AAAS released a report last week regarding the NSF’sBroadening Participation in Computing (BPC) program and it’s findings are very good news for the computing community. While we have only begun to increase overall enrollments in the field, colleges and universities that are part of the BPC program have begun to increase the number of women and minorities working toward computing degrees. The report talks about all 11 BPC Alliances, including the CRA-W/CDC Alliance and NCWIT in which CRA is heavily involved.
The report is an interesting look into the various BPC efforts and how they have reached students who might otherwise never consider computing as a major or career. It can be downloaded here. There is also a nice write up on the report on the CCC Blog.
This legislation will fund grants to look at the condition of computer science education in each state and come up with a plan specific to each state that will address the specific reforms needed. There would also be a commission to look at computer science education nationally and design teacher preparation programs for colleges and universities.
K – 12 computer science education faces many problems that need to be addressed. The number of courses is declining, standards either do not exist or are far less rigorous in some states than others, there is very little professional development and certification is problematic for computer science teachers. All of this is happening while computing is projected to be one of the fastest growing career paths in the next decade.
More information is available here and a fact sheet on the bill can be found here.
This morning, the House Committee on Science and Technology’s subcommittee on Technology and Innovation held a hearing entitled “Planning for the Future of Cyber Attack Attribution”. The hearing contained a panel of four witnesses — Dr. David Wheeler, a Research Staff Member of the Information Technology and Systems Division at the Institute for Defense Analyses, Mr. Robert Knake an International Affairs Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, Mr. Ed Giorgio, the President and Co-Founder of Ponte Technologies, Mr. Marc Rotenberg, the President of the Electronic Privacy Information Center.
The purpose of the hearing was to “discuss attribution in cyber attacks, and how attribution technologies have the potential to affect the anonymity and privacy of internet users.” Witnesses answered questions ranging from ‘Can attack attribution play a role in deterring cyber attacks?’, to ‘If attribution is futile, what other methods can we use to prevent cyber attacks?’ Witnesses emphasized that while attribution is important, it is not a cure-all, and should only be a part of the security tool box.
They claimed that automatic attack attribution — e.g. having computers automatically determine the origin of an attack — was dangerous because of the possibility for failure and the assignment of wrong identities to attackers. They also, thankfully, mentioned that the internet should not be ‘locked down’, and that different segments should have varying degrees of security and privacy.
The panel stressed that anonymity on the internet conflicts with attribution. A common sentiment was that attribution must not come at the cost of normal legal internet user-privacy. Witnesses went on to posit various methods to create attack attribution without a total loss of privacy.
While the hearing touched on many topics, one of personal interest was the role of the Government in limiting the amount of data that private companies, such as Google, can record on their users. The panel claimed that increased restrictions on private companies would better secure citizens in the face of company breakdown, like the Chinese hack on Google earlier this year.
Peter Lee, current head of DARPA’s innovative Transformational Convergence Technology Office (TCTO), will leave the agency in September to run Microsoft Research’s Redmond Lab. Before joining DARPA, Lee was Chair of the computer science department at Carnegie Mellon University, as well as Chair of CRA (and head of CRA’s Government Affairs Committee). In a press release announcing the move, Lee had this to say about this new opportunity:
“Microsoft Research is an incredible place. The researchers are truly world-class and doing work that is expanding the frontiers of knowledge,” Lee said. “And, while Microsoft Research’s revolutionary advances affect just about every desktop, enterprise and mobile system in the world, what I find most exciting is Microsoft Research’s ability to influence and inspire countless numbers of researchers, students and technology leaders. This unique combination of world-class research, impact on billions of systems and influential thought leadership is simply exhilarating. I can hardly wait to get started.”
Lee did a fantastic job as Chair of CRA, Chair of my Government Affairs Committee, and PI of the Computing Innovations Fellowship program through CCC. We have no doubt he’ll excel at Microsoft just as he has everywhere else he’s been.
It’s not known whether Lee, an avid Pittsburgh Penguin fan, will alter his hockey allegiance with his change in residency to the Pacific Northwest, but we’ll keep you updated.
This week the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report urging the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) to come up with a clear and comprehensive cybersecurity R & D strategy. The report, prepared by request of the House Committee on Homeland Securty, called upon OSTP to show more leadership in the creation of an R & D plan.
There’s been some presscoverage of the report. Here’s a good snippet from Infoweek:
“The report notes that officials within the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy’s Subcommittee on Networking and Information Technology (NITRD) are endowed with a leadership role in terms of coordinating cybersecurity R&D efforts, they haven’t taken advantage of that role. Despite GAO recommendations and responsibilities laid out in legislation, NITRD has never prioritized a national or federal R&D agenda.”
“The report recommends that the White House follow the Bush administration’s National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace, which urged the creation of near-term, mid-term and long-term goals for cybersecurity R&D. The report notes that OSTP is only in the beginning stages of creating such an agenda and updating its 5-year plan for cybersecurity R&D.”
These conclusions about NITRD’s role aren’t surprising. The computing research community has had long-standing concerns about the ability of the NITRD NCO to exercise a leadership role in coordinating the federal IT R&D investment. A big part of that inability to lead comes down to the NCO’s lack of budgetary authority, but that’s a reality of the federal budget process — there’s no way federal agencies will cede control of a piece of their budgets to some central coordinating office (other than OMB). As a result, NITRD becomes less about leadership and coordination and more about agencies reporting what they plan to do and the NCO collecting that information.
It will be interesting to see whether the PCAST’s new look at NITRD, now underway and due in late August or September, will address these cyber security concerns. That review is being shepherded by PCAST members Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, and Shirley Ann Jackson, President of RPI, and driven by a subcommittee led by Ed Lazowska, Chair of CRA’s Computing Community Consortium and professor computer science at University of Washington, and David E. Shaw, head of D.E. Shaw and Co. (We’ll have more on the PCAST study in a later post…).
The federal government’s role in spurring innovation continues to be a hot topic on Capitol Hill.
Last Tuesday, the Senate Committee on Commerce Science, and Transportation’s subcommittee on Competitiveness, Innovation, and Export Promotion heard experts ranging from Aneesh P. Chopra, the Chief Technology Officer and Associated Director for Technology from the Office of Science and Technology Policy to Mr. Rhys L. Williams, President of New World Angels, Inc., talk about the difficulties the U.S. faces in spurring private sector innovation. The hearing, “Innovation in America: Opportunities and Obstacles,” featured two panels testifying on the current challenges in innovation and possible solutions to fix the situation. Both panels agreed that it is imperative the United States create an innovation strategy. They also agreed that innovation in America would be greatly enhanced by better translation of ideas from academia to the private sector.
Then on Thursday, the Coalition for National Science Funding (of which CRA is a member) and the National Science Foundation partnered to put together an event for lawmakers on the House side to highlight some of NSF’s successes in funding basic research. The event, “NSF: Investing in America’s Future,” featured Doctor Erin Santini Bell, Assistant Professor of Civil Engineering at the University of New Hampshire, who has developed “new methods of incorporating structural modeling, instrumentation and non-destructive testing to asses the structural health of bridges”, and Doctor Laura Landweber, Professor of Biology at Princeton University, who studies “the roles of RNA in epigenetic inheritance”, who talked about the importance of NSF in supporting their research.
Attendance was great at both events, despite a packed legislative schedule, which bodes well for those interested in seeing the U.S. stay committed to fostering innovation. Though perhaps a more definitive sign of support was the approval Tuesday by the House Commerce, Justice, Science of a significant increase for the NSF budget in FY11.
The House Commerce, Justice, Science Appropriations Subcommittee has marked up it’s FY11 appropriations bill and approved a healthy increase for the National Science Foundation. The committee approved essentially the President’s requested increase for NSF, about an 8 percent increase in FY11 vs. FY10. Here’s a breakdown. It appears that NSF’s Research and Related Activities account is slightly lower than the request ($58 million, but $343 million more than FY10), and that Education and Human Resources is bumped up by a nearly corresponding amount ($66 million more than the request, $86 million more than FY10).
Subcommittee Chair Alan Mollohan (D-WV) explained how the bill treats science and STEM Ed funding in the bill in his statement to open the markup:
For investments in science, technology and innovation, the bill provides $32.8 billion, an increase of $1.6 billion over comparable levels from last year. Within this level, the Subcommittee bill provides $7.4 billion for the National Science Foundation and $19 billion for NASA, both equal to the request. For NIST, the bill provides $882.9 million. NOAA is recommended for $5.5 billion. The Subcommittee recommendation continues to provide resources consistent with the doubling path identified for NSF and NIST in the COMPETES Act. It also considers the science and research conducted at NOAA and NASA as critical to the Nation’s science enterprise as that performed by the NSF and NIST, and investments are recommended accordingly.
Within overall science funding, the bill provides $1.5 billion to support all aspects of science, technology, engineering and math – or STEM – education, from kindergarten through graduate school. The bill puts a particular focus on inquiry-based instruction, broadening minority participation, and increasing graduate student fellowships.
Encouraging step. Still far from the endgame in appropriations, but about as good a start as we could’ve hoped, I think.
The President’s Innovation and Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC) is looking for advice regarding infrastructures paramount to innovation in information technology, nanotechnology, and biotechnology. Comments can be submitted to the President’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology (PCAST) through the online portal OpenPCAST.
Specifically, PITAC asks:
What are the critical infrastructures that only government can help provide that are needed to enable creation of new biotechnology, nanotechnology, and information technology products and innovations – a technological congruence that we have been calling the “Golden Triangle” – that will lead to new jobs and greater GDP?
PCAST is also hosting a webcast on June 22nd between 10 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Eastern Time. During the webcast, comments can be submitted via email (pcast@ostp.gov), or PCAST’s Facebook page and Twitter feed.
The information obtained from these activities should support the implementation of President Obama’s Strategy for American Innovation. Furthermore, the announcement mentions an upcoming PCAST/PITAC initiative to create jobs through science, technology and innovation.
For a link to the webcast, visit the PCAST website on June 22 before 10 a.m.
Subra Suresh, Nominee for Director, National Science Foundation
Subra Suresh is currently Dean of the School of Engineering and the Vannevar Bush Professor of Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). From 2000 to 2006, Dr. Suresh served as the head of the MIT Department of Materials Science and Engineering. He joined MIT in 1993 as the R.P. Simmons Professor of Materials Science and Engineering and since then has held joint faculty appointments in the Departments of Mechanical Engineering and Biological Engineering, as well as the Division of Health Sciences and Technology. From 1983 to 1993, Dr. Suresh was a faculty member in the Division of Engineering at Brown University. He has been elected to the U.S. National Academy of Engineering, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Indian National Academy of Engineering, the Indian Academy of Sciences in Bangalore, the Royal Spanish Academy of Sciences, the Academy of Sciences of the Developing World based in Trieste, Italy, and the German National Academy of Sciences. Dr. Suresh is the recipient of the 2007 European Materials Medal, the highest honor conferred by the Federation of European Materials Societies, and the 2006 Acta Materialia Gold Medal. He holds a bachelor’s degree from the Indian Institute of Technology in Madras, an M.S. from Iowa State University, and a Sc.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dr. Suresh also holds honorary doctorate degrees from the Technical University of Madrid in Spain and Sweden’s Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm.
FINAL UPDATE: (5/28/10 3:05 pm) COMPETES passes, sans troublesome MTR language: 262 – 150 with 17 Republicans in support.
Now, on to the Senate!
UPDATE: (5/28/10) – It looks like Rep. Gordon got creative with a solution to the COMPETES Act logjam. In a surprise move, he’s brought the original bill back to the floor just now and asked that the Motion to Recommit language (which essentially gutted the original bill and added the anti-porn language as a trap to insure both sides voted for it) be considered as a “divided question” – a move that allows the House to consider each portion of the motion on its own. So, instead of one up or down vote, it’s nine different votes, then a move for final passage of the bill. So far (through seven sections) the Dems have killed all the attempts to gut COMPETES. I’m guessing at this point that the bill is a done deal, but we’ll know in about 30 mins.
UPDATE: (5/19/2010 1:13 pm ET) The bill did not receive enough votes to pass under suspension. There’s a lot to unpack here and try to understand, but for now we’ll just link to Gordon’s press release, which was clearly written before the vote (it appeared a few minutes after the vote was finalized).
COMPUTING RESEARCH ADVOCACY NETWORK ACTION ALERT!
***ACTION NEEDED NOW: Please contact your representative in Congress *NOW* to urge his or her support for the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act when it comes up for a vote this afternoon!***
The ‘WHAT TO DO’ section below gives specific suggestions and a ready-to-use sample letter for how to quickly contact your representative.
THE SITUATION:
An attempt to pass the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act, which would authorize significant increases for several key science agencies and include provisions related to the National Information Technology R&D program, was derailed last week by a procedural vote that sent the bill back to the House Science and Technology committee with instructions to strike the increases and eliminate a number of new programs. Rather than comply with the instructions and, in essence, neuter the bill, the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Bart Gordon, Chair of the House S&T Committee, pulled the bill from consideration in the hope of bringing it back to the floor at a later date. It appears that bill is coming back to the floor this week.
Members of Congress need to be urged to support the bill because federal investment in research remains a key part of the vibrant innovation ecosystem that helps preserve U.S. leadership in an increasingly competitive world. They need to be reminded that the investments in NSF, DOE and NIST will help ensure the U.S. continues the produce the ideas and talent that drive American science and industry, creating new technologies, new industry sectors, and new high value jobs.
BACKGROUND:
The America COMPETES Act of 2007 marked the culmination of a several-years long effort to achieve increased funding for the federal agencies responsible for investments in the “physical sciences” (which, in DC parlance, includes computing research). COMPETES authorized several years of budget increases for the National Science Foundation, National Institute of Standards and Technology, and Department of Energy’s Office of Science – increases that put the agencies on a path towards doubling their budgets over the next 7 to 10 years. The authorizations contained in the 2007 version of the COMPETES Act are expiring, so Chairman Gordon introduced H.R. 5116, the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2010 to continue the authorizations for the science agencies on roughly the same trajectory as the original bill. In addition, Gordon’s bill includes authorizations for a number of programs designed to increase the participation of U.S. students in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) fields, includes two free-standing bills already passed by the full House – the National Nanotechnology Initiative Reauthorization bill and the National Information Technology Research and Development Act – and a number of other programs designed to improve the climate of innovation for U.S. companies.
Given the election-year climate and a Republican minority that sees a chance to pick up dozens of seats in the House in November, it was unlikely from the start that the bill would receive wide bipartisan support. However, the Republican leadership, figuring it would lose a straight party-line vote, utilized a procedural gambit to imperil the bill’s passage and potentially deny the Democrats a legislative “victory.” They seized on last year’s revelations that NSF had disciplined a number of employees, including at least one in senior leadership, for using their government-issued computers to view pornographic material. Republican House S&T Committee Ranking Member Ralph Hall (R-TX) used a “Motion to Recommit With Instructions” that would send the bill back to the House S&T Committee with instructions to add language to fire anyone at a federal agency disciplined for viewing pornography, along with a provision that would freeze funding in the bill in any year in which the government ran a deficit (which is essentially every year for the foreseeable future) and cut a number of new programs the bill would have created, mostly designed to spur industrial innovation.
Not wishing to be seen as “pro-pornography,” 121 Democrats broke rank and joined Republicans in supporting the motion. (The only Republican voting against the motion was Rep. Vern Ehlers (R-MI), a former physicist who has already announced his retirement.) Rather than accede to the motion, Gordon pulled the COMPETES reauthorization from the floor.
