As our readers will have noticed of late, Congress has a well-earned reputation for doing little-to-nothing, legislatively speaking. So when the newly installed Republican House and Senate majorities promised in January to move on the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), a bill that had not been reauthorized since No Child Left Behind was passed into law in 2001, and had expired eight years ago, most people (myself included) thought it would go nowhere. Over the last year Congress has proved the naysayers wrong.
Both the House and Senate education committees worked throughout the year to pull together bills that would move the issue. During the spring and summer each chamber was able to pass their own bills and, starting in September, negotiations between the Republican and Democratic staffs in both chambers worked out a compromise bill that would pass through conferenced and that would be acceptable to all sides. Most observers assumed this was the stage where the bill would die, especially with Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), a big supporter of education and a huge cheerleader for reauthorizing ESEA, retiring; the three month wait over the early fall only validated the idea that the bill would have to be taken up in the 2016 session of Congress.
But the week before Thanksgiving, both committee chairmen and ranking members announced they had worked out a compromise bill and it would go to conference. In fact, the legislation sailed through the conference stage without a problem. On December 2nd the House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed the “Every Student Succeeds Act” (as this version of ESEA is being called; it is being moved under the Senate bill number S. 1177) 359 to 64. The Senate is expected to vote on the bill next week and the White House says it strongly supports it. The expectation is that the bill will be signed into law by the end of the year.
Depending on how you feel about the Federal role in K-12 education, the broad policy points of the bill could be good or bad. However, for CS, it’s quite good and significantly elevates the field’s visibility within the STEM disciplines. For starters, CS is now specifically included in the Federal definition of core subjects (called “well rounded education subjects” rather than “core subjects”). While this may appear to be a wonky or bureaucratic gesture, it’s actually quite important. Many states follow the Federal government’s lead in what are core subjects to offer and computer science is now added to the list. Additionally, the bill specifically includes CS teachers as being eligible for Title II professional development funds. These are big wins for the community.
In fact, the CS and larger STEM communities were not silent during the lead up to the conference bill. CRA specifically signed on to three letters that supported different provisions in the House and Senate bills. The first letter, organized by Code.org and signed mainly by CS related organizations, pushed for more specific CS provisions in the two bills. The second letter, organized by an informal group of STEM organizations, led by Boston Museum of Science, covers a more broad range of STEM fields. The final letter, organized by the STEM Education Coalition, of which CRA is a member, also covers more broad range of STEM fields. All these actions had an impact on the final form of the bill.
Thirteen different coalitions, representing over 500 individual organizations, who are concerned with the federal investment in research and development, have sent a letter to the chairs and ranking members of the House and Senate Appropriations Committees, urging them, “to make strong investments in America’s innovation ecosystem one of your highest priorities by increasing federal research funding by at least 5.2 percent above FY 2015 levels—the same level of increase to discretionary spending.” This is in light of the new budget deal that Congress approved last week and President Obama signed yesterday.
Four groups that CRA is a member of are signatories of the letter: the Task Force on American Innovation; the Coalition for National Security Research; the Energy Sciences Coalition; and the Coalition for National Science Funding. The other signatories represent other scientific and engineering fields, such as the Coalition for Aerospace and Science, and United for Medical Research. The 500+ organizations range from industry voices to science societies to education advocates, all making the case to, “urge…[Congress]…to take this opportunity to act decisively in favor of American innovation so that our nation’s economic, health, and national security will prosper for many years in the future.”
Greg Hager (left) and Keith Marzullo (right) prepare to give testimony before the House Science, Space and Technology Subcommittee on Research and Technology on Oct 28, 2015.
Experts from academia and government, including CCC Council Chair Greg Hager, told a congressional panel yesterday that the Networking and Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD) program remains a crucial part of the extraordinarily productive computing research ecosystem that has made the U.S. the world leader in IT and deserves further support.
The experts were witnesses at a hearing called by the House Science, Space and Technology Subcommittee on Research and Technology to review the status of the NITRD program in advance of possible reauthorization legislation from the committee. Hager, who also served as the co-Chair of a working group of the President’s Council of Advisors for Science and Technology (PCAST) charged with reviewing the NITRD program, presented the findings and recommendations of that review. He was joined by Keith Marzullo, who currently heads the National Coordinating Office for NITRD — coordinating nearly $4 billion annually in research investments across 19 different Federal agencies — and Ed Seidel, who heads the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign.
All three made the case that while the landscape for computing research has changed significantly since NITRD was first established by the High Performance Computing and Communications Act of 1991, the need for the Federal investment in long-term, fundamental research has never been more important. Hager spelled out eight key areas of research highlighted by PCAST: Cybersecurity, Health, Cyber-human systems, Privacy, IT-based Interaction with the Physical World, Data-Intensive Computing, High-capability Computing, and Foundational IT research. (You can read all three witnesses written testimony, or watch a video of the hearing, from the committee website.)
