The House Appropriations Committee has released the bill text (pdf) and the accompanying committee report (pdf) for the Stimulus and Recovery Plan released today. They provide a little finer view of what’s actually in the stimulus bill. But ultimately, the House appropriators and leadership have left some discretion to the agency management to decide how to spend the new funding, which is probably a good thing. In summary, though, this looks awfully good to us and will likely go a long way towards recharging the Nation’s innovation engine.
Here’s what we know: The Department of Energy — The Office of Science would see an increase of $2 billion under this plan. Called out specifically in the bill (but not in the accompanying report) is a $100 million increase for the Advanced Scientific Computing Research program. The only other program in Science to get a specific call-out is the brand new Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA-E), which would receive $400 million. The rest is presumably up to the Director’s discretion.
Additionally in DOE Energy Programs, the Smart Grid Investment Program, which would support efforts to add IT and other intelligence to the power grid, would receive a $4.5 billion increase under the plan. The National Science Foundation — NSF would see an increase of $3 billion overall (so, it would become an ~ $9 billion agency, for one year, at least — more on that below). Of the $3 billion, $2.5 billion would go to the Research and Related Activities Account, home of NSF’s core research efforts. Of that $2.5 billion, 300 million would go to the Major Research Instrumentation program and an additional $200 million for academic research facilities modernization. This leaves an additional $2.0 billion to be spread among the research directorates for their core programs!
NSF’s Education and Human Resources program would see a $100 million boost — $60 million for Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarships and $40 million to the Math and Science Partnerships program.
NSF’s Major Research Equipment and Facilities Construction account would see a boost of $400 million to start “approved projects” or projects that are close to completing their design review, though none are named in the bill or the report. The National Institute of Standards and Technology — NIST would see a boost of $100 million to its core research programs, plus another $100 million to be split between the Technology Innovation Program (TIP – the revamped Advanced Technology Program), and $30 million for the Manufacturing Extension Partnership. In addition, NIST would get $300 million for facilities repair and construction, so maybe they’ll actually be able to keep that $100 million for core research, instead of using it to pay for broken buildings or ATP/TIP/MEP. The National Institutes of Health — NIH would receive $1.5 billion for grants to improve university research facilities and another $1.5 billion in new research funding.
So, this all looks really good to us. However, in our meetings with congressional staff over the last couple of weeks, there has been some concern about managing expectations about the sustainability of any of this funding beyond the stimulus. There are no promises that this stimulus funding will establish a new baseline funding level for these science agencies. There is the possibility that this truly is “one and done.” The report language doesn’t speak to that directly, but seems to suggest that the idea with this influx of research funding in what was thought to be simply an “infrastructure” bill is to reestablish a trajectory towards the doubling targets in the America COMPETES Act. If that’s the case, we should expect that future appropriations bills will start with a funding level of $9 8 billion for NSF, for example (because $1 billion of the $3 billion increase is for a “one-time” infrastructure investment, while the remaining $2 billion is a research investment), and not revert back to the $6 billion pre-stimulus level. Hard to know exactly what the intent is and it’s hard to reach the appropriations staff to hear it from them directly. So what we have is the language for NSF, which is posted below for your own interpretation.
In other news, the “pre-conferencing” — or the bulk of negotiations between the Senate and House over differing priorities — for the FY 2009 omnibus appropriations bill is done, but the leadership is holding off moving it until after the stimulus is finished. We’re getting mixed signals on that one, too. While it’s likely the FY 09 Omnibus will include funding for science above the FY 08 levels (which were flat or a cut compared to FY 07), it might not be as much as either the House or Senate appropriations committees have separately agreed on in early versions of the bill because of the need to pay for other significant disagreements elsewhere in the bill. A dispute over what the Senate percieves as a $500 million shortfall in funding for the U.S. Census in the House version of the bill is one such sticking point that could impact science funding levels.
And then there’s the matter of the FY 10 budget, which will be released in skeletal form in early February and then fleshed out significantly by the new Administration in April. If the FY 10 budget numbers use the stimulus-increased numbers as the new baseline — if they ignore the FY 09 approps numbers, which were marked up pre-stimulus, in other words — then we really will be on the trajectory to realize the promise of COMPETES. If, however, they use the FY 09 approps levels as the baseline for FY 10, then it will mean that the stimulus funding for research was just a one-time bump, and we’ll likely have a near impossible task getting anywhere near those numbers again in FY10.
In any case, that’s what we know from a couple quick reads of the bill and report and conversations with congressional staff over the last week or so. None of this is a done deal until the ink is dry, and there will be much fighting about the final program levels before this is passed sometime between President’s Day and St. Patrick’s Day…. but it’s a very very nice place to start.
More detail as we learn more. Oh, and the NSF report language follows after the jump.
The House Democratic leadership has released an official stimulus summary and it looks great. It includes $10 billion in new spending for science, including $3 billion in new money for NSF — “including $2 billion for expanding employment opportunities in fundamental science and engineering to meet environmental challenges and to improve global economic competitiveness, $400 million to build major research facilities that perform cutting edge science, $300 million for major research equipment shared by institutions of higher education and other scientists, $200 million to repair and modernize science and engineering research facilities at the nations institutions of higher education and other science labs, and $100 million is also included to improve instruction in science, math and engineering” — and $6 billion for broadband deployment.
Here is a PDF of the summary and we’ll have more details on this as it begins moving forward.
According to Science Magazine’s Eli Kintisch, physicist John Holdren, from Harvard’s Kennedy School and director of the Woods Hole Research Center, will be nominated Science Advisor to the President by president-elect Barack Obama on Saturday.
Here’s some background from Science:
Holdren is well known for his work on energy, climate change, and nuclear proliferation. Trained in fluid dynamics and plasma physics, Holdren branched out into policy early in his career. He has led the Woods Hole Research Center for the past 3 years and served as president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (which publishes ScienceInsider) in 2006.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Congressman Rush Holt (D-NJ) spoke of their intent to increase federal support for science at Princeton University yesterday as part of the universitys Innovation Agenda roundtable. Both Pelosi and Holt have been vocal in their support of basic science research in the past but under the Bush Administration have struggled to translate that support into appropriations levels that match the America COMPETES authorization levels. Its a potential problem moving forward as well as Pelosi stated:
“I have said over and over again, if you want to know the agenda for this new Congress, remember four words: science, science, science and science,” Pelosi said. However, referring obliquely to current crises, she warned there would be competition for resources in the coming months and that supporters of science must become active advocates for science research funding.
Holt, a physicist and former Princeton staff member, pointed out the economic importance of research, stating:
“We should make a commitment as a nation to research and development,” said Holt, a physicist and former assistant director of the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. “Science and scientific research,” he continued, “are not luxuries to be engaged in in plush times, but rather they are the basis for economic growth, economic prosperity and quality of life.”
Princeton has a press release with more details on the event here.
Carnegie Mellon CS Chair (and CRA Government Affairs Chair) Peter Lee and Berkeley’s Randy Katz have been doing some thinking about the sorts of problems in computing it might be useful for a future DARPA Director to understand. Their inspiration comes from a book written by Katz’s colleague, Richard Muller, called Physics for Future Presidents, which describes the “science behind the headlines — the tools of terrorists, the dangers of nuclear power, and the reality of global warming.” Katz and Lee want to know: “Shouldn’t there also be a computer science (or, more broadly, an IT) version of this book?”
They believe there should and have proposed one that
summarizes key IT technology trends that most urgently affect the national defense,
analyzes IT technology roadmaps that are nearing their end, and the consequences of that end, and
attempts to identify areas of possible “technological surprise” that is, soft points in the defense IT research portfolio.
They’ve generated some interest in such a project from the agency and are looking for further input from others within the community.
I think this is a great idea and hope you’ll visit Lee’s blog and add your thoughts. The time to produce something that might be useful to the new administration is very short, obviously, but the opportunity to get the attention of the new agency leadership (whomever it may turn out to be) focused on important, compelling issues in computing makes it worth the effort.
Google hosted a town hall style panel discussion today at its Washington, DC office. The discussion was based on technology policy in 2009 with a new Administration and Congress but focused almost exclusively on broadband deployment and a smart electric grid. The panel had six speakers: Gigi Sohn (President, Public Knowledge), Jennifer Canty (CEO, Dyscern), Ben Scott (Policy Director, Free Press), Stephen Ezell (Senior Analyst, ITIF), Harry Wingo (Policy Counsel, Google), and Michael Oldak (Senior Director, Edison Electric Institute). Questions were taken from a moderator, from the audience, and from online submissions through Google Moderator.
The consensus seemed to be that broadband availability needs to improve throughout the country but that broadband adoption by consumers was also a large issue that needed to be tackled. Additionally, regulations need to be implemented to keep the Internet as an open system without false controls.
The other topic discussed was the need for a smart, efficient electricity infrastructure that uses alternative, renewable energy sources and that has the ability to regulate energy use during peak times.
The discussion was recorded and is supposed to be available on YouTube, however, it does not seem to have been posted yet. Well provide the link when it becomes available.
CRA member Google Inc.’s CEO Eric Schmidt gave a speech yesterday in DC regarding government and technology. Schmidt is a member of President-elect Obama’s transition team but he focused more on issues that the technology community (including CRA) has been talking about for years, including research funding. The Washington Times has all the details but here’s a brief quote on research:
Mr. Schmidt said the government has an important role to play in funding research, noting that businesses “by law have to serve their shareholders” and therefore are not going to “fundamentally invest at the level of pure research.”
“It takes government policy. That model works,” he said, citing a pledge by Mr. Obama to double basic spending on scientific research, which declined this year.
Science Magazine recently published an editorial by Wen Jibao, (sub. reqd.) Premier of Chinas State Council on Chinas science and technology initiatives. Weve been saying here for years that China is very serious about becoming a world leader in science and technology. The editorial states China is now engaged in a modernization drive unprecedented in the history of humankind. Other important highlights include:
The future of Chinas science and technology depends fundamentally on how we attract, train, and use young scientific talents today. Thus, at the core of our science and technology policy is attracting a diverse range of talents, especially young people, into science and providing them with an environment that brings out the best of their creative ideas.
I firmly believe that science is the ultimate revolution. At a time when the current global financial turmoil is dealing a heavy blow to the world economy, it has become all the more important to rely on scientific and technological progress to promote growth in the real economy. Economic and social development must rely on science and technology, and science and technology must serve economic and social development. We will rely on science and technology to promote economic restructuring, transform development patterns, safeguard food and energy security, and address global climate change. We are confident that China will reap a rich harvest in science and technology and that this will have positive and far-reaching effects on human civilization and the well-being of humankind.
This is a good editorial to read to understand Chinas commitment to science and technology and its willingness to follow through on its rhetoric even at a financially difficult time.
The Computing Community Consortium is looking for help with a brainstorming exercise. Here’s what they have in mind:
Identify about a dozen game-changing advances from computing research conducted in the past 20 years. Heres what we mean:
The advance needs to be “game changing,”in the sense of dramatically altering how we think about computing and its applications.
The importance of the advance needs to be obvious and easily appreciated by a wide audience.
There needs to be a clear tie to computing research (or to infrastructure initiatives that build upon research and were sponsored by computing research organizations).
We’re particularly interested in highlighting the impact of federally-funded university-based research.
To start the conversation, they’ve picked four examples:
The Internet and the World Wide Web as we know them today
Search
Cluster Computing
Computational Science
Agree? Disagree? Have others to suggest? You can do it all by heading to the thread on the CCC Blog and adding your two (or more) cents.
Please use the Category and Archive Filters below, to find older posts. Or you may also use the search bar.
More Detail on 2009 House Dem Stimulus and Recovery Plan
/In: Economic Stimulus and Recovery, FY09 Appropriations, Policy /by Peter HarshaThe House Appropriations Committee has released the bill text (pdf) and the accompanying committee report (pdf) for the Stimulus and Recovery Plan released today. They provide a little finer view of what’s actually in the stimulus bill. But ultimately, the House appropriators and leadership have left some discretion to the agency management to decide how to spend the new funding, which is probably a good thing. In summary, though, this looks awfully good to us and will likely go a long way towards recharging the Nation’s innovation engine.
Here’s what we know:
The Department of Energy — The Office of Science would see an increase of $2 billion under this plan. Called out specifically in the bill (but not in the accompanying report) is a $100 million increase for the Advanced Scientific Computing Research program. The only other program in Science to get a specific call-out is the brand new Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA-E), which would receive $400 million. The rest is presumably up to the Director’s discretion.
Additionally in DOE Energy Programs, the Smart Grid Investment Program, which would support efforts to add IT and other intelligence to the power grid, would receive a $4.5 billion increase under the plan.
The National Science Foundation — NSF would see an increase of $3 billion overall (so, it would become an ~ $9 billion agency, for one year, at least — more on that below). Of the $3 billion, $2.5 billion would go to the Research and Related Activities Account, home of NSF’s core research efforts. Of that $2.5 billion, 300 million would go to the Major Research Instrumentation program and an additional $200 million for academic research facilities modernization. This leaves an additional $2.0 billion to be spread among the research directorates for their core programs!
NSF’s Education and Human Resources program would see a $100 million boost — $60 million for Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarships and $40 million to the Math and Science Partnerships program.
NSF’s Major Research Equipment and Facilities Construction account would see a boost of $400 million to start “approved projects” or projects that are close to completing their design review, though none are named in the bill or the report.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology — NIST would see a boost of $100 million to its core research programs, plus another $100 million to be split between the Technology Innovation Program (TIP – the revamped Advanced Technology Program), and $30 million for the Manufacturing Extension Partnership. In addition, NIST would get $300 million for facilities repair and construction, so maybe they’ll actually be able to keep that $100 million for core research, instead of using it to pay for broken buildings or ATP/TIP/MEP.
The National Institutes of Health — NIH would receive $1.5 billion for grants to improve university research facilities and another $1.5 billion in new research funding.
So, this all looks really good to us. However, in our meetings with congressional staff over the last couple of weeks, there has been some concern about managing expectations about the sustainability of any of this funding beyond the stimulus. There are no promises that this stimulus funding will establish a new baseline funding level for these science agencies. There is the possibility that this truly is “one and done.” The report language doesn’t speak to that directly, but seems to suggest that the idea with this influx of research funding in what was thought to be simply an “infrastructure” bill is to reestablish a trajectory towards the doubling targets in the America COMPETES Act. If that’s the case, we should expect that future appropriations bills will start with a funding level of $
98 billion for NSF, for example (because $1 billion of the $3 billion increase is for a “one-time” infrastructure investment, while the remaining $2 billion is a research investment), and not revert back to the $6 billion pre-stimulus level. Hard to know exactly what the intent is and it’s hard to reach the appropriations staff to hear it from them directly. So what we have is the language for NSF, which is posted below for your own interpretation.In other news, the “pre-conferencing” — or the bulk of negotiations between the Senate and House over differing priorities — for the FY 2009 omnibus appropriations bill is done, but the leadership is holding off moving it until after the stimulus is finished. We’re getting mixed signals on that one, too. While it’s likely the FY 09 Omnibus will include funding for science above the FY 08 levels (which were flat or a cut compared to FY 07), it might not be as much as either the House or Senate appropriations committees have separately agreed on in early versions of the bill because of the need to pay for other significant disagreements elsewhere in the bill. A dispute over what the Senate percieves as a $500 million shortfall in funding for the U.S. Census in the House version of the bill is one such sticking point that could impact science funding levels.
And then there’s the matter of the FY 10 budget, which will be released in skeletal form in early February and then fleshed out significantly by the new Administration in April. If the FY 10 budget numbers use the stimulus-increased numbers as the new baseline — if they ignore the FY 09 approps numbers, which were marked up pre-stimulus, in other words — then we really will be on the trajectory to realize the promise of COMPETES. If, however, they use the FY 09 approps levels as the baseline for FY 10, then it will mean that the stimulus funding for research was just a one-time bump, and we’ll likely have a near impossible task getting anywhere near those numbers again in FY10.
In any case, that’s what we know from a couple quick reads of the bill and report and conversations with congressional staff over the last week or so. None of this is a done deal until the ink is dry, and there will be much fighting about the final program levels before this is passed sometime between President’s Day and St. Patrick’s Day…. but it’s a very very nice place to start.
More detail as we learn more. Oh, and the NSF report language follows after the jump.
Read more →
Initial Stimulus Summary Released
/In: American Competitiveness Initiative, Economic Stimulus and Recovery, Policy, Research /by MelissaNorrThe House Democratic leadership has released an official stimulus summary and it looks great. It includes $10 billion in new spending for science, including $3 billion in new money for NSF — “including $2 billion for expanding employment opportunities in fundamental science and engineering to meet environmental challenges and to improve global economic competitiveness, $400 million to build major research facilities that perform cutting edge science, $300 million for major research equipment shared by institutions of higher education and other scientists, $200 million to repair and modernize science and engineering research facilities at the nations institutions of higher education and other science labs, and $100 million is also included to improve instruction in science, math and engineering” — and $6 billion for broadband deployment.
Here is a PDF of the summary and we’ll have more details on this as it begins moving forward.
Science: Physicist John Holdren to be Named Science Advisor
/In: Policy /by Peter HarshaAccording to Science Magazine’s Eli Kintisch, physicist John Holdren, from Harvard’s Kennedy School and director of the Woods Hole Research Center, will be nominated Science Advisor to the President by president-elect Barack Obama on Saturday.
Here’s some background from Science:
We’ll have more as we learn more….