The Democratic leadership has announced that the bill will return to the floor TODAY. We need to urge support for the funding authorizations including in the COMPETES Act reauthorization bill because those investments are critical in keeping U.S. innovation moving forward. The research supported by the funds in this act create the ideas and develop the talent that will keep the U.S. in a leadership role in an increasingly competitive world.
WHAT TO DO:
The most important thing you can do now is call or fax your representative **NOW** and urge them to support the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act. A sample letter you can use can be found at COMPETES_ActionAlert_Sample_letter. Please complete it using your own information and FAX it to your Representative’s office NOW. Please also send a copy of your fax to Melissa Norr at 202.667.1066. Having copies of letters from our community is incredibly helpful in our advocacy activities in Washington.
If you have any trouble figuring out your Member of Congress or his or her contact information, please don’t hesitate to contact Melissa (mnorr@cra.org) for help.
Please use the Category and Archive Filters below, to find older posts. Or you may also use the search bar.
NSF’s Broadening Participation in Computing Program Works
/In: General /by MelissaNorrAAAS released a report last week regarding the NSF’s Broadening Participation in Computing (BPC) program and it’s findings are very good news for the computing community. While we have only begun to increase overall enrollments in the field, colleges and universities that are part of the BPC program have begun to increase the number of women and minorities working toward computing degrees. The report talks about all 11 BPC Alliances, including the CRA-W/CDC Alliance and NCWIT in which CRA is heavily involved.
The report is an interesting look into the various BPC efforts and how they have reached students who might otherwise never consider computing as a major or career. It can be downloaded here. There is also a nice write up on the report on the CCC Blog.
Computer Science Education Act Introduced in House
/In: Computing Education, CRA, Policy /by MelissaNorrHR 5929, the Computer Science Education Act, was introduced in Congress today by Rep. Jared Polis (D-CO). CRA, the Association for Computing Machinery, the Computer Science Teachers Association, the National Center for Women and Information Technology, the Anita Borg Institute, Microsoft, Google, Intel and SAS are all organizations that support this bill to address the concerns regarding computer science education at the K-12 level.
This legislation will fund grants to look at the condition of computer science education in each state and come up with a plan specific to each state that will address the specific reforms needed. There would also be a commission to look at computer science education nationally and design teacher preparation programs for colleges and universities.
K – 12 computer science education faces many problems that need to be addressed. The number of courses is declining, standards either do not exist or are far less rigorous in some states than others, there is very little professional development and certification is problematic for computer science teachers. All of this is happening while computing is projected to be one of the fastest growing career paths in the next decade.
More information is available here and a fact sheet on the bill can be found here.
House Panel Examines Cyber Attack Attribution
/In: Security /by Brian MosleyThis morning, the House Committee on Science and Technology’s subcommittee on Technology and Innovation held a hearing entitled “Planning for the Future of Cyber Attack Attribution”. The hearing contained a panel of four witnesses — Dr. David Wheeler, a Research Staff Member of the Information Technology and Systems Division at the Institute for Defense Analyses, Mr. Robert Knake an International Affairs Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, Mr. Ed Giorgio, the President and Co-Founder of Ponte Technologies, Mr. Marc Rotenberg, the President of the Electronic Privacy Information Center.
The purpose of the hearing was to “discuss attribution in cyber attacks, and how attribution technologies have the potential to affect the anonymity and privacy of internet users.” Witnesses answered questions ranging from ‘Can attack attribution play a role in deterring cyber attacks?’, to ‘If attribution is futile, what other methods can we use to prevent cyber attacks?’ Witnesses emphasized that while attribution is important, it is not a cure-all, and should only be a part of the security tool box.
They claimed that automatic attack attribution — e.g. having computers automatically determine the origin of an attack — was dangerous because of the possibility for failure and the assignment of wrong identities to attackers. They also, thankfully, mentioned that the internet should not be ‘locked down’, and that different segments should have varying degrees of security and privacy.
