On May 20th the full House Appropriations Committee passed the Commerce, Justice, Science funding bill; this is important to our community because it is the bill that contains the funding for the National Science Foundation, which funds 89 percent of all university-led fundamental computer science research in the U.S. First, the not-so-bad news: NSF doesn’t exactly get a budget cut in actual dollars; it in fact gets a small bump (though when inflation is considered, that bump may go away completely). The worse news: NSF gets some onerous language on how to spend the tax-dollars it’s allocated. Let’s get into the details.
NSF received $7.34 billion in Fiscal Year (FY) 2015, the present budget we are working under. For FY16, the President requested $7.72 billion, or an increase of $379.3 million (or 5.2 percent) over FY15 levels. In the House Appropriations bill, the agency would receive $7.39 billion in FY16, an increase of $50 million (or 0.7 percent). Again, it’s an increase in actual dollars – so things could have been worse. But the bill contains some disheartening language restricting the agency’s activities.
The most significant section concerns restricting how money in NSF’s Research and Related Activities account, where most of the money for research resides, can be spent. The relevant section reads:
The Committee directs NSF to ensure that Mathematical and Physical Sciences; Computer and Information Science and Engineering; Engineering; and Biological Sciences comprise no less than 70 percent of the funding within Research and Related Activities. Further, the Committee directs that NSF allocate no less than the fiscal year 2015 levels for the Office of International Science and Engineering; Integrative Activities; and the U.S. Arctic Commission.
This language would force Geosciences (funded at $1.3 billion in FY15) and Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences (funded at $272 million in FY15) to share roughly $1.32 billion in funding. The combined budget of the two directorates in FY15 was $1.58 billion, so this language translates into a cut of about $257 million to the two directorates, or 16.3 percent. This is in line with the authorization levels passed by the House Science Committee in their bill H.R. 1806 the America COMPETES Act of 2015, which CRA has stated it opposes.
Of almost equal concern, the Appropriations Committee included the following section concerning, “Transparency and accountability:”
The Committee supports section 106 of the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2015, H.R. 1806, as reported, that enhances transparency and accountability of NSF grants by requiring that public award abstracts articulate how the projects serve the national interest. The Committee understands that NSF has already taken steps to implement these transparency processes. NSF is directed to comply with section 106 and provide periodic updates to the Committee on its transparency activities.
As our readers will recall from last year, a similar section to Section 106 is one of the areas that CRA has had significant concerns over, as it puts unnecessary bureaucratic burdens on the agency and is already covered in legislation which founded NSF. While the original language in the section was much worse than what the committee ended up with in COMPETES, we believe it still creates an unnecessary level of bureaucracy and provides a “fix” to a process that isn’t truly broken.
The only other issue of note to our community is a short section on high-performance computing. The committee’s language urges NSF to continue its commitment to the field by modernizing its facilities. Here is the relevant text:
The Committee urges NSF to continue its commitment to modernizing its world-class big data and high-performance computing, which support all areas of scientific research and education, including the most demanding scientific challenges.
So, where do things go from here? The bill now moves to the House floor for consideration; it is likely to pass along a party-line vote, just as it did in committee. It is expected on the House floor as early as today but probably take a day or two to get to a final vote. On the other side of Congress, the Senate Appropriations Committee still needs to complete its own CJS bill. When that will happen also isn’t yet known; the Senate has been the bottleneck in the Appropriations process for the last number of years. But with a new Republican majority, there is a chance that the chamber will move more quickly. Even if that happens, we would not expect a Senate CJS bill until the end of June, at the earliest. We can hope for a better outcome there, but that is not guaranteed. Assuming the Senate gets their bill together, the two chambers will then have to come up with an agreed upon bill in conference, which would then have to be passed by both chambers, before being sent to the President’s desk. That’s still a long way away, so we will have to wait to see how events unfold over the coming summer.
Be sure to check back for more updates on the Fiscal Year 2016 budget.
The House of Representatives today will consider the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2015 (H.R. 1806), a bill designed to set policy at three key science agencies and authorize funding for the next two fiscal years. The bill is being brought to the floor by House Science, Space and Technology Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-TX), who secured passage of the bill through his committee on a strict party-line vote. CRA raised concerns about the bill at the committee level citing issues with the funding levels authorized and a disagreement over significant cuts the bill would make to authorizations for the Social, Behavioral and Economic sciences as well as the Geosciences — concerns that remain as the bill moves to the House floor.
The bill is a reauthorization of the America COMPETES Acts of 2007 and 2010, bills which sought to authorize robust and sustainable investments in fundamental research at three key Federal science agencies: the National Science Foundation (NSF), National Institute of Standards of Technology (NIST), and Department of Energy’s Office of Science. They were inspired by a conclusion reached by the National Academies that the U.S. was woefully underinvesting in the physical sciences (which, in DC parlance, is anything that’s not life science) and that underinvestment was constraining U.S. innovation and competitiveness in an increasingly competitive world. They set the three agencies on a funding trajectory that would authorize a doubling of their research budgets over seven years. They were both strong, bipartisan statements about the importance of investments of fundamental research and the priority the Federal government ought to place on them. Unfortunately, the current bill does not share that priority and does not set these agencies on a path to robust, sustainable investments in research.
We’ve written about the concerns we raised with the committee. Though the bill provides a healthy increase to the NSF Computing and Information Science and Engineering directorate in the first year of the authorization (FY 2016), it does so at the expense of the geosciences, and the social, behavioral and economic sciences. We believe that these cuts are detrimental to not just the research portfolios in those disciplines, but detrimental to computer science as well. Work in computer science — in cyber security, in human-computer interaction — is informed by work that comes from the social, behavioral and economic sciences. Understanding human interactions and motivations is crucial in understanding how to build hardware and software that is more secure and easy to use.
CRA is not alone among scientific societies in opposing H.R. 1806. Forty-three other societies, universities, coalitions and task forces joined in writing letters of concern about the measure. Despite that, it’s likely that the bill will pass, on a largely party-line vote, in the House today. This would be a disappointing result, not just because of the content of this particular bill, but because it signals a particularly partisan approach to setting science policy that Congress has largely avoided in past years. Federal science policy is too important to pass on a party-line vote.
On April 29th, the Coalition for National Science Funding (CNSF), an alliance of over 140 professional organizations, universities, and businesses, held their 21st Annual Capitol Hill Exhibition. CNSF supports the goal of increasing the federal investment in the National Science Foundation’s research and education programs, and the exhibition itself is a great way to show members of Congress and their staff what research the American people have funded.
Greg Hager, of Johns Hopkins University & the Computing Community Consortium, explains aspects of his students’ research to NSF Director France Cordova.
This year the Computing Research Association, a member of CNSF, sponsored three students, two PhD candidates and a defended PhD candidate, from Johns Hopkins University to come to Washington to demonstrate their work. Kelleher Guerin (the defended PhD candidate) and Amanda Edwards demonstrated their collaborative robot for manufacturing, called CoSTAR; while Colin Lea demonstrated a virtual reality interface that can be used to more easily program robots by novice, non-technical users. All three young researchers are advised by Greg Hager, professor and chair of the Department of Computer Science at Johns Hopkins University and Chair of the Computing Community Consortium; Dr. Hager was also in attendance at the event and fielded questions.
Amanda Edwards demonstrates the CoSTAR system to Deborah Lockhart of NSF.
CoSTAR, a system for human instruction and collaboration with robotic systems, has been developed to enable experts skilled at a task, but not skilled with programming, to instruct the robot as an apprentice. In apprenticeship, a teacher understands the capabilities of the apprentice, and builds on those capabilities until the apprentice can perform the desired tasks. Their system allows for a similar instruction of robots by representing the capabilities of a robot as a set of easy to understand building blocks. A novice end-user can then use these building blocks to create a plan, which the robot follows to accomplish a task. This also allows for the robot to reuse information it is taught across many different tasks. Their system also allows for the robot to collaborate with humans, and respond to dynamic events just as a human would. In addition, they showed how advances in virtual reality could provide an environment for intuitive robot interaction and teaching.
Kelleher Guerin explains his work on the CoSTAR system to exhibition attendees.
With regard to the virtual reality interface, it was noted that most robots used in factories are old and not intended to be used directly with humans. Users must stand behind shielding where they spend a substantial amount of time programming the robot. The researchers’ work showed how advances in virtual reality could provide an environment for intuitive robot interaction and teaching. Using a virtual reality headset, and a pair of 3D joysticks, a user can virtually move the robot around as if they were performing the task themselves.
Colin Lea explains the virtual reality interface to Anita Benjamin of the American Mathematical Society.
All of this work is supported from the CISE directorate at NSF. Both projects were well received by the attendees of the exhibition; in fact, the students fielded questions from members of Congress, Congressional staffers, NSF Program Officers, and even the NSF Director, France Córdova.
A number of other organizations had displays and were demonstrating NSF funded research at the event. From the University of Illinois’ National Center for Supercomputing Applications “NSF Blue Water” supercomputer, to the American Political Science Association’s “American National Election Studies: Understanding the Changing American Electorate,” to the American Astronomical Society’s “Disruptive Technology & Cosmology at 17,000 Feet,” the exhibition was a great display of the different types of research being supported by NSF. Look here to see a list of some of the participating organizations and what a few of the exhibitors were presenting.
The House Committee on Science, Space and Technology is currently marking up the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2015 (H.R. 1806), introduced by Committee Chair Lamar Smith (R-TX) — a bill designed to provide three key science agencies with authorizations for funding for FY 2016 and FY 2017 and implement other policies. The bill is cast as a reauthorization of the original America COMPETES Act of 2007, which, inspired by the seminal National Academies report Rising Above the Gathering Storm, was a bipartisan attempt to buttress Federal support the National Science Foundation, Department of Energy’s Office of Science, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology in recognition of the critical role they play in fostering U.S. innovation and competitiveness in an increasingly competitive world. That original bill attempted to put those agencies on a path to doubling their research budgets over seven years — an important symbolic goal that demonstrated Congress’ commitment to support the physical sciences (which, in DC parlance, is anything not in the life sciences) after years of relative underinvestment.
H.R. 1806 also would authorize funding at NSF, DOE’s Office of Science, and NIST, as well as the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, but does not provide for the steady and real growth in the Federal investment in research called for by the Gathering Storm report or enacted by past COMPETES authorizations. While the bill includes authorized increases for some programs in FY 2016, the bill holds agency funding flat in FY 2017 — and that means a cut in real dollars when inflation is considered.
Though the bill also shows strong support for investments in computing research at NSF and DOE, it does so at the expense of other science disciplines, including the social, behavioral and economic sciences (SBE) and geosciences (GEO). CRA, along with many partners in the science community, opposes this approach, especially given the importance of research in fields like SBE in informing computing research — particularly in computing areas like cyber security research and human-computer interaction. The insight into human behaviors provided by SBE is critical to understanding how best to design and implement hardware and software that are more secure and easier to use.
For these reasons, CRA opposes passage of H.R. 1806 as introduced. CRA released the following letter to Committee Chair Lamar Smith and Ranking Member Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX) explaining our lack of endorsement.
April 21, 2015
The Honorable Lamar Smith
Chairman
House Committee on Science, Space and Technology
2321 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
The Honorable Eddie Bernice Johnson
Ranking Member
House Committee on Science, Space and Technology
394 Ford House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
Dear Chairman Smith and Ranking Member Johnson,
As an organization representing over 200 PhD-granting departments in computing, 16 industrial computing research labs, and 6 affiliated computing societies, we commend you both on your long-standing efforts to support the Federal investment in fundamental computing research. While we are pleased to see elements of that support continue in the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2015 (H.R. 1806), other concerns — including the overall level of support provided to key science agencies in the act — prevent us from offering our endorsement of the bill.
In particular, we are disappointed to note that the bill, by flat-funding science agencies in the second year of authorizations, fails to provide for steady and real growth in the Federal investment in research, something we believe is critical to our Nation’s ability to compete, prosper and be secure in the coming years and decades. Indeed, when inflation is considered, the authorizations for FY 2017 represent real reductions in research investments, including investments in computing research.
We are also disappointed to note that research at the National Science Foundation in the Social, Behavioral, and Economic (SBE) sciences, along with the Geosciences, would be curtailed under this authorization. As you are aware, research in several key areas of computing — including cyber security and human-computer interaction (HCI) — is significantly informed by work emanating from the SBE directorate. The insight into human behaviors provided by SBE-funded work is critical to understanding how best to design and implement hardware and software systems that are more secure and easier to use. In cyber security work, where the human is often the weakest link in the chain, it is especially crucial to understand the varying motivations and usage patterns that dictate how people interact with their machines, and the expertise in studying those issues in large part resides in the social, behavioral and economic sciences. In HCI work, expertise in social, behavioral and economic sciences is critically valuable in creating workplace systems that foster collaboration and creativity, creating disaster response systems that influence people to effectively find shelter and assistance, and creating systems that motivate medical adherence and compliance with medical treatment.
