The National Coordinating Office for Networking and Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD) — the ~$3 billion, 14 agency program that constitutes the federal effort in IT research and development — is looking for comment by the end of September on its draft plan for advanced networking research and development. Here’s the notice:
We are seeking your help in revising the Draft Federal Plan for Advanced Networking Research and Development. This document was developed to provide guidance to Federal agency networking programs on networking research priorities over the next 7-8 years. We seek your views on priority areas of networking research and development. Could you, or someone knowledgeable of networking needs in your organization, please review the draft plan and provide us with comments by September 30, 2007?
In January 2007, Dr. John Marburger, Director of OSTP, charged the NSTC Committee on Technology to establish the Interagency Task Force on Advanced Networking (ITFAN). The Charge and Terms of Reference directed ITFAN to develop an interagency Federal Plan for Advanced Networking Research and Development to provide input to the FY 2009 Federal budget planning cycle. A Draft Interim Report was delivered May 15.
To finalize this report we are seeking inputs from the wide spectrum of the networking research and development communities including university, Federal laboratory, and commercial researchers and developers. The final report will provide input to the Federal agencies for the FY 2010 and beyond Federal budget planning cycles. The report including the Charge, Terms of Reference, and findings can be found at the Web site: www.nitrd.gov/advancednetworkingplan
or at: www.nitrd.gov under Whats New, Solicitation for comment
In addition to providing the Draft Interim Report, this Web site provides guidance and formats for providing comments.
Please provide, by September 30, 2007, your comments, suggestions, and additions on the information and networking research priorities to finalize this report. Your comments and perspective are important to provide a broad understanding and perspective on future networking needs and priorities.
If you’ve got something to say about the federal government’s approach to networking research, this is your chance….
The BizTech blog at the Wall Street Journal had a good post today on women in IT. Some of the comments by readers are interesting but some of them are clearly part of the problem. Check it out here.
It’s done! It’s done! By now, I expect that everyone has heard that both the House and Senate have agreed on the conference report for H.R. 2272, The America COMPETES Act and that the measure is headed to the President for his signature.
Word comes from the White House today that the President will sign the bill in a small signing-ceremony tomorrow with the Members of Congress who were instrumental in moving the bill along. While it’s a bit of a bummer that the President isn’t making a big “to-do” about this with representatives from industry and academia and lots of press — it does, after all, enact many portions of his own American Competitiveness Initiative, and it’s also an issue that polls really well, a fact you’d think would be important to both a Congress and a President who could use a few good examples of positive, bi-partisan legislation to show off — the important thing is it’s getting signed. After nearly two years of wrangling over this particular set of proposals — and a lot longer than that to get the Administration and the Congress to understand the import of the problems addressed — the President will sign the bill and its provisions will be law.
That deserves some kudos, back-patting, and maybe one or two loud “whoo-hoo’s.”
Especially because this bill has a lot of good things in it. As Cameron Wilson points out over on the USACM Technology Policy Blog, the bill takes two basic routes to fostering the innovation the country will require to stay competitive in an increasingly global world. It addresses federal support for research — both authorizing large amounts of new funding for three key science agencies (National Science Foundation, NIST, and the Department of Energy’s Office of Science), setting a target to double the agencies budgets over 7 years, and by creating a new high-risk research agency at the Department of Energy (called the Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy, or ARPA-E, in a nod to the DARPA-like character Congress hopes the agency will adopt). And the bill addresses a diversity of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) Education efforts. For these, I’ll simply steal what Cameron has already written:
The bill authorizes $43.3 billion over the next three fiscal years for STEM education programs across the federal government. The variety is impressive ranging from new k-12 teacher programs to new opportunities for undergraduate and graduate STEM students. Here is a sampling of the proposals:
Expands the Robert Noyce program which links students in STEM fields up with education degrees so they can teach STEM in K-12;
Authorizes two new competitive grant programs that will enable partnerships to implement courses of study in mathematics, science, engineering, technology or critical foreign languages in ways that lead to a baccalaureate degree with concurrent teacher certification;
Authorizes competitive grants to increase the number of teachers serving high-need schools and expand access to AP and IB classes and to increase the number of qualified AP and IB teachers in high-need schools; and,
Expands early career grant programs and provides additional support for outstanding young investigators at both NSF and DOE.