The members of the committee were largely supportive of the NITRD program, many echoing comments of Subcommittee Chairwoman Barbara Comstock (R-VA) who noted that “focusing our investments on information technology research and development is important to our nation for a variety of reasons, including economic prosperity, national security, U.S. competitiveness, and quality of life.” Encouraging more industry participation in the program was a common theme among the questions posed to the panel by the members of the subcommittee, with Republicans wondering how to use the Federal investment to leverage more industry support for long-term, foundational research and Democrats disappointed that the committee was unable to find witnesses from industry available to testify about the importance of the Federal investment. A visible show of support from representatives in industry will be an important part of making the case for Federal investment in IT research, Ranking Member Daniel Lipinski (D-IL) noted in his opening statement, adding that he was disappointed that all were apparently unavailable for the hearing.
Additional questions from the subcommittee members concerned how we prioritize between infrastructure investments and research investments, where the U.S. remains ranked worldwide in computing leadership, whether the makeup of the Program Component Areas need to be changed to reflect the changing landscape for computing research (they do).
The hearing is groundwork for any legislative action the committee might take to reauthorize the NITRD program. The House has attempted to reauthorize the program — to update the legislation authorizing its operations to reflect the current environment for research — in each of the last three congresses only to see the efforts die in the Senate. The committee appears interested in using the PCAST review to inform a fourth try soon. We’ll have more detail on that as it becomes available.
We’ve launched a new blog! The CRA Bulletin is a news and announcement blog that focuses on topics of interest to the computing research community. The blog will highlight interesting opportunities for researchers and students, news from the field, developments in diversity, and announcements from award programs and other CRA initiatives.
Jeannette Wing, a corporate vice president at Microsoft Research overseeing the company’s core research labs and former CRA board member (and current member of CRA’s Government Affairs Committee), has an excellent post on the importance of federally supported fundamental research. Dr. Wing makes several points but the best is this: “Basic scientific research made today’s technology possible, and it will lead to tomorrow’s technological breakthroughs. That’s why we believe it is important for our company and for our country.” Citing, “the Internet, global positioning systems, the laser, multi-touch displays and search engines,” as examples of everyday products and tools, which we take for granted today, that come from federally supported basic research funding from decades ago. It’s a great piece to read.
The briefing will focus on ways that colleges and universities can creatively engage students in the STEM fields and bridge the gap between education and careers in the field. The panelists will focus on initiatives at the 2-year and 4-year college level, as well as graduate and doctoral levels. Additionally, there will be a focus on improving diversity and inclusiveness within the field and in industry.
Speakers include: Dr. Nancy Amato, Texas A&M University (who is also a co-chair of CRA-W); Dr. Collins Jones, Montgomery College; and Dr. Oscar Barton, George Mason University. Dr. Beth Ambos, Executive Officer of CUR, will moderate the briefing.
The briefing is on Tuesday October 20th from noon to 1pm in B339 Rayburn House Office Building. Please RSVP by October 18th to Mackenzie Yaryura.
On October 7th President Obama signed into law the STEM Education Act (Public Law No: 114-59; originally introduced as HR 1020). Introduced by House Science, Space, and Technology Chairman Lamar Smith (R-TX) and Rep. Elizabeth Etsy (D-CT), this legislation has specific importance to the computing community as it expands the federal definition of STEM to include computer science. There has been an ongoing concern that with constrained budgets, research agencies could possibly exclude computer science and related fields from future STEM education efforts; this is because CS doesn’t fall perfectly into any of the areas that make up the STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, and math). This legislation specifically closes that potential loophole and reconfirms the field’s STEM status at the federal level.
Additionally, the legislation amends the NSF Noyce Master Teaching Fellowship program to allow teachers in pursuit of Master’s degrees to participate in the program. According to the bill’s sponsors, “this would allow more teachers the opportunity to compete for the grants.” As well, computer science is added as a subject for the scholarship program. Lastly, the legislation directs the National Science Foundation (NSF) to continue to award competitive merit-reviewed grants to support informal STEM education.
This is a big win for the computing education community as it shows policy makers in Congress look favorably on the field. Also, for practical reasons, it makes sure CS can take part in any STEM initiatives the federal research agencies initiate. It’s great to see the field be recognize as so important to the nation’s STEM education investment.
[Update (10/8/15: 12:40 pm): Well, that was quick. McCarthy has apparently withdrawn from the Speaker race and the leadership election has been postponed… ]
A last-minute agreement hammered out September 30th between the House and Senate, just hours before the start of the new Federal fiscal year, averted a government shutdown at least through mid-December. But the agreement spelled the end of Rep. John Boehner’s (R-OH) term as Speaker, as he announced his resignation from both the Speakership and his seat in Congress –citing the difficulties of working with an increasingly fractured GOP — effective October 30th. While the move quiets debate temporarily about the final budgets for Federal agencies, including Federal science agencies in FY 2016, and keeps them open, it casts very little light about how funding will ultimately be resolved by the Congress.
The agreement struck by both chambers and signed by the President, called a Continuing Resolution, will keep the Federal Government operating through December 11, 2015. In the meantime, Congress must decide how to complete work on all twelve unfinished annual appropriations bills necessary to fund the operations of government in the new fiscal year, which began October 1st. In lieu of passing the appropriations bills — which are mired in arguments over Republican adherence to strict spending caps — the continuing resolution will keep Federal agencies and programs running at their current rates of spending until December 11th or the Congress passes and the President signs the unfinished bills, whichever comes first. If Congress fails to resolve the outstanding appropriations bills by December 11th, it will either have to pass another stopgap continuing resolution or the government will shut down as it did last in 2013.
House Speaker Boehner came under extreme pressure in advance of the October 1st funding deadline from conservative members of his party over the nature of the continuing resolution they were willing to approve. Central to the dispute was Federal funding for Planned Parenthood. Conservative Republicans, particularly those members of the Tea Party Caucus in the House, sought to target funding for Planned Parenthood after controversy emerged surrounding money received for the donation of fetal tissue obtained through abortions performed by the organization. Tea Party representatives sought to include provisions in the CR that would strip Federal funding for Planned Parenthood — provisions that would not be approved in the Senate or signed into law by the President.
Though the Tea Party does not represent a majority of the GOP in the House, they represent a significant enough percentage of the party that their opposition to a bill would require the Speaker to find Democratic votes to pass it, a difficult ask on controversial votes like appropriations measures. Boehner, realizing that the Planned Parenthood gambit in the CR would doom its chances of passage and lead to a shutdown of the government, argued strenuously within his own party about pursuing it. In the Senate, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) had already reached an agreement with his caucus to pass a so-called “clean CR,” without funding prohibitions for Planned Parenthood, arguing that a CR wasn’t the right legislative vehicle for this particular issue. Boehner faced a less receptive crowd among the Tea Party members in the House. Instead of arguing the point, Boehner apparently bought support for a “clean” CR by indicating he planned to leave the speakership, and the Congress, at the end of the month. The House approved the clean bill on September 30th and the Senate followed quickly thereafter and sent it on to the President, who signed it before the October 1st deadline.
The move signals a rightward power-shift in the House caucus. But ironically, the prohibitive favorite to take over the reins of leadership in the House is current House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), who has been more politically moderate than Boehner in the recent past [Note update above — McCarthy has withdrawn from the race, apparently because he did not believe he could win the 218 GOP votes needed]. Whether he can broker an agreement with the Tea Party faction in the GOP to allow spending bills to go forward by the December 11th expiration of the CR remains to be seen. As this goes to press, it appears the both the moderate wing and the conservative wing of the House GOP are pressing for rule changes in the party leadership structure to give their constituencies more of a voice in the leadership of the party before they will allow a vote on certain key leadership positions that will change with Boehner leaving. It is not yet clear whether they will get those changes or if the House will vote on new leadership, as planned, by October 15th.
Whoever constitutes the leadership of the House GOP will have to contend with the influence of the Tea Party caucus going forward, and several key votes will serve as bell-weathers for their effectiveness. The first is the December 11th spending deadline. If McCarthy cannot find a way to build a majority using a block of more fiscally-conservative Democrats, then he may have to acquiesce to Tea Party demands for tighter budget controls, which will likely mean cuts at Federal science agencies in FY 2016. Future votes include the renewal of the Federal Import-Export Bank and an approval of an increase to the Federal debt limit.
In the Senate, McConnell may propose a bipartisan two-year budget agreement as a way of avoiding the impasse. Details of the plan have not yet been released, but conversations with Senate staff indicate that McConnell is pushing for a plan that would hold all Federal spending to an across-the-board 0.2 percent cut for the next two years as a way of providing some certainty to those involved in Federal programs. While a 0.2 percent government-wide cut does not sound like a positive development, it represents an improvement over cuts required to meet the budget caps mandated for Federal spending by the Budget Control Act of 2011, which is current law.
Yet another possibility is that Congress will just punt on FY 2016 appropriations and pass a CR that covers the entire year, holding agency funding flat — prohibiting new hiring or new program starts. While this in many ways would be a bad outcome for the research community — it hamstrings Federal science agencies somewhat in deciding what they can fund in the coming year — it may not actually be the worst case scenario. If Congress does manage to pass FY 2016 appropriations, funding for key agencies like the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy’s Office of science could see even greater cuts to their budgets than the 0.2 percent across-the-board cuts in McConnell’s two-year plan.
We expect to get further clarity on how this budget process for FY 2016 and beyond will shake out after the October 15th leadership elections and, hopefully, before the December 11th expiration of the current CR. As always, we will have all the details in the Computing Research Policy Blog at cra.org/blog and in the next issue of CRN.
A new report, titled, “Rebooting the IT Revolution: A Call to Action,” produced by the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) and the Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC), calls for, “a targeted and coordinated government initiative similar to that which sparked the semiconductor revolution fifty years ago.” Calling this initiative the “National Computing and Insight Technologies Ecosystem initiative,” or N-CITE, the report identifies critical areas where research, particular federally supported research, is needed in order to position the country to enjoy the full benefit of advances in Big Data and the burgeoning “Internet of Things.”
The report is mainly the product of a workshop titled Rebooting the IT Revolution, held in Washington DC on March 30–31 of this year, which brought together experts from industry, government, and academia to explore “leap-ahead IT technologies.” That workshop identified many “critical areas” where research is needed; from energy-efficient sensing and computing, to intelligent storage, to an Internet of Things test platform, there are a total of eight areas. Read the full list in the executive summary of the report on page 2.
The report also makes the point that the country cannot rely on the private sector alone to fund these innovations. Mentioning many important government research initiatives, that are heavily driven by computing and IT research, such as the National Strategic Computing Initiative and the BRAIN initiative, the report states, “near term, product-driven investment by the private sector alone is not sufficient to create the significant advances in IT infrastructure and insight technologies needed for these innovations. Private sector research and development must build upon and connect to government-funded programs.”
The conclusion to this report makes a clear call to action: “The United States needs to adopt and fund an innovation agenda—built upon fundamental research— that creates a new engine to drive the next generations of human experience, economic and societal progress, security and sustainability.”
CRA today filed comments with Senators Cory Gardner (R-CO) and Gary Peters (D-MI) urging the senators to put a priority on ensuring that fundamental research in the physical sciences, including computing, sees strong and sustainable growth as the senators work to build bipartisan consensus around a reauthorization of a key science policy bill.
The senators are leading an effort for the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee to reauthorize the America COMPETES Act, a bill first passed in 2007 that signaled the Federal government’s commitment to increasing support for physical science research at the National Science Foundation, National Institute of Standards and Technology, and Department of Energy’s Office of Science. The committee solicited feedback from the science community as they begin their work on crafting a Senate version of COMPETES. A House version of the bill passed that chamber in May, despite concerns raised by CRA and other members of the science advocacy community about poor funding levels, prioritizations and policy decisions contained in the bill.
Our letter, signed by CRA Chair Susan Davidson, urges the senators to consider three recommendations when crafting their bill:
Put a priority on ensuring that fundamental research in the physical sciences, including computing, sees strong and sustainable growth.
Ensure that those investments span the full range of disciplines, in recognition of the important role that fields like social science, economics and behavioral science play in informing work in computing and other fields.
Provide authorizations of meaningful lengths of time to allow researchers and the agencies that support them more predictability and stability, which will help improve planning around and management of Federal research programs.
The letter then offers the case for Federal funding of computing research as an exemplar of the extraordinary benefit that Federal investment in fundamental research can yield, along with a warning that our leadership in IT isn’t a guarantee:
Our position as the world leader in information technology has clearly paid enormous dividends, but that position is not guaranteed. In many key sectors, including high-performance computing and new areas like ubiquitous computing that comprise the “Internet of Things,” the global competition has grown more fierce. We cannot afford to lose our leadership role.
The Federal investment in computing research is without question one of the best investments the Nation has ever made. The future is bright. There is tremendous opportunity – and tremendous need – for future breakthroughs. The Federal Government’s essential role in fostering these advances – in supporting fundamental research across fields – must continue.
The senators have held three briefings on topics related to innovation policy since announcing their efforts to reauthorize COMPETES. Their request for comment period ends today, so we expect to learn more about their approach very soon, with hopefully a bill produced by early Fall that could earn bipartisan support.
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Could it be? ESEA Nears Final Passage!
/In: Computing Education, STEM /by Brian MosleyAs our readers will have noticed of late, Congress has a well-earned reputation for doing little-to-nothing, legislatively speaking. So when the newly installed Republican House and Senate majorities promised in January to move on the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), a bill that had not been reauthorized since No Child Left Behind was passed into law in 2001, and had expired eight years ago, most people (myself included) thought it would go nowhere. Over the last year Congress has proved the naysayers wrong.
Both the House and Senate education committees worked throughout the year to pull together bills that would move the issue. During the spring and summer each chamber was able to pass their own bills and, starting in September, negotiations between the Republican and Democratic staffs in both chambers worked out a compromise bill that would pass through conferenced and that would be acceptable to all sides. Most observers assumed this was the stage where the bill would die, especially with Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), a big supporter of education and a huge cheerleader for reauthorizing ESEA, retiring; the three month wait over the early fall only validated the idea that the bill would have to be taken up in the 2016 session of Congress.
But the week before Thanksgiving, both committee chairmen and ranking members announced they had worked out a compromise bill and it would go to conference. In fact, the legislation sailed through the conference stage without a problem. On December 2nd the House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed the “Every Student Succeeds Act” (as this version of ESEA is being called; it is being moved under the Senate bill number S. 1177) 359 to 64. The Senate is expected to vote on the bill next week and the White House says it strongly supports it. The expectation is that the bill will be signed into law by the end of the year.
Depending on how you feel about the Federal role in K-12 education, the broad policy points of the bill could be good or bad. However, for CS, it’s quite good and significantly elevates the field’s visibility within the STEM disciplines. For starters, CS is now specifically included in the Federal definition of core subjects (called “well rounded education subjects” rather than “core subjects”). While this may appear to be a wonky or bureaucratic gesture, it’s actually quite important. Many states follow the Federal government’s lead in what are core subjects to offer and computer science is now added to the list. Additionally, the bill specifically includes CS teachers as being eligible for Title II professional development funds. These are big wins for the community.
In fact, the CS and larger STEM communities were not silent during the lead up to the conference bill. CRA specifically signed on to three letters that supported different provisions in the House and Senate bills. The first letter, organized by Code.org and signed mainly by CS related organizations, pushed for more specific CS provisions in the two bills. The second letter, organized by an informal group of STEM organizations, led by Boston Museum of Science, covers a more broad range of STEM fields. The final letter, organized by the STEM Education Coalition, of which CRA is a member, also covers more broad range of STEM fields. All these actions had an impact on the final form of the bill.
500+ Organizations Urge Congressional Leaders to Make Strong Investments in Research
/In: Funding, R&D in the Press /by Brian MosleyThirteen different coalitions, representing over 500 individual organizations, who are concerned with the federal investment in research and development, have sent a letter to the chairs and ranking members of the House and Senate Appropriations Committees, urging them, “to make strong investments in America’s innovation ecosystem one of your highest priorities by increasing federal research funding by at least 5.2 percent above FY 2015 levels—the same level of increase to discretionary spending.” This is in light of the new budget deal that Congress approved last week and President Obama signed yesterday.
Four groups that CRA is a member of are signatories of the letter: the Task Force on American Innovation; the Coalition for National Security Research; the Energy Sciences Coalition; and the Coalition for National Science Funding. The other signatories represent other scientific and engineering fields, such as the Coalition for Aerospace and Science, and United for Medical Research. The 500+ organizations range from industry voices to science societies to education advocates, all making the case to, “urge…[Congress]…to take this opportunity to act decisively in favor of American innovation so that our nation’s economic, health, and national security will prosper for many years in the future.”
House Science Committee Reviews Federal IT Research
/In: CRA, Policy /by Peter HarshaGreg Hager (left) and Keith Marzullo (right) prepare to give testimony before the House Science, Space and Technology Subcommittee on Research and Technology on Oct 28, 2015.
Experts from academia and government, including CCC Council Chair Greg Hager, told a congressional panel yesterday that the Networking and Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD) program remains a crucial part of the extraordinarily productive computing research ecosystem that has made the U.S. the world leader in IT and deserves further support.
The experts were witnesses at a hearing called by the House Science, Space and Technology Subcommittee on Research and Technology to review the status of the NITRD program in advance of possible reauthorization legislation from the committee. Hager, who also served as the co-Chair of a working group of the President’s Council of Advisors for Science and Technology (PCAST) charged with reviewing the NITRD program, presented the findings and recommendations of that review. He was joined by Keith Marzullo, who currently heads the National Coordinating Office for NITRD — coordinating nearly $4 billion annually in research investments across 19 different Federal agencies — and Ed Seidel, who heads the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign.
All three made the case that while the landscape for computing research has changed significantly since NITRD was first established by the High Performance Computing and Communications Act of 1991, the need for the Federal investment in long-term, fundamental research has never been more important. Hager spelled out eight key areas of research highlighted by PCAST: Cybersecurity, Health, Cyber-human systems, Privacy, IT-based Interaction with the Physical World, Data-Intensive Computing, High-capability Computing, and Foundational IT research. (You can read all three witnesses written testimony, or watch a video of the hearing, from the committee website.)
The members of the committee were largely supportive of the NITRD program, many echoing comments of Subcommittee Chairwoman Barbara Comstock (R-VA) who noted that “focusing our investments on information technology research and development is important to our nation for a variety of reasons, including economic prosperity, national security, U.S. competitiveness, and quality of life.” Encouraging more industry participation in the program was a common theme among the questions posed to the panel by the members of the subcommittee, with Republicans wondering how to use the Federal investment to leverage more industry support for long-term, foundational research and Democrats disappointed that the committee was unable to find witnesses from industry available to testify about the importance of the Federal investment. A visible show of support from representatives in industry will be an important part of making the case for Federal investment in IT research, Ranking Member Daniel Lipinski (D-IL) noted in his opening statement, adding that he was disappointed that all were apparently unavailable for the hearing.
Additional questions from the subcommittee members concerned how we prioritize between infrastructure investments and research investments, where the U.S. remains ranked worldwide in computing leadership, whether the makeup of the Program Component Areas need to be changed to reflect the changing landscape for computing research (they do).
The hearing is groundwork for any legislative action the committee might take to reauthorize the NITRD program. The House has attempted to reauthorize the program — to update the legislation authorizing its operations to reflect the current environment for research — in each of the last three congresses only to see the efforts die in the Senate. The committee appears interested in using the PCAST review to inform a fourth try soon. We’ll have more detail on that as it becomes available.
New CRA Blog – The CRA Bulletin
/In: CRA, General /by Shar SteedWe’ve launched a new blog! The CRA Bulletin is a news and announcement blog that focuses on topics of interest to the computing research community. The blog will highlight interesting opportunities for researchers and students, news from the field, developments in diversity, and announcements from award programs and other CRA initiatives.
The Bulletin is the perfect complement to the Computing Research Policy Blog! Subscribe to both today.
Microsoft Research VP to Speak to Congress about Importance of Federal Research Funding
/In: COMPETES, People /by Brian MosleyJeannette Wing, a corporate vice president at Microsoft Research overseeing the company’s core research labs and former CRA board member (and current member of CRA’s Government Affairs Committee), has an excellent post on the importance of federally supported fundamental research. Dr. Wing makes several points but the best is this: “Basic scientific research made today’s technology possible, and it will lead to tomorrow’s technological breakthroughs. That’s why we believe it is important for our company and for our country.” Citing, “the Internet, global positioning systems, the laser, multi-touch displays and search engines,” as examples of everyday products and tools, which we take for granted today, that come from federally supported basic research funding from decades ago. It’s a great piece to read.
Today, Dr. Wing will be participating in a roundtable discussion with members of the Senate Commerce Committee to help identify key priorities for the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2015. We wish her luck!
House STEM Education Caucus Briefing on Building a STEM Education Pipeline for Industry Needs
/In: Events, STEM /by Brian MosleyOn Wednesday October 20th, the House STEM Education Caucus is sponsoring a briefing for Congressional staff titled, “Building a STEM Education Pipeline Aligned with Industry Needs: Perspectives from the Field.” The briefing is being moderated by the Council on Undergraduate Research (CUR) and is partnering with CRA, ASME, and the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM).
The briefing will focus on ways that colleges and universities can creatively engage students in the STEM fields and bridge the gap between education and careers in the field. The panelists will focus on initiatives at the 2-year and 4-year college level, as well as graduate and doctoral levels. Additionally, there will be a focus on improving diversity and inclusiveness within the field and in industry.
Speakers include: Dr. Nancy Amato, Texas A&M University (who is also a co-chair of CRA-W); Dr. Collins Jones, Montgomery College; and Dr. Oscar Barton, George Mason University. Dr. Beth Ambos, Executive Officer of CUR, will moderate the briefing.
The briefing is on Tuesday October 20th from noon to 1pm in B339 Rayburn House Office Building. Please RSVP by October 18th to Mackenzie Yaryura.
STEM Education Act Signed Into Law
/In: Computing Education /by Brian MosleyOn October 7th President Obama signed into law the STEM Education Act (Public Law No: 114-59; originally introduced as HR 1020). Introduced by House Science, Space, and Technology Chairman Lamar Smith (R-TX) and Rep. Elizabeth Etsy (D-CT), this legislation has specific importance to the computing community as it expands the federal definition of STEM to include computer science. There has been an ongoing concern that with constrained budgets, research agencies could possibly exclude computer science and related fields from future STEM education efforts; this is because CS doesn’t fall perfectly into any of the areas that make up the STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, and math). This legislation specifically closes that potential loophole and reconfirms the field’s STEM status at the federal level.
Additionally, the legislation amends the NSF Noyce Master Teaching Fellowship program to allow teachers in pursuit of Master’s degrees to participate in the program. According to the bill’s sponsors, “this would allow more teachers the opportunity to compete for the grants.” As well, computer science is added as a subject for the scholarship program. Lastly, the legislation directs the National Science Foundation (NSF) to continue to award competitive merit-reviewed grants to support informal STEM education.
This is a big win for the computing education community as it shows policy makers in Congress look favorably on the field. Also, for practical reasons, it makes sure CS can take part in any STEM initiatives the federal research agencies initiate. It’s great to see the field be recognize as so important to the nation’s STEM education investment.
News Catch-up: Congress Avoids Shutdown; Boehner Quits; Budget Still Unsettled
/In: FY16 Appropriations, People, Policy /by Peter Harsha[Update (10/8/15: 12:40 pm): Well, that was quick. McCarthy has apparently withdrawn from the Speaker race and the leadership election has been postponed… ]
[From this month’s Computing Research News]
A last-minute agreement hammered out September 30th between the House and Senate, just hours before the start of the new Federal fiscal year, averted a government shutdown at least through mid-December. But the agreement spelled the end of Rep. John Boehner’s (R-OH) term as Speaker, as he announced his resignation from both the Speakership and his seat in Congress –citing the difficulties of working with an increasingly fractured GOP — effective October 30th. While the move quiets debate temporarily about the final budgets for Federal agencies, including Federal science agencies in FY 2016, and keeps them open, it casts very little light about how funding will ultimately be resolved by the Congress.
The agreement struck by both chambers and signed by the President, called a Continuing Resolution, will keep the Federal Government operating through December 11, 2015. In the meantime, Congress must decide how to complete work on all twelve unfinished annual appropriations bills necessary to fund the operations of government in the new fiscal year, which began October 1st. In lieu of passing the appropriations bills — which are mired in arguments over Republican adherence to strict spending caps — the continuing resolution will keep Federal agencies and programs running at their current rates of spending until December 11th or the Congress passes and the President signs the unfinished bills, whichever comes first. If Congress fails to resolve the outstanding appropriations bills by December 11th, it will either have to pass another stopgap continuing resolution or the government will shut down as it did last in 2013.
House Speaker Boehner came under extreme pressure in advance of the October 1st funding deadline from conservative members of his party over the nature of the continuing resolution they were willing to approve. Central to the dispute was Federal funding for Planned Parenthood. Conservative Republicans, particularly those members of the Tea Party Caucus in the House, sought to target funding for Planned Parenthood after controversy emerged surrounding money received for the donation of fetal tissue obtained through abortions performed by the organization. Tea Party representatives sought to include provisions in the CR that would strip Federal funding for Planned Parenthood — provisions that would not be approved in the Senate or signed into law by the President.
Though the Tea Party does not represent a majority of the GOP in the House, they represent a significant enough percentage of the party that their opposition to a bill would require the Speaker to find Democratic votes to pass it, a difficult ask on controversial votes like appropriations measures. Boehner, realizing that the Planned Parenthood gambit in the CR would doom its chances of passage and lead to a shutdown of the government, argued strenuously within his own party about pursuing it. In the Senate, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) had already reached an agreement with his caucus to pass a so-called “clean CR,” without funding prohibitions for Planned Parenthood, arguing that a CR wasn’t the right legislative vehicle for this particular issue. Boehner faced a less receptive crowd among the Tea Party members in the House. Instead of arguing the point, Boehner apparently bought support for a “clean” CR by indicating he planned to leave the speakership, and the Congress, at the end of the month. The House approved the clean bill on September 30th and the Senate followed quickly thereafter and sent it on to the President, who signed it before the October 1st deadline.
The move signals a rightward power-shift in the House caucus. But ironically, the prohibitive favorite to take over the reins of leadership in the House is current House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), who has been more politically moderate than Boehner in the recent past [Note update above — McCarthy has withdrawn from the race, apparently because he did not believe he could win the 218 GOP votes needed]. Whether he can broker an agreement with the Tea Party faction in the GOP to allow spending bills to go forward by the December 11th expiration of the CR remains to be seen. As this goes to press, it appears the both the moderate wing and the conservative wing of the House GOP are pressing for rule changes in the party leadership structure to give their constituencies more of a voice in the leadership of the party before they will allow a vote on certain key leadership positions that will change with Boehner leaving. It is not yet clear whether they will get those changes or if the House will vote on new leadership, as planned, by October 15th.
Whoever constitutes the leadership of the House GOP will have to contend with the influence of the Tea Party caucus going forward, and several key votes will serve as bell-weathers for their effectiveness. The first is the December 11th spending deadline. If McCarthy cannot find a way to build a majority using a block of more fiscally-conservative Democrats, then he may have to acquiesce to Tea Party demands for tighter budget controls, which will likely mean cuts at Federal science agencies in FY 2016. Future votes include the renewal of the Federal Import-Export Bank and an approval of an increase to the Federal debt limit.
In the Senate, McConnell may propose a bipartisan two-year budget agreement as a way of avoiding the impasse. Details of the plan have not yet been released, but conversations with Senate staff indicate that McConnell is pushing for a plan that would hold all Federal spending to an across-the-board 0.2 percent cut for the next two years as a way of providing some certainty to those involved in Federal programs. While a 0.2 percent government-wide cut does not sound like a positive development, it represents an improvement over cuts required to meet the budget caps mandated for Federal spending by the Budget Control Act of 2011, which is current law.
Yet another possibility is that Congress will just punt on FY 2016 appropriations and pass a CR that covers the entire year, holding agency funding flat — prohibiting new hiring or new program starts. While this in many ways would be a bad outcome for the research community — it hamstrings Federal science agencies somewhat in deciding what they can fund in the coming year — it may not actually be the worst case scenario. If Congress does manage to pass FY 2016 appropriations, funding for key agencies like the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy’s Office of science could see even greater cuts to their budgets than the 0.2 percent across-the-board cuts in McConnell’s two-year plan.
We expect to get further clarity on how this budget process for FY 2016 and beyond will shake out after the October 15th leadership elections and, hopefully, before the December 11th expiration of the current CR. As always, we will have all the details in the Computing Research Policy Blog at cra.org/blog and in the next issue of CRN.
New Report Identifies Fundamental Research Needs for Advancing Internet of Things & Cutting-Edge Innovations
/In: Cybersecurity R&D Highlights, Internet of Things Highlights, Policy, Research /by Brian MosleyA new report, titled, “Rebooting the IT Revolution: A Call to Action,” produced by the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) and the Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC), calls for, “a targeted and coordinated government initiative similar to that which sparked the semiconductor revolution fifty years ago.” Calling this initiative the “National Computing and Insight Technologies Ecosystem initiative,” or N-CITE, the report identifies critical areas where research, particular federally supported research, is needed in order to position the country to enjoy the full benefit of advances in Big Data and the burgeoning “Internet of Things.”
The report is mainly the product of a workshop titled Rebooting the IT Revolution, held in Washington DC on March 30–31 of this year, which brought together experts from industry, government, and academia to explore “leap-ahead IT technologies.” That workshop identified many “critical areas” where research is needed; from energy-efficient sensing and computing, to intelligent storage, to an Internet of Things test platform, there are a total of eight areas. Read the full list in the executive summary of the report on page 2.
The report also makes the point that the country cannot rely on the private sector alone to fund these innovations. Mentioning many important government research initiatives, that are heavily driven by computing and IT research, such as the National Strategic Computing Initiative and the BRAIN initiative, the report states, “near term, product-driven investment by the private sector alone is not sufficient to create the significant advances in IT infrastructure and insight technologies needed for these innovations. Private sector research and development must build upon and connect to government-funded programs.”
The conclusion to this report makes a clear call to action: “The United States needs to adopt and fund an innovation agenda—built upon fundamental research— that creates a new engine to drive the next generations of human experience, economic and societal progress, security and sustainability.”
CRA Urges Senate Commerce Task Force to Support Robust, Stable Investments in Research
/In: American Competitiveness Initiative, COMPETES, Funding, FY16 Appropriations, Policy /by Peter HarshaCRA today filed comments with Senators Cory Gardner (R-CO) and Gary Peters (D-MI) urging the senators to put a priority on ensuring that fundamental research in the physical sciences, including computing, sees strong and sustainable growth as the senators work to build bipartisan consensus around a reauthorization of a key science policy bill.
The senators are leading an effort for the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee to reauthorize the America COMPETES Act, a bill first passed in 2007 that signaled the Federal government’s commitment to increasing support for physical science research at the National Science Foundation, National Institute of Standards and Technology, and Department of Energy’s Office of Science. The committee solicited feedback from the science community as they begin their work on crafting a Senate version of COMPETES. A House version of the bill passed that chamber in May, despite concerns raised by CRA and other members of the science advocacy community about poor funding levels, prioritizations and policy decisions contained in the bill.
Our letter, signed by CRA Chair Susan Davidson, urges the senators to consider three recommendations when crafting their bill:
The letter then offers the case for Federal funding of computing research as an exemplar of the extraordinary benefit that Federal investment in fundamental research can yield, along with a warning that our leadership in IT isn’t a guarantee:
The senators have held three briefings on topics related to innovation policy since announcing their efforts to reauthorize COMPETES. Their request for comment period ends today, so we expect to learn more about their approach very soon, with hopefully a bill produced by early Fall that could earn bipartisan support.