Pelosi, Holt Reiterate Support for Science
/In: Economic Stimulus and Recovery, Funding, FY09 Appropriations, Policy /by MelissaNorrSpeaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Congressman Rush Holt (D-NJ) spoke of their intent to increase federal support for science at Princeton University yesterday as part of the universitys Innovation Agenda roundtable. Both Pelosi and Holt have been vocal in their support of basic science research in the past but under the Bush Administration have struggled to translate that support into appropriations levels that match the America COMPETES authorization levels. Its a potential problem moving forward as well as Pelosi stated:
Holt, a physicist and former Princeton staff member, pointed out the economic importance of research, stating:
Princeton has a press release with more details on the event here.
Great DOD S&T Video on the Importance of Basic Research
/In: General /by Peter HarshaGreat tagline… “The Science of Victory”
(via Defense Tech)
Computer Science for Future DARPA Directors?
/In: Research /by Peter HarshaCarnegie Mellon CS Chair (and CRA Government Affairs Chair) Peter Lee and Berkeley’s Randy Katz have been doing some thinking about the sorts of problems in computing it might be useful for a future DARPA Director to understand. Their inspiration comes from a book written by Katz’s colleague, Richard Muller, called Physics for Future Presidents, which describes the “science behind the headlines — the tools of terrorists, the dangers of nuclear power, and the reality of global warming.” Katz and Lee want to know: “Shouldn’t there also be a computer science (or, more broadly, an IT) version of this book?”
They believe there should and have proposed one that
They’ve generated some interest in such a project from the agency and are looking for further input from others within the community.
I think this is a great idea and hope you’ll visit Lee’s blog and add your thoughts. The time to produce something that might be useful to the new administration is very short, obviously, but the opportunity to get the attention of the new agency leadership (whomever it may turn out to be) focused on important, compelling issues in computing makes it worth the effort.
Google Talks: Tech Policy
/In: Events, Misc., Policy /by MelissaNorrGoogle hosted a town hall style panel discussion today at its Washington, DC office. The discussion was based on technology policy in 2009 with a new Administration and Congress but focused almost exclusively on broadband deployment and a smart electric grid. The panel had six speakers: Gigi Sohn (President, Public Knowledge), Jennifer Canty (CEO, Dyscern), Ben Scott (Policy Director, Free Press), Stephen Ezell (Senior Analyst, ITIF), Harry Wingo (Policy Counsel, Google), and Michael Oldak (Senior Director, Edison Electric Institute). Questions were taken from a moderator, from the audience, and from online submissions through Google Moderator.
The consensus seemed to be that broadband availability needs to improve throughout the country but that broadband adoption by consumers was also a large issue that needed to be tackled. Additionally, regulations need to be implemented to keep the Internet as an open system without false controls.
The other topic discussed was the need for a smart, efficient electricity infrastructure that uses alternative, renewable energy sources and that has the ability to regulate energy use during peak times.
The discussion was recorded and is supposed to be available on YouTube, however, it does not seem to have been posted yet. Well provide the link when it becomes available.
Google CEO Speaks On Government and Technology
/In: CRA, People, Policy, R&D in the Press /by MelissaNorrCRA member Google Inc.’s CEO Eric Schmidt gave a speech yesterday in DC regarding government and technology. Schmidt is a member of President-elect Obama’s transition team but he focused more on issues that the technology community (including CRA) has been talking about for years, including research funding. The Washington Times has all the details but here’s a brief quote on research:
Check out the article for more on what Schmidt talked about or listen to the speech at the New America Foundation (mp3 format download).
Science Magazine Editorial by Wen Jibao
/In: American Competitiveness Initiative, Diversity in Computing, Funding, Misc., Policy /by MelissaNorrScience Magazine recently published an editorial by Wen Jibao, (sub. reqd.) Premier of Chinas State Council on Chinas science and technology initiatives. Weve been saying here for years that China is very serious about becoming a world leader in science and technology. The editorial states China is now engaged in a modernization drive unprecedented in the history of humankind. Other important highlights include:
This is a good editorial to read to understand Chinas commitment to science and technology and its willingness to follow through on its rhetoric even at a financially difficult time.
CCC Looking for “Game Changers” in Computing, Picks Four of its Own
/In: Computing Community Consortium (CCC) /by Peter HarshaThe Computing Community Consortium is looking for help with a brainstorming exercise. Here’s what they have in mind:
To start the conversation, they’ve picked four examples:
Agree? Disagree? Have others to suggest? You can do it all by heading to the thread on the CCC Blog and adding your two (or more) cents.