$101 | -4.5% |
There are some caveats to this table. The first is that the President’s budget submission indicates that DOD will “reassess which of its IT R&D programs are appropriate to count as part of the NITRD program, and any changes will be reported in subsequent NITRD publications.”
The second is that the baseline budgets (FY 2004 actual and FY 05 estimated) of just about every agency have increased significantly since last year’s budget submission. You can see that by comparing this year’s “Trends in IT R&D” chart with last year’s chart. The change in baseline makes it a little trickier to put the cuts in context. It also makes NIH look like a much more significant supporter of IT R&D than previously reported…
I’ll have much more parsing of the numbers a little later today. For now, I’m off to NSF for their budget briefing. I’m not terribly optimistic.
Update: (3/28/05) — Table now reflects the latest revised numbers (pdf) from the NITRD National Coordinating Office. The NITRD cut is now “only” 4.5 versus FY 2005.