In addition, the legislation has several provisions that expand outreach to women and minorities in STEM fields. The lack of females and minorities has been a key problem in computing, so this is another welcome effort.
In addition, the bill contains two particular provisions I wanted to highlight because they’re of particular interest to the computing community:
The first is Section 7024, “High-performance Computing and Networking” (if you’re following along at home (pdf)) — the inclusion of the High-Performance Computing Research and Development Act that has been much discussed on these pages since some of the earliest days of this blog. The bill has been proposed in various forms in every session of Congress since the 106th (we’re now in the 110th) and has never gained the full approval of the Congress — almost always for reasons unrelated to the bill. The bill has, in sessions past, been approved by the House only to languish in the Senate due to jurisdictional fights over other bills, approved by the House Science committee only to run afoul of budget disputes with the GOP Leadership, and been held hostage over fights about NASA between the House and Senate. In fact, until the approval of the conference report last week, it was assumed that this version HPC R&D Act might meet a similar fate as word escaped that some of the Senate conferees thought its inclusion might cause some jurisdictional friction between two Senate committees (Energy and Commerce, who both claim HPC jurisdiction). But those problems were resolved, and the bill includes the full House-approved language, plus an extra section that authorizes efforts in “Advanced Information and Communications Technology Research” at NSF, including research on:
affordable broadband access, including wireless technologies;
network security and reliability;
communications interoperability;,
networking protocols and architectures, including resilience to outages or attacks;
trusted software;
privacy;
nanoelectronics for communications applicaitons;
low-power communications electronics;
implementation of equitable access to natinoal advanced fiber optic research and educational networks in noncontiguous States; and
other areas the Director [of NSF] finds appropriate.
The provision also allows NSF to fund multiyear, multidisciplinary “Centers for Communications Research” to “generate innovative approaches to problems in information and communications technology research.”
Otherwise, the HPC R&D Act remains essentially unchanged, which means it includes two provisions we particularly like: it requires the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy to develop and maintain a research, development, and deployment roadmap for the provision of federal high-performance computing systems; and there’s now an explicit requirement that the President’s advisory committee for IT (now PCAST) review not only the goals of the federal Networking and Information Technology Research and Development program, but the funding levels as well and report the results of that review to Congress every two years.
The second noteworthy provision in the COMPETES bill is one (Sec. 7012) that was originally included in the House-passed NSF Authorization Act of 2007 (H.R. 1867), that should help clarify NSF’s role in supporting efforts that seek to encourage the participation of women and underrepresented groups in computing, science, technology, engineering and mathematics. As we noted back in March, this is a response to long-standing concerns from CRA and other members of the computing and science communities about NSF’s role. Basically, NSF’s general policy is to only support efforts that represent novel approaches. Yet, what’s often needed in these cases isn’t a novel approach, just a sustained one. The House Science and Technology Committee agreed and included language in the NSF Authorization that addresses the issue by allowing the Director of NSF to review such programs one year before their grants expire and issue extensions of up to three years without recompetition to those efforts that appear to be successful at meeting their stated goals. It also emphasizes that the committee believes this sort of effort — maintaining the strength and vitality of the U.S. science and engineering workforce — is appropriately part of the agency’s mission. So, we’re thrilled that the provision survived the conference and will become law with the President’s signature tomorrow.
This is, of course, not the end of innovation efforts in the Congress or the Administration. While this bill sets nice, juicy funding targets for NSF, NIST and DOE Office of Science, it doesn’t actually appropriate a single dime, so the focus will continue to be on House and Senate appropriators as they wind their way through the appropriations process later this year. We’re still expecting a meltdown in that process, so nothing is guaranteed, despite all the supportive words from Congress and the President. And there will be further efforts to address some of the pieces of the various innovation agendas that aren’t represented in H.R. 2272 — like a permanent extension of the R&D tax credit.