We would be happy to work with you and your staff to help address these concerns and create legislation we could support wholeheartedly. However, as the act stands, we are unable to offer our endorsement.
Sincerely,
J Strother Moore
Chair
Information on the ongoing markup, including a live stream, can be found here. CRA joins with a large number of academic, scientific and industry groups in opposition to H.R. 1806. We’ll have more detail about the results of the markup soon.
The Association for Computing Machinary (ACM) and the IEEE Computer Society, two of the premiere organizations for computer and computing scientists, and members of CRA, are looking for exceptional PhD students in the high-performance computing field to apply for the George Michael Memorial HPC Fellowship Program. The details of the program, including application requirements and award benefits, are listed in the press release below. We encourage everyone who is interested to apply.
The ACM/IEEE-CS George Michael Memorial HPC Fellowship honors exceptional PhD students throughout the world whose research focus is on high-performance computing applications, networking, storage, or large-scale data analysis using the most powerful computers that are currently available. The award committee is selected by the two societies and includes past winners as well as leaders in the field.
The Fellowship reflects the two societies’ (ACM and IEEE-CS) long-standing commitment to workforce diversity. We encourage applications from women, minorities, international students, and all who contribute to diversity.
Award
$5000 honorarium
Travel and registration to attend SC15 in Austin, TX and be honored at the Awards Session
Recognition with other HPC award winners on the ACM, IEEE-CS, and ACM SIGHPC websites
Selection Criteria
Candidates must be enrolled in a full-time PhD program at an accredited college or university and must meet the minimum scholarship requirements at their institution. They are expected to have completed at least one year of study, and have at least one year remaining between the application deadline and their expected graduation. Applications will be evaluated based on the following factors:
Overall potential for research excellence
Degree to which technical interests align with those of the HPC community
Evidence of academic progress to-date, including presentations and publications
Recommendations by faculty advisor and (optionally) others
Evidence of a plan of study to enhance HPC-related skills
Demonstration of current and planned future use of HPC resources
Procedure
Candidates should submit their applications for the ACM – IEEE-CS George Michael Memorial HPC Fellowship using the online form available at http://submissions.supercomputing.org. Applications include the following components:
Name, email address, and contact information for the candidate
Name of the institution where candidate is enrolled, department chair, and basic enrollment information
Advisor’s recommendation: name and contact information for the applicant’s PhD advisor, who will be contacted to certify the applicant’s eligibility and to provide a written recommendation (candidates are responsible for providing information about the fellowship and their application to the advisor)
Endorsements: name and contact information for up to 2 additional faculty members or others who will be contacted to attest to the quality and value of the applicant’s graduate research (candidates are responsible for providing background information to each person included as an endorser)
Candidate’s statement: Brief description of the candidate’s PhD program, covering: (a) description of current research and its connection to HPC; (b) academic progress including classes taken; (c) description of a plan of study to enhance HPC-related skills; (d) description of current and future use of HPC resources. This is limited to 1500 words or a 2-page PDF file (using typical technical paper page standards: 11-point font or larger, single spaced text, fitting within 7.5” x 10” text area). Applications exceeding these limits will be disqualified.
Listing of presentations, papers, and posters authored by candidate
The prestigious Marconi Society, established in 1974 to honor Guglielmo Marconi, the Nobel laureate who invented radio, is seeking nominations for its Paul Baran Young Scholar Awards. The award, “recognizes young scientists and engineers with the potential to make game-changing contributions in the field of communications and the Internet.” While this award is separate from the well-known Marconi Prize, the identified young scholars for the Paul Baran Young award are seen as having the potential to someday become Marconi Prize winners too.
The awards will be present in London on October 20th at the Royal Society. Awardees will receive $4000 cash prize plus $1000 in expenses to attend the event. This also gives an opportunity for these young scholars to gain well-deserved recognition, as well as meet and network with some of the industry’s best-known scientists and engineers. If you know a student who has, “demonstrated outstanding research capability, entrepreneurial spirit, and technical vision,” head over to the Marconi Society’s webpage to submit your nominations. The deadline is June 30th 2015.
President Obama released his annual budget request on Monday February 2nd (interesting note: Fiscal Year 2016 is the first time his administration released the budget on time). As we have done in years past, the CRA Policy Blog will be doing a series of posts on the assorted budget requests for key science agencies, particularly highlighting the ones that are of importance to the computing community. Check back for more agencies.
First up is the Department of Energy (DOE). The two key parts of DOE for the computing community are the Office of Science (SC), home of most of the agency’s basic research support, and ARPA-E. For SC, the office would see a very healthy increase of 5.4 percent from FY15 to FY16 (going from $5.07B to $5.34B). Seeing as the agency has limped through the Sequestration era with up-and-down budgets, this request is very good.
Perhaps most important for computing researchers is the Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) program. ASCR would see a huge increase in funding, going up by 14.8 percent (or $541M in FY15 to $621M in FY16). Most of the justification for this increase (~$87M) is set aside for the exascale computing initiative. In fact, Secretary of Energy Ernie Moniz said that exascale computing, both hardware and software, is a “top priority across the Office of Science.” Some other details from ASCR’s request are that their user facilities are operating, “optimally and with >90% availability;” and “deployment of 10-40 petaflop upgrade at NERSC and continued preparation for 75-200 petaflop upgrades at the Leadership Computing Facilities” continue. Also, the Computational Science Graduate Fellowship is restored at $10M to, “fully fund a new cohort.” (You’ll recall we joined with the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) to call on Congress to preserve the CS Grad Fellowship program.)
Digging a little deeper, the majority of the ASCR increase — $77.5M — is provided for the High Performance Computing and Networking Facilities (HPCF) subaccount. The Mathematical, Computational, and Computer Sciences Research subaccount would receive a more modest increase of $2.5M.
As for ARPA-E (or Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy), it would see the same increase the President requested last year: 16.1 percent (or $280M in FY15 to $325M in FY16). The agency, “advances high-potential, high-impact energy technologies that are too early for private-sector investment.” This increase has become something of a tradition for ARPA-E, where the White House recommends a significant increase but Congress decides to flat fund the agency. There are few indications that this dynamic will change with this budget.