The panel stressed that anonymity on the internet conflicts with attribution. A common sentiment was that attribution must not come at the cost of normal legal internet user-privacy. Witnesses went on to posit various methods to create attack attribution without a total loss of privacy.
While the hearing touched on many topics, one of personal interest was the role of the Government in limiting the amount of data that private companies, such as Google, can record on their users. The panel claimed that increased restrictions on private companies would better secure citizens in the face of company breakdown, like the Chinese hack on Google earlier this year.
Check out the hearing’s website and the webcast.
Ex-CRA Chair Peter Lee to Leave DARPA for Microsoft Research
/In: CRA, People, Research /by Peter HarshaPeter Lee, current head of DARPA’s innovative Transformational Convergence Technology Office (TCTO), will leave the agency in September to run Microsoft Research’s Redmond Lab. Before joining DARPA, Lee was Chair of the computer science department at Carnegie Mellon University, as well as Chair of CRA (and head of CRA’s Government Affairs Committee). In a press release announcing the move, Lee had this to say about this new opportunity:
Lee did a fantastic job as Chair of CRA, Chair of my Government Affairs Committee, and PI of the Computing Innovations Fellowship program through CCC. We have no doubt he’ll excel at Microsoft just as he has everywhere else he’s been.
It’s not known whether Lee, an avid Pittsburgh Penguin fan, will alter his hockey allegiance with his change in residency to the Pacific Northwest, but we’ll keep you updated.
Here’s Wired’s coverage of the news.
GAO releases report on cybersecurity strategy
/In: General /by Brian MosleyThis week the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report urging the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) to come up with a clear and comprehensive cybersecurity R & D strategy. The report, prepared by request of the House Committee on Homeland Securty, called upon OSTP to show more leadership in the creation of an R & D plan.
There’s been some press coverage of the report. Here’s a good snippet from Infoweek:
These conclusions about NITRD’s role aren’t surprising. The computing research community has had long-standing concerns about the ability of the NITRD NCO to exercise a leadership role in coordinating the federal IT R&D investment. A big part of that inability to lead comes down to the NCO’s lack of budgetary authority, but that’s a reality of the federal budget process — there’s no way federal agencies will cede control of a piece of their budgets to some central coordinating office (other than OMB). As a result, NITRD becomes less about leadership and coordination and more about agencies reporting what they plan to do and the NCO collecting that information.
It will be interesting to see whether the PCAST’s new look at NITRD, now underway and due in late August or September, will address these cyber security concerns. That review is being shepherded by PCAST members Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, and Shirley Ann Jackson, President of RPI, and driven by a subcommittee led by Ed Lazowska, Chair of CRA’s Computing Community Consortium and professor computer science at University of Washington, and David E. Shaw, head of D.E. Shaw and Co. (We’ll have more on the PCAST study in a later post…).
Innovation on Capitol Hill
/In: Events /by Brian MosleyThe federal government’s role in spurring innovation continues to be a hot topic on Capitol Hill.
Last Tuesday, the Senate Committee on Commerce Science, and Transportation’s subcommittee on Competitiveness, Innovation, and Export Promotion heard experts ranging from Aneesh P. Chopra, the Chief Technology Officer and Associated Director for Technology from the Office of Science and Technology Policy to Mr. Rhys L. Williams, President of New World Angels, Inc., talk about the difficulties the U.S. faces in spurring private sector innovation. The hearing, “Innovation in America: Opportunities and Obstacles,” featured two panels testifying on the current challenges in innovation and possible solutions to fix the situation. Both panels agreed that it is imperative the United States create an innovation strategy. They also agreed that innovation in America would be greatly enhanced by better translation of ideas from academia to the private sector.
Then on Thursday, the Coalition for National Science Funding (of which CRA is a member) and the National Science Foundation partnered to put together an event for lawmakers on the House side to highlight some of NSF’s successes in funding basic research. The event, “NSF: Investing in America’s Future,” featured Doctor Erin Santini Bell, Assistant Professor of Civil Engineering at the University of New Hampshire, who has developed “new methods of incorporating structural modeling, instrumentation and non-destructive testing to asses the structural health of bridges”, and Doctor Laura Landweber, Professor of Biology at Princeton University, who studies “the roles of RNA in epigenetic inheritance”, who talked about the importance of NSF in supporting their research.