But for now, I think it’s probably appropriate to take a deep breath and savor this win for a day or two. This is a big victory for the science community and a long-time coming for those of us who have been working these issues around the Hill over the better part of the last decade. We commend the President and the Congress for having the vision and the commitment to push ahead on these issues, even when it didn’t seem as politically popular as it is today. And we commend the members of the science community for speaking up on these issues, serving on the advisory committees, and partipating in the grassroots efforts to make Congress aware of the issues. Now, just make sure you go out and do world-leading science — take risks, think audaciously…demonstrate as you’ve done so well in the past why America needs to continue to be an incubator for invention, discovery, and innovation.
And keep it tuned here for all the details… 🙂 Update: (8/9/07) — It’s official!:
President George W. Bush signs H.R. 2272, The America Competes Act, Thursday, Aug. 9, 2007, in the Oval Office. Pictured with the President are, from left: Director John Marburger of the Office of Science and Technology Policy; Senator Jeff Bingaman of N.M.; Congressman Bart Gordon of Tenn.; and Senator Pete Domenici of N.M. White House photo by Chris Greenberg Update2: (8/10/07) — Here are the President’s comments about the bill and ACI, as well as an OSTP-produced fact sheet.
The long effort to address concerns about America’s future competitiveness and capacity for innovation may finally result in a bill.
For the last two years, there’s been a fairly constant drumbeat in Congress, the Administration, and federal advisory bodies over the need to prop up the U.S. innovation infrastructure — by strengthening the federal investment in basic research in the physical sciences (including computing, mathematics and engineering), by investing in new math and science teachers, by increasing the participation of US students in math and science, and by creating new research organizations to help nurture an innovative culture in some federal research agencies. There’s been a whole suite of different bills proposed to address these proposals — many inspired by the National Academies Rising Above the Gathering Storm report, or many of the other similar reports that have come out of the scientific community and American industry over the past several years. Unfortunately, though many of these bills had passed either the House or the Senate last session, none had passed both and gone on to the President.
But, that could change. As we’ve noted previously, this suite of competitiveness proposals has coaliesced into two different pieces of legislation, one House bill and one Senate bill — both essentially omnibus bills that are collections of most of the previous proposals. The Senate passed its version, S. 761 The America COMPETES Act, in May by bundling a whole bunch of proposals together and having the Senate Leader bring the package directly to the Senate floor, bypassing the Senate committee structure (which would’ve tied things up for months). The House took a more piecemeal approach, passing the “10,000 Teachers, 10 Million Minds” Science and Math Authorization Act (HR 362), the Sowing the Seeds Through Science and Engineering Act (HR 363), the High Performance Computing Research and Development Act (HR 1068), the National Science Foundation Authorization Act of 2007 (HR 1867), and the Technology Innovation and Manufacturing Stimulation Act (HR 1868), one-by-one (by overwhelming margins) over the course of several months, then combining them into one giant omnibus bill “The 21st Century Competitiveness Act” (HR 2272), which they passed by voice vote. The plan was to conference HR 2272 and S. 761 and work out a compromise bill both chambers could approve. It appears that negotiation is nearing its end and a final bill may be on its way.
We just got a notice of a meeting with Speaker Pelosi scheduled for tomorrow at which the House and Senate leadership will discuss the conference agreement. We know that the bills have been exhaustively “pre-conferenced” with the various committee staff over the last couple of weeks. The official conferees — the Representatives and Senators who were appointed to serve on the conference committee — will meet tonight to hammer out the final details. So, this time tomorrow we should have a good sense of what made the bill and what didn’t.
We’ll have all the details as they are released, of course. There are some provisions in the the House and Senate bills about which the computing research community has had particular interest. More detail on those later. But for now, it’s nice to see a light at the end of the tunnel. Congress — and the Administration — has spent a lot of time over the last two years talking about the importance of bolstering the chain of innovation that helps keep America a world leader, but they don’t have much to show for it. It appears that could change soon. Update: (7/30/07 10 pm ET) — The conference committee has reached agreement on a compromise bill. It’s massive — 470 pages — but you can poke through it here (pdf) if you’re so inclined. We’ll have details on the bill in the next day or so, but after a brief look through the bill it’s fair to say there’s a lot of good news for the community in there — including the High Performance Computing R&D Act, which has died every previous Congress since the 106th (this is the 110th). So keep it tuned here for more detail….
President Bush yesterday presented awards to the 2005 and 2006 National Medal of Science and Technology Recipients, and in his remarks reiterated his support for a strong federal role in support of fundamental research. There’s no guarantee, of course, that the President’s strong support now will help alleviate the coming appropriations meltdown (that could threaten science funding gains), but at least it appears that his heart is in the right place. The full remarks are here, but I thought I’d just highlight a bit of them:
The work of these Laureates demonstrates that innovation is vital to a better future for our country and the world. In America, the primary engine of innovation is the private sector. But government can help by encouraging the basic research that gives rise to promising new thought and products. So that’s why I’ve worked with some in this room and around our country to develop and propose the American Competitiveness Initiative. Over ten years, this initiative will double the federal government’s commitment to the most critical, basic research programs in physical sciences. Last year the Congress provided more than $10 billion, and that’s just a start. And I call on leaders of both political parties to fully fund this initiative for the good of the country.
Maintaining our global leadership also requires a first-class education system. There are many things that American schools are doing right — including insisting on accountability for every single child. There are also some areas where we need to improve. And so as members work to reauthorize the No Child Left Behind Act, one of their top priorities has got to be to strengthen math and science education.
One way to do that is to create an “adjunct teachers corps” of math and science professionals all aiming to bring their expertise into American classrooms. It’s not really what the aim is — the aim is to make it clear to young Americans that being in science and engineering is okay; it’s cool; it’s a smart thing to do. And so for those of you who are involved with inspiring youngsters, thank you for what you’re doing. I appreciate you encouraging the next generation to follow in your footsteps. And I ask that Congress fully fund the adjunct teacher corps, so you can have some help as you go out to inspire.
One of the many reasons that I am an optimistic fellow, and I am, is because I understand that this country is a nation of discovery and enterprise. And that spirit is really strong in America today. I found it interesting that one of today’s Laureates, Dr. Leslie Geddes, is 86 years old and continues to teach and conduct research at Purdue University. Even more interesting is what he had to say. He said, “I wouldn’t know what else to do. I’m not done yet.” (Laughter.)
He’s right. He’s not done yet, because the promise of science and technology never runs out. With the imagination and determinations of Americans like our awardees today, our nation will continue to discover new possibilities and to develop new innovations, and build a better life for generations to come. And that’s what we’re here to celebrate.
More on the awards, including links to pictures of each awardee receiving their medal, is here.
Two developments of note today in the annual appropriations cycle. First, the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense will mark up its version of the FY 2008 Defense Appropriations Bill, which includes research funding for the various service and defense-wide accounts. We’ve gotten our first look at the funding levels for the Research, Development, Testing and Evaluation title of the bill in the Chairman’s mark, and they look pretty good for most of the accounts the computing research community might care about. In general, defense basic research accounts (6.1) are up vs. the President’s request, as are most of the computing-related applied research accounts (6.2). The remainder are funded at the President’s request.
DARPA does suffer an overall cut in the bill, however, related to the fact that the committee continues to have concerns with the rate of spending at the agency. DARPA has been slow to execute programs for which it has been appropriated money either because a) the agency has been a careful steward of taxpayer dollars or b) because programs have become bottlenecked in the Director’s office, depending on whether you believe the agency’s explanation or the feeling among some congressional committee staff. As a result the committee reduced funding in the Biological Warfare, Electronics Technology, Advanced Aerospace Systems and Land Warfare Technology program elements. As a result of this spend-it-or-lose-it DC culture, the cuts would cause DARPA to lose $80 million vs. FY 2007, a reduction of 2.6 percent.
For a more-detailed look at the different accounts, take a gander at the table included in the jump. (Click on the “Continue Reading” link below). We’ll update the table as we get additional detail.
Keep in mind, however, that these numbers are just a first step. The committee needs to approve them, then the whole House, then the Senate needs to approve its version, then a compromise version between the chambers, and then, after all that, it’s likely that the President will veto the bill for being too generous. (More on that below….) So, consider these numbers a starting point in the inevitable negotiation that will occur between both the Senate and the President. But, it’s a good place to start.
Speaking of vