On May 22nd the House Science Committee took up the Frontiers in Innovation, Research, Science, and Technology (or FIRST) Act of 2014. The bill’s lead sponsor is the House Science Committee chairman, Lamar Smith (R-TX). This bill is to reauthorize the majority of the America COMPETES Act of 2010, and focuses on the non-energy agencies […]
The title of this post was the last question, asked by Chairwoman Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), at the Senate Appropriations hearing Tuesday afternoon. It was a telling question and got to the root of the budgetary problems facing the Federal science agencies at this point in time: would it be better to have more (modest) funding […]
Tomorrow the full Senate Appropriations Committee will be holding an major hearing on “Driving Innovation through Federal Investments.” This is important news as the list of witnesses being called is a who’s-who of Federal science agencies: the Secretary of Energy, the President’s science advisor, and the Directors of NSF, DARPA, and NIH. Of course, you […]
House Budget Chair Paul Ryan (R-WI) and Senate Budget Chair Patty Murray (D-WA) announced Tuesday afternoon that they’d reached an agreement on FY 2014 and FY 2015 budget numbers that would avert sequester levels by providing about $63 billion of cap relief over both years. That sequester relief includes $22 billion for non-defense discretionary spending […]
CRA is pleased to announce that Brian Mosley has joined its staff starting today as Policy Analyst. In this position, Brian will track a number of issues of importance to the computing community, including Robotics R&D, STEM Education issues, and policies surrounding Open Access and Open Data efforts at the Federal level. He’ll also be a […]
The folks behind the 2013 Golden Goose Awards have put together a really nice video highlighting this year’s winners. You may recall that the Golden Goose Awards were the brainchild of Rep. Jim Cooper (D-TN) who had grown frustrated with the occasional targeting by his colleagues in Congress of so-called “silly-sounding science” — shrimp on […]
Every year, AAAS administers the Science & Technology Policy Fellowship program, which brings over 200 scientists and engineers to DC each year to work for the federal government. The goal of the Fellowship is to educate scientists on how the government works and to explore the intersection where policy and science meet. AAAS has recently […]
The House STEM Education Caucus hosted a briefing on various STEM programs occurring at the undergraduate level, in conjunction with the Association of American Universities (AAU), Association of Public and Land Grant Universities (APLU), the Business Higher Education Forum, and the Research Corporation of Science Advancement. Each organization spoke about the need for such STEM […]
The Progressive Policy Institute recently released their report, authored by Everett Ehrlich, on the progressive policy agenda for the broadband market. The report touched on three main sections: what progressives should want from the internet, the current state of competition in the broadband sector, and what the progressive agenda should look like. In the first […]
On Friday the House passed HR 5, the Student Success Act, by a vote of 221-207. The bill would rewrite many of the provisions of the current version of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) and include provisions helpful to computer science education and educators. These provisions were put in place because of an amendment […]