Attendance was great at both events, despite a packed legislative schedule, which bodes well for those interested in seeing the U.S. stay committed to fostering innovation. Though perhaps a more definitive sign of support was the approval Tuesday by the House Commerce, Justice, Science of a significant increase for the NSF budget in FY11.
NSF Fares Well in First FY11 Appropriations Mark
/In: Funding, FY11 Appropriations /by Peter HarshaThe House Commerce, Justice, Science Appropriations Subcommittee has marked up it’s FY11 appropriations bill and approved a healthy increase for the National Science Foundation. The committee approved essentially the President’s requested increase for NSF, about an 8 percent increase in FY11 vs. FY10. Here’s a breakdown. It appears that NSF’s Research and Related Activities account is slightly lower than the request ($58 million, but $343 million more than FY10), and that Education and Human Resources is bumped up by a nearly corresponding amount ($66 million more than the request, $86 million more than FY10).
Subcommittee Chair Alan Mollohan (D-WV) explained how the bill treats science and STEM Ed funding in the bill in his statement to open the markup:
Encouraging step. Still far from the endgame in appropriations, but about as good a start as we could’ve hoped, I think.
More details as I get them.
PCAST Desires Public Input on Critical Infrastructures for Technology Innovation
/In: Events, Policy /by Brian MosleyThe President’s Innovation and Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC) is looking for advice regarding infrastructures paramount to innovation in information technology, nanotechnology, and biotechnology. Comments can be submitted to the President’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology (PCAST) through the online portal OpenPCAST.
Specifically, PITAC asks:
PCAST is also hosting a webcast on June 22nd between 10 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Eastern Time. During the webcast, comments can be submitted via email (pcast@ostp.gov), or PCAST’s Facebook page and Twitter feed.
The information obtained from these activities should support the implementation of President Obama’s Strategy for American Innovation. Furthermore, the announcement mentions an upcoming PCAST/PITAC initiative to create jobs through science, technology and innovation.
For a link to the webcast, visit the PCAST website on June 22 before 10 a.m.
MIT Dean of Engineering Nominated for NSF Director
/In: People /by Peter HarshaThis word just received from OSTP:
ACTION ALERT: Urge Your Rep *NOW* to Support COMPETES
/In: Action Alerts, CRA, Funding, Policy /by Peter HarshaFINAL UPDATE: (5/28/10 3:05 pm) COMPETES passes, sans troublesome MTR language: 262 – 150 with 17 Republicans in support.
Now, on to the Senate!
UPDATE: (5/28/10) – It looks like Rep. Gordon got creative with a solution to the COMPETES Act logjam. In a surprise move, he’s brought the original bill back to the floor just now and asked that the Motion to Recommit language (which essentially gutted the original bill and added the anti-porn language as a trap to insure both sides voted for it) be considered as a “divided question” – a move that allows the House to consider each portion of the motion on its own. So, instead of one up or down vote, it’s nine different votes, then a move for final passage of the bill. So far (through seven sections) the Dems have killed all the attempts to gut COMPETES. I’m guessing at this point that the bill is a done deal, but we’ll know in about 30 mins.
UPDATE: (5/19/2010 1:13 pm ET) The bill did not receive enough votes to pass under suspension. There’s a lot to unpack here and try to understand, but for now we’ll just link to Gordon’s press release, which was clearly written before the vote (it appeared a few minutes after the vote was finalized).
COMPUTING RESEARCH ADVOCACY NETWORK ACTION ALERT!
***ACTION NEEDED NOW: Please contact your representative in Congress *NOW* to urge his or her support for the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act when it comes up for a vote this afternoon!***
The ‘WHAT TO DO’ section below gives specific suggestions and a ready-to-use sample letter for how to quickly contact your representative.
THE SITUATION:
An attempt to pass the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act, which would authorize significant increases for several key science agencies and include provisions related to the National Information Technology R&D program, was derailed last week by a procedural vote that sent the bill back to the House Science and Technology committee with instructions to strike the increases and eliminate a number of new programs. Rather than comply with the instructions and, in essence, neuter the bill, the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Bart Gordon, Chair of the House S&T Committee, pulled the bill from consideration in the hope of bringing it back to the floor at a later date. It appears that bill is coming back to the floor this week.
Members of Congress need to be urged to support the bill because federal investment in research remains a key part of the vibrant innovation ecosystem that helps preserve U.S. leadership in an increasingly competitive world. They need to be reminded that the investments in NSF, DOE and NIST will help ensure the U.S. continues the produce the ideas and talent that drive American science and industry, creating new technologies, new industry sectors, and new high value jobs.
BACKGROUND:
The America COMPETES Act of 2007 marked the culmination of a several-years long effort to achieve increased funding for the federal agencies responsible for investments in the “physical sciences” (which, in DC parlance, includes computing research). COMPETES authorized several years of budget increases for the National Science Foundation, National Institute of Standards and Technology, and Department of Energy’s Office of Science – increases that put the agencies on a path towards doubling their budgets over the next 7 to 10 years. The authorizations contained in the 2007 version of the COMPETES Act are expiring, so Chairman Gordon introduced H.R. 5116, the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2010 to continue the authorizations for the science agencies on roughly the same trajectory as the original bill. In addition, Gordon’s bill includes authorizations for a number of programs designed to increase the participation of U.S. students in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) fields, includes two free-standing bills already passed by the full House – the National Nanotechnology Initiative Reauthorization bill and the National Information Technology Research and Development Act – and a number of other programs designed to improve the climate of innovation for U.S. companies.
Given the election-year climate and a Republican minority that sees a chance to pick up dozens of seats in the House in November, it was unlikely from the start that the bill would receive wide bipartisan support. However, the Republican leadership, figuring it would lose a straight party-line vote, utilized a procedural gambit to imperil the bill’s passage and potentially deny the Democrats a legislative “victory.” They seized on last year’s revelations that NSF had disciplined a number of employees, including at least one in senior leadership, for using their government-issued computers to view pornographic material. Republican House S&T Committee Ranking Member Ralph Hall (R-TX) used a “Motion to Recommit With Instructions” that would send the bill back to the House S&T Committee with instructions to add language to fire anyone at a federal agency disciplined for viewing pornography, along with a provision that would freeze funding in the bill in any year in which the government ran a deficit (which is essentially every year for the foreseeable future) and cut a number of new programs the bill would have created, mostly designed to spur industrial innovation.
Not wishing to be seen as “pro-pornography,” 121 Democrats broke rank and joined Republicans in supporting the motion. (The only Republican voting against the motion was Rep. Vern Ehlers (R-MI), a former physicist who has already announced his retirement.) Rather than accede to the motion, Gordon pulled the COMPETES reauthorization from the floor.
The Democratic leadership has announced that the bill will return to the floor TODAY. We need to urge support for the funding authorizations including in the COMPETES Act reauthorization bill because those investments are critical in keeping U.S. innovation moving forward. The research supported by the funds in this act create the ideas and develop the talent that will keep the U.S. in a leadership role in an increasingly competitive world.
WHAT TO DO:
The most important thing you can do now is call or fax your representative **NOW** and urge them to support the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act. A sample letter you can use can be found at COMPETES_ActionAlert_Sample_letter. Please complete it using your own information and FAX it to your Representative’s office NOW. Please also send a copy of your fax to Melissa Norr at 202.667.1066. Having copies of letters from our community is incredibly helpful in our advocacy activities in Washington.
To identify your Representative visit Write Your Rep.
If you have any trouble figuring out your Member of Congress or his or her contact information, please don’t hesitate to contact Melissa (mnorr@cra.org) for help.