The big question now is will Congress pass this request? While it is true that support for computing research is widespread and bipartisan, it is still unlikely that this budget will breeze through the legislative process. For starters, throughout his request, the President has rejected funding levels called for by the budget deal that brought us sequestration, or the mandatory, across-the-board budget cuts, that are still US law. In rolling back sequestration, Obama is making an argument that the country is coming out of the recession and that these cuts need to be replaced with something more targeted. It’s unlikely that the Republican-controlled Congress shares that view. In addition to the sequestration rollback, it’s likely that congressional Republicans will have a different set of priorities within the Dept of Energy budget about things like climate change, sustainable energy, and clean coal programs, and those will require adjustments throughout the proposed budget to accommodate. So chances are very good that the final FY16 budget for DOE will look very little like the President’s request. But there appears to be strong bipartisan support for DOE computing programs (see, for example, last week’s hearing), and ASCR has recently fared well even when other aspects of the Office of Science budget have been flat-funded (or worse). So perhaps a little cautious optimism is warranted.
We’ll be watching this budget, and the other science agencies’ budgets, as they progress through Congress this year. Check back for more updates.
On Wednesday January 28th, the Energy Subcommittee of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee held a hearing on, “Supercomputing and American Technology Leadership.” The witnesses that were called, who spanned the public and private sectors in high performance computing (HPC), gave the simple message that in order to out compete other nations, America needs to out compute them. And that calls for sustained funding for supercomputing resources and research.
The hearing was opened by Subcommittee Chairman Randy Weber (R-TX), who, in his opening statement, said that, “it is our job in Congress to ensure that taxpayer dollars are spent wisely, on innovative research that is in the national interest, and provides the best chance for broad impact and long-term success. The basic research conducted within the ASCR program (the Department of Energy’s Advanced Scientific Computing and Research program) clearly meets this requirement.” He elaborated by saying, “high performance computing can lead to scientific discoveries, economic growth, and will maintain America’s leadership in science and technology.” Science Committee Ranking Member Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX), in her own opening statement, echoed much the same points, saying, “public policies play a critical role in supporting the advancement of high performance computing, and in enabling our society and economy to directly benefit from this capability.” She pointed out that, “the U.S. currently hosts more than 45% of the 500 fastest supercomputers in the world,” and that, “as we enter the world of ‘big data’, where thousands of devices all around us are generating millions of bytes of data to be analyzed, high performance computing is needed not just by scientists and government researchers, but by many civic and commercial enterprises as well.”
The panel of witnesses was a venerable who’s-who of high performance computing and science policy. They included Norman Augustine, board member of the Bipartisan Policy Center and an “old sage” of the science policy community (long time readers of this blog will recognize him as the co-chair of the National Academies study “Rising Above the Gathering Storm”); Roscoe Giles, Chairman of the DOE Advanced Scientific Computing Advisory Committee, who spoke on what is happening at ASCR; Dave Turek, Vice President, Technical Computing, at IBM, who gave the industry perspective for HPC and insight into the long-term challenges the field is facing; and James Crowley, Executive Director of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM), who gave the perspective from the scientific community. You can read their testimony in full on the House Science Committee website.
The witnesses agreed that America needs to increase their investment in supercomputing. In response to a question from Ranking Member Johnson about how he would make the case to lawmakers to increase funding for research, Mr. Augustine said that in order to compete with other countries, we have to be faster at applying research to the economy and the best way to do that is through improved computing. Vice-chairman Dan Newhouse (R-WA) asked what Congress could do to remove barriers to allow the DOE National Laboratories to be able to better transfer research to industries; Mr. Augustine pointed out that much of industry doesn’t know what’s going on at the national labs and that he has found the best way to transfer knowledge is to move people. While Mr. Augustine understood the need to have tight conflict of interest laws, encouraging more movement of scientists between labs and industry would help speed up the transfer of research. Finally, a question from Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) on what the next step beyond the use of silicon in computers could be; Mr. Turek pointed out that we have reached the limits of silicon and there is no single solution to this problem. The only option is more research to find more options. Dr. Giles, in response to Rep. Massie’s question, also pointed out that ASCR, and the Department of Energy as a whole, is in an excellent position tackle this problem, because it is physics based and DOE’s research portfolio is predominantly physics research.
The hearing was quite informative and completely free of political rancor. All the Representatives present asked insightful questions, and they walked away with a greater understanding of the challenges and promises of high performance computing. Hopefully this will translate into some good legislation down the road from the Science Committee.
On Tuesday January 27th, the Research and Technology Subcommittee of the House Science, Space, & Technology Committee held it’s first hearing of the 114th Congress. The topic was expanding cyber threats and cybersecurity, and the subcommittee heard from experts from both the private sector and government agencies. Assistant Director of CISE, Jim Kurose, testifying for the first time in his new position, told the subcommittee that sustained investment in basic research is need to combat these threats and that it is a socio-technological issue that requires involvement from behavioral researchers as well.
Subcommittee Chairwoman Barbara Comstock (R-VA) opened the hearing making the point that, “advances in technology and the growing nature of every individual’s online presence means cybersecurity needs to become an essential part of our vernacular.” Further elaborating on the threats the country is dealing with, she went on:
Instances of harmful cyber-attacks are reported regularly and expose the very real threats growing in this area. Financial information, medical records, and personal data maintained on computer systems by individuals and organizations continue to be vulnerable. Cyber-attacks on companies like Sony or Target and the U.S. Central Command will not go away and we have to constantly adapt and intercept and stop these threats before they happen and understand where and how they are happening and stay ever vigilant. Utilizing targeted emails, spam, malware, bots and other tools, cyber criminals, “hacktivists” and nation states are attempting to access information technology systems all the time. The defense of these systems relies on professionals who can react to threats and proactively prepare those systems for attack. (Citation)
Ranking Member Daniel Lipinski (D-IL), in his own opening statement, agreed with the chairwoman, saying that, “cybercrimes are ever-increasing. The threats are not only growing in number, but in the level of sophistication.” There was no dissenting opinions from any members of the subcommittee, Democrat or Republican, that cyber threats are real or that the country needs to do more to understand and combat them.
The witnesses for the hearing represented the cybersecurity community quite well. In addition to Dr. Kurose, there was Cheri McGuire , Vice President, Global Government Affairs & Cybersecurity Policy, Symantec Corporation, who shared the insights her company has from their customers and global security network; Charles Romine, Director, Information Technology Laboratory, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), which is the lead agency within the Federal Government in creating standards and distributing best practices throughout the cybersecurity community; Eric A. Fischer, Senior Specialist in Science and Technology, Congressional Research Service, who spoken about the long term challenges and short term needs of the cybersecurity, as well as the Federal role in the field; and Dean Garfield, President and CEO, Information Technology Industry Council, who provided the IT industry perspective of what is going within the industry and how Congress can help. You can read their individual testimony on the Science Committee website.
To sum up, all the witnesses agreed that what was most needed is a sustained investment in basic research for cybersecurity, as well as research into how people interact/use cybersecurity technology. As Dr. Kurose put it, any solutions will be “socio-technical” ones; behavioral research is needed just as much as the physical science research. As well, more interactions between Federal agencies, particularly NIST, and industry is needed in order to get the latest information on threats and best practices. This was brought up, not so much because there is bad or no interaction now (many witnesses stated the opposite; NIST was highly praised by both witnesses and members of the subcommittee) but that the threats change so quickly, necessitating close communication.
Many of the questions asked by committee members showed an interest and a realization of the challenges in cybersecurity. Chairwoman Comstock asked all the witnesses on how Congress should engage their constituents on this matter; the general response being that everyday people need to take this issue seriously and use the security tools that are available. Ranking Member Lipinski asked Mr. Garfield of the IT Industry Council if there is anything different that should be done within the Federal government R&D portfolio; the response was nothing new needs to be done but adequate funding is needed. Rep. Randy Hultgren (R-IL) asked about the status of research to get “beyond the password;” Mr. Garfield pointed out that many new security features and technology is already being deployed into the marketplace. There were even questions about how threats to personal information, such as fraudulent credit card usage, are tracked; this certainly demonstrated the everyday concerns for regular people that can dominate this discussion.
All in all, it was a very informative hearing. One gets the sense that the members of Congress walked away with a good picture of the threats and what is being done about it. And aside from a few off-topic political questions, there was no grandstanding or disagreement (something that is becoming rarer on the committee, sad to say). Hopefully this augurs well for the coming year and this topic specifically.
We’re entering the final stretch for submitting nominations and applications for the 2015 Leadership in Science Policy workshop. The deadline is this Friday, January 23rd; we’ll be letting those who are selected know by February 2nd. If you know of someone who meets the qualifications and you would like to nominate them, or if you have already been nominated, now is your chance. Don’t miss out on this chance to learn about science policy from experts in the field.
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House Appropriations Committee Passes CJS Funding; Mixed News for NSF
/In: FY16 Appropriations, Policy, Research /by Brian MosleyOn May 20th the full House Appropriations Committee passed the Commerce, Justice, Science funding bill; this is important to our community because it is the bill that contains the funding for the National Science Foundation, which funds 89 percent of all university-led fundamental computer science research in the U.S. First, the not-so-bad news: NSF doesn’t exactly get a budget cut in actual dollars; it in fact gets a small bump (though when inflation is considered, that bump may go away completely). The worse news: NSF gets some onerous language on how to spend the tax-dollars it’s allocated. Let’s get into the details.
NSF received $7.34 billion in Fiscal Year (FY) 2015, the present budget we are working under. For FY16, the President requested $7.72 billion, or an increase of $379.3 million (or 5.2 percent) over FY15 levels. In the House Appropriations bill, the agency would receive $7.39 billion in FY16, an increase of $50 million (or 0.7 percent). Again, it’s an increase in actual dollars – so things could have been worse. But the bill contains some disheartening language restricting the agency’s activities.
The most significant section concerns restricting how money in NSF’s Research and Related Activities account, where most of the money for research resides, can be spent. The relevant section reads:
This language would force Geosciences (funded at $1.3 billion in FY15) and Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences (funded at $272 million in FY15) to share roughly $1.32 billion in funding. The combined budget of the two directorates in FY15 was $1.58 billion, so this language translates into a cut of about $257 million to the two directorates, or 16.3 percent. This is in line with the authorization levels passed by the House Science Committee in their bill H.R. 1806 the America COMPETES Act of 2015, which CRA has stated it opposes.
Of almost equal concern, the Appropriations Committee included the following section concerning, “Transparency and accountability:”
As our readers will recall from last year, a similar section to Section 106 is one of the areas that CRA has had significant concerns over, as it puts unnecessary bureaucratic burdens on the agency and is already covered in legislation which founded NSF. While the original language in the section was much worse than what the committee ended up with in COMPETES, we believe it still creates an unnecessary level of bureaucracy and provides a “fix” to a process that isn’t truly broken.
The only other issue of note to our community is a short section on high-performance computing. The committee’s language urges NSF to continue its commitment to the field by modernizing its facilities. Here is the relevant text:
So, where do things go from here? The bill now moves to the House floor for consideration; it is likely to pass along a party-line vote, just as it did in committee. It is expected on the House floor as early as today but probably take a day or two to get to a final vote. On the other side of Congress, the Senate Appropriations Committee still needs to complete its own CJS bill. When that will happen also isn’t yet known; the Senate has been the bottleneck in the Appropriations process for the last number of years. But with a new Republican majority, there is a chance that the chamber will move more quickly. Even if that happens, we would not expect a Senate CJS bill until the end of June, at the earliest. We can hope for a better outcome there, but that is not guaranteed. Assuming the Senate gets their bill together, the two chambers will then have to come up with an agreed upon bill in conference, which would then have to be passed by both chambers, before being sent to the President’s desk. That’s still a long way away, so we will have to wait to see how events unfold over the coming summer.
Be sure to check back for more updates on the Fiscal Year 2016 budget.
America COMPETES Reauthorization on Floor Today
/In: American Competitiveness Initiative, Funding, FY16 Appropriations, Policy /by Peter HarshaThe House of Representatives today will consider the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2015 (H.R. 1806), a bill designed to set policy at three key science agencies and authorize funding for the next two fiscal years. The bill is being brought to the floor by House Science, Space and Technology Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-TX), who secured passage of the bill through his committee on a strict party-line vote. CRA raised concerns about the bill at the committee level citing issues with the funding levels authorized and a disagreement over significant cuts the bill would make to authorizations for the Social, Behavioral and Economic sciences as well as the Geosciences — concerns that remain as the bill moves to the House floor.
The bill is a reauthorization of the America COMPETES Acts of 2007 and 2010, bills which sought to authorize robust and sustainable investments in fundamental research at three key Federal science agencies: the National Science Foundation (NSF), National Institute of Standards of Technology (NIST), and Department of Energy’s Office of Science. They were inspired by a conclusion reached by the National Academies that the U.S. was woefully underinvesting in the physical sciences (which, in DC parlance, is anything that’s not life science) and that underinvestment was constraining U.S. innovation and competitiveness in an increasingly competitive world. They set the three agencies on a funding trajectory that would authorize a doubling of their research budgets over seven years. They were both strong, bipartisan statements about the importance of investments of fundamental research and the priority the Federal government ought to place on them. Unfortunately, the current bill does not share that priority and does not set these agencies on a path to robust, sustainable investments in research.
We’ve written about the concerns we raised with the committee. Though the bill provides a healthy increase to the NSF Computing and Information Science and Engineering directorate in the first year of the authorization (FY 2016), it does so at the expense of the geosciences, and the social, behavioral and economic sciences. We believe that these cuts are detrimental to not just the research portfolios in those disciplines, but detrimental to computer science as well. Work in computer science — in cyber security, in human-computer interaction — is informed by work that comes from the social, behavioral and economic sciences. Understanding human interactions and motivations is crucial in understanding how to build hardware and software that is more secure and easy to use.
CRA is not alone among scientific societies in opposing H.R. 1806. Forty-three other societies, universities, coalitions and task forces joined in writing letters of concern about the measure. Despite that, it’s likely that the bill will pass, on a largely party-line vote, in the House today. This would be a disappointing result, not just because of the content of this particular bill, but because it signals a particularly partisan approach to setting science policy that Congress has largely avoided in past years. Federal science policy is too important to pass on a party-line vote.
NSF Funded Robotic System Excites Attendees at the 2015 CNSF Exhibition
/In: Computing Community Consortium (CCC), CRA, Events /by Brian MosleyOn April 29th, the Coalition for National Science Funding (CNSF), an alliance of over 140 professional organizations, universities, and businesses, held their 21st Annual Capitol Hill Exhibition. CNSF supports the goal of increasing the federal investment in the National Science Foundation’s research and education programs, and the exhibition itself is a great way to show members of Congress and their staff what research the American people have funded.
Greg Hager, of Johns Hopkins University & the Computing Community Consortium, explains aspects of his students’ research to NSF Director France Cordova.
This year the Computing Research Association, a member of CNSF, sponsored three students, two PhD candidates and a defended PhD candidate, from Johns Hopkins University to come to Washington to demonstrate their work. Kelleher Guerin (the defended PhD candidate) and Amanda Edwards demonstrated their collaborative robot for manufacturing, called CoSTAR; while Colin Lea demonstrated a virtual reality interface that can be used to more easily program robots by novice, non-technical users. All three young researchers are advised by Greg Hager, professor and chair of the Department of Computer Science at Johns Hopkins University and Chair of the Computing Community Consortium; Dr. Hager was also in attendance at the event and fielded questions.
Amanda Edwards demonstrates the CoSTAR system to Deborah Lockhart of NSF.
CoSTAR, a system for human instruction and collaboration with robotic systems, has been developed to enable experts skilled at a task, but not skilled with programming, to instruct the robot as an apprentice. In apprenticeship, a teacher understands the capabilities of the apprentice, and builds on those capabilities until the apprentice can perform the desired tasks. Their system allows for a similar instruction of robots by representing the capabilities of a robot as a set of easy to understand building blocks. A novice end-user can then use these building blocks to create a plan, which the robot follows to accomplish a task. This also allows for the robot to reuse information it is taught across many different tasks. Their system also allows for the robot to collaborate with humans, and respond to dynamic events just as a human would. In addition, they showed how advances in virtual reality could provide an environment for intuitive robot interaction and teaching.
Kelleher Guerin explains his work on the CoSTAR system to exhibition attendees.
With regard to the virtual reality interface, it was noted that most robots used in factories are old and not intended to be used directly with humans. Users must stand behind shielding where they spend a substantial amount of time programming the robot. The researchers’ work showed how advances in virtual reality could provide an environment for intuitive robot interaction and teaching. Using a virtual reality headset, and a pair of 3D joysticks, a user can virtually move the robot around as if they were performing the task themselves.
Colin Lea explains the virtual reality interface to Anita Benjamin of the American Mathematical Society.
All of this work is supported from the CISE directorate at NSF. Both projects were well received by the attendees of the exhibition; in fact, the students fielded questions from members of Congress, Congressional staffers, NSF Program Officers, and even the NSF Director, France Córdova.
A number of other organizations had displays and were demonstrating NSF funded research at the event. From the University of Illinois’ National Center for Supercomputing Applications “NSF Blue Water” supercomputer, to the American Political Science Association’s “American National Election Studies: Understanding the Changing American Electorate,” to the American Astronomical Society’s “Disruptive Technology & Cosmology at 17,000 Feet,” the exhibition was a great display of the different types of research being supported by NSF. Look here to see a list of some of the participating organizations and what a few of the exhibitors were presenting.
CRA Statement Opposing America COMPETES Reauthorization Act
/In: CRA, Funding, FY16 Appropriations, Policy, Statements /by Peter HarshaH.R. 1806 also would authorize funding at NSF, DOE’s Office of Science, and NIST, as well as the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, but does not provide for the steady and real growth in the Federal investment in research called for by the Gathering Storm report or enacted by past COMPETES authorizations. While the bill includes authorized increases for some programs in FY 2016, the bill holds agency funding flat in FY 2017 — and that means a cut in real dollars when inflation is considered.
Though the bill also shows strong support for investments in computing research at NSF and DOE, it does so at the expense of other science disciplines, including the social, behavioral and economic sciences (SBE) and geosciences (GEO). CRA, along with many partners in the science community, opposes this approach, especially given the importance of research in fields like SBE in informing computing research — particularly in computing areas like cyber security research and human-computer interaction. The insight into human behaviors provided by SBE is critical to understanding how best to design and implement hardware and software that are more secure and easier to use.
For these reasons, CRA opposes passage of H.R. 1806 as introduced. CRA released the following letter to Committee Chair Lamar Smith and Ranking Member Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX) explaining our lack of endorsement.
Information on the ongoing markup, including a live stream, can be found here. CRA joins with a large number of academic, scientific and industry groups in opposition to H.R. 1806. We’ll have more detail about the results of the markup soon.
Call for Applications for ACM/IEEE-CS George Michael Memorial HPC Fellowship Program
/In: Diversity in Computing, Misc., People /by Brian MosleyThe Association for Computing Machinary (ACM) and the IEEE Computer Society, two of the premiere organizations for computer and computing scientists, and members of CRA, are looking for exceptional PhD students in the high-performance computing field to apply for the George Michael Memorial HPC Fellowship Program. The details of the program, including application requirements and award benefits, are listed in the press release below. We encourage everyone who is interested to apply.
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ACM/IEEE-CS George Michael Memorial HPC Fellowship Program
CALL FOR APPLICATIONS
Due May 1, 2015
The ACM/IEEE-CS George Michael Memorial HPC Fellowship honors exceptional PhD students throughout the world whose research focus is on high-performance computing applications, networking, storage, or large-scale data analysis using the most powerful computers that are currently available. The award committee is selected by the two societies and includes past winners as well as leaders in the field.
The Fellowship reflects the two societies’ (ACM and IEEE-CS) long-standing commitment to workforce diversity. We encourage applications from women, minorities, international students, and all who contribute to diversity.
Award
Selection Criteria
Candidates must be enrolled in a full-time PhD program at an accredited college or university and must meet the minimum scholarship requirements at their institution. They are expected to have completed at least one year of study, and have at least one year remaining between the application deadline and their expected graduation. Applications will be evaluated based on the following factors:
Procedure
Candidates should submit their applications for the ACM – IEEE-CS George Michael Memorial HPC Fellowship using the online form available at http://submissions.supercomputing.org. Applications include the following components:
Schedule
Submissions close: FRIDAY, 01 May 2015
Questions
Contact: hpc-fellowship-questions@info.supercomputing.org
Help the Marconi Society identify outstanding young scientists & engineers!
/In: Misc., People /by Brian MosleyThe prestigious Marconi Society, established in 1974 to honor Guglielmo Marconi, the Nobel laureate who invented radio, is seeking nominations for its Paul Baran Young Scholar Awards. The award, “recognizes young scientists and engineers with the potential to make game-changing contributions in the field of communications and the Internet.” While this award is separate from the well-known Marconi Prize, the identified young scholars for the Paul Baran Young award are seen as having the potential to someday become Marconi Prize winners too.
The awards will be present in London on October 20th at the Royal Society. Awardees will receive $4000 cash prize plus $1000 in expenses to attend the event. This also gives an opportunity for these young scholars to gain well-deserved recognition, as well as meet and network with some of the industry’s best-known scientists and engineers. If you know a student who has, “demonstrated outstanding research capability, entrepreneurial spirit, and technical vision,” head over to the Marconi Society’s webpage to submit your nominations. The deadline is June 30th 2015.
Dept of Energy FY16 Request: Very Good but Will Congress Approve?
/In: FY16 Appropriations, Policy /by Brian MosleyPresident Obama released his annual budget request on Monday February 2nd (interesting note: Fiscal Year 2016 is the first time his administration released the budget on time). As we have done in years past, the CRA Policy Blog will be doing a series of posts on the assorted budget requests for key science agencies, particularly highlighting the ones that are of importance to the computing community. Check back for more agencies.
First up is the Department of Energy (DOE). The two key parts of DOE for the computing community are the Office of Science (SC), home of most of the agency’s basic research support, and ARPA-E. For SC, the office would see a very healthy increase of 5.4 percent from FY15 to FY16 (going from $5.07B to $5.34B). Seeing as the agency has limped through the Sequestration era with up-and-down budgets, this request is very good.
Perhaps most important for computing researchers is the Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) program. ASCR would see a huge increase in funding, going up by 14.8 percent (or $541M in FY15 to $621M in FY16). Most of the justification for this increase (~$87M) is set aside for the exascale computing initiative. In fact, Secretary of Energy Ernie Moniz said that exascale computing, both hardware and software, is a “top priority across the Office of Science.” Some other details from ASCR’s request are that their user facilities are operating, “optimally and with >90% availability;” and “deployment of 10-40 petaflop upgrade at NERSC and continued preparation for 75-200 petaflop upgrades at the Leadership Computing Facilities” continue. Also, the Computational Science Graduate Fellowship is restored at $10M to, “fully fund a new cohort.” (You’ll recall we joined with the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) to call on Congress to preserve the CS Grad Fellowship program.)
Digging a little deeper, the majority of the ASCR increase — $77.5M — is provided for the High Performance Computing and Networking Facilities (HPCF) subaccount. The Mathematical, Computational, and Computer Sciences Research subaccount would receive a more modest increase of $2.5M.
As for ARPA-E (or Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy), it would see the same increase the President requested last year: 16.1 percent (or $280M in FY15 to $325M in FY16). The agency, “advances high-potential, high-impact energy technologies that are too early for private-sector investment.” This increase has become something of a tradition for ARPA-E, where the White House recommends a significant increase but Congress decides to flat fund the agency. There are few indications that this dynamic will change with this budget.
The big question now is will Congress pass this request? While it is true that support for computing research is widespread and bipartisan, it is still unlikely that this budget will breeze through the legislative process. For starters, throughout his request, the President has rejected funding levels called for by the budget deal that brought us sequestration, or the mandatory, across-the-board budget cuts, that are still US law. In rolling back sequestration, Obama is making an argument that the country is coming out of the recession and that these cuts need to be replaced with something more targeted. It’s unlikely that the Republican-controlled Congress shares that view. In addition to the sequestration rollback, it’s likely that congressional Republicans will have a different set of priorities within the Dept of Energy budget about things like climate change, sustainable energy, and clean coal programs, and those will require adjustments throughout the proposed budget to accommodate. So chances are very good that the final FY16 budget for DOE will look very little like the President’s request. But there appears to be strong bipartisan support for DOE computing programs (see, for example, last week’s hearing), and ASCR has recently fared well even when other aspects of the Office of Science budget have been flat-funded (or worse). So perhaps a little cautious optimism is warranted.
We’ll be watching this budget, and the other science agencies’ budgets, as they progress through Congress this year. Check back for more updates.
“If we want to out compete, we have to out compute,” witnesses tell Congressional Science Committee
/In: Misc., People, Policy /by Brian MosleyOn Wednesday January 28th, the Energy Subcommittee of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee held a hearing on, “Supercomputing and American Technology Leadership.” The witnesses that were called, who spanned the public and private sectors in high performance computing (HPC), gave the simple message that in order to out compete other nations, America needs to out compute them. And that calls for sustained funding for supercomputing resources and research.
The hearing was opened by Subcommittee Chairman Randy Weber (R-TX), who, in his opening statement, said that, “it is our job in Congress to ensure that taxpayer dollars are spent wisely, on innovative research that is in the national interest, and provides the best chance for broad impact and long-term success. The basic research conducted within the ASCR program (the Department of Energy’s Advanced Scientific Computing and Research program) clearly meets this requirement.” He elaborated by saying, “high performance computing can lead to scientific discoveries, economic growth, and will maintain America’s leadership in science and technology.” Science Committee Ranking Member Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX), in her own opening statement, echoed much the same points, saying, “public policies play a critical role in supporting the advancement of high performance computing, and in enabling our society and economy to directly benefit from this capability.” She pointed out that, “the U.S. currently hosts more than 45% of the 500 fastest supercomputers in the world,” and that, “as we enter the world of ‘big data’, where thousands of devices all around us are generating millions of bytes of data to be analyzed, high performance computing is needed not just by scientists and government researchers, but by many civic and commercial enterprises as well.”
The panel of witnesses was a venerable who’s-who of high performance computing and science policy. They included Norman Augustine, board member of the Bipartisan Policy Center and an “old sage” of the science policy community (long time readers of this blog will recognize him as the co-chair of the National Academies study “Rising Above the Gathering Storm”); Roscoe Giles, Chairman of the DOE Advanced Scientific Computing Advisory Committee, who spoke on what is happening at ASCR; Dave Turek, Vice President, Technical Computing, at IBM, who gave the industry perspective for HPC and insight into the long-term challenges the field is facing; and James Crowley, Executive Director of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM), who gave the perspective from the scientific community. You can read their testimony in full on the House Science Committee website.
The witnesses agreed that America needs to increase their investment in supercomputing. In response to a question from Ranking Member Johnson about how he would make the case to lawmakers to increase funding for research, Mr. Augustine said that in order to compete with other countries, we have to be faster at applying research to the economy and the best way to do that is through improved computing. Vice-chairman Dan Newhouse (R-WA) asked what Congress could do to remove barriers to allow the DOE National Laboratories to be able to better transfer research to industries; Mr. Augustine pointed out that much of industry doesn’t know what’s going on at the national labs and that he has found the best way to transfer knowledge is to move people. While Mr. Augustine understood the need to have tight conflict of interest laws, encouraging more movement of scientists between labs and industry would help speed up the transfer of research. Finally, a question from Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) on what the next step beyond the use of silicon in computers could be; Mr. Turek pointed out that we have reached the limits of silicon and there is no single solution to this problem. The only option is more research to find more options. Dr. Giles, in response to Rep. Massie’s question, also pointed out that ASCR, and the Department of Energy as a whole, is in an excellent position tackle this problem, because it is physics based and DOE’s research portfolio is predominantly physics research.
The hearing was quite informative and completely free of political rancor. All the Representatives present asked insightful questions, and they walked away with a greater understanding of the challenges and promises of high performance computing. Hopefully this will translate into some good legislation down the road from the Science Committee.
Sustained investment in research is needed to combat cyber threats, CISE AD tells Congress
/In: Cybersecurity R&D Highlights, People, Policy, Research /by Brian MosleyOn Tuesday January 27th, the Research and Technology Subcommittee of the House Science, Space, & Technology Committee held it’s first hearing of the 114th Congress. The topic was expanding cyber threats and cybersecurity, and the subcommittee heard from experts from both the private sector and government agencies. Assistant Director of CISE, Jim Kurose, testifying for the first time in his new position, told the subcommittee that sustained investment in basic research is need to combat these threats and that it is a socio-technological issue that requires involvement from behavioral researchers as well.
Subcommittee Chairwoman Barbara Comstock (R-VA) opened the hearing making the point that, “advances in technology and the growing nature of every individual’s online presence means cybersecurity needs to become an essential part of our vernacular.” Further elaborating on the threats the country is dealing with, she went on:
Ranking Member Daniel Lipinski (D-IL), in his own opening statement, agreed with the chairwoman, saying that, “cybercrimes are ever-increasing. The threats are not only growing in number, but in the level of sophistication.” There was no dissenting opinions from any members of the subcommittee, Democrat or Republican, that cyber threats are real or that the country needs to do more to understand and combat them.
The witnesses for the hearing represented the cybersecurity community quite well. In addition to Dr. Kurose, there was Cheri McGuire , Vice President, Global Government Affairs & Cybersecurity Policy, Symantec Corporation, who shared the insights her company has from their customers and global security network; Charles Romine, Director, Information Technology Laboratory, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), which is the lead agency within the Federal Government in creating standards and distributing best practices throughout the cybersecurity community; Eric A. Fischer, Senior Specialist in Science and Technology, Congressional Research Service, who spoken about the long term challenges and short term needs of the cybersecurity, as well as the Federal role in the field; and Dean Garfield, President and CEO, Information Technology Industry Council, who provided the IT industry perspective of what is going within the industry and how Congress can help. You can read their individual testimony on the Science Committee website.
To sum up, all the witnesses agreed that what was most needed is a sustained investment in basic research for cybersecurity, as well as research into how people interact/use cybersecurity technology. As Dr. Kurose put it, any solutions will be “socio-technical” ones; behavioral research is needed just as much as the physical science research. As well, more interactions between Federal agencies, particularly NIST, and industry is needed in order to get the latest information on threats and best practices. This was brought up, not so much because there is bad or no interaction now (many witnesses stated the opposite; NIST was highly praised by both witnesses and members of the subcommittee) but that the threats change so quickly, necessitating close communication.
Many of the questions asked by committee members showed an interest and a realization of the challenges in cybersecurity. Chairwoman Comstock asked all the witnesses on how Congress should engage their constituents on this matter; the general response being that everyday people need to take this issue seriously and use the security tools that are available. Ranking Member Lipinski asked Mr. Garfield of the IT Industry Council if there is anything different that should be done within the Federal government R&D portfolio; the response was nothing new needs to be done but adequate funding is needed. Rep. Randy Hultgren (R-IL) asked about the status of research to get “beyond the password;” Mr. Garfield pointed out that many new security features and technology is already being deployed into the marketplace. There were even questions about how threats to personal information, such as fraudulent credit card usage, are tracked; this certainly demonstrated the everyday concerns for regular people that can dominate this discussion.
All in all, it was a very informative hearing. One gets the sense that the members of Congress walked away with a good picture of the threats and what is being done about it. And aside from a few off-topic political questions, there was no grandstanding or disagreement (something that is becoming rarer on the committee, sad to say). Hopefully this augurs well for the coming year and this topic specifically.
Photo by CERDEC
Reminder: LiSPI Deadline is this Friday the 23rd!
/In: Computing Community Consortium (CCC), People /by Brian MosleyWe’re entering the final stretch for submitting nominations and applications for the 2015 Leadership in Science Policy workshop. The deadline is this Friday, January 23rd; we’ll be letting those who are selected know by February 2nd. If you know of someone who meets the qualifications and you would like to nominate them, or if you have already been nominated, now is your chance. Don’t miss out on this chance to learn about science policy from experts in the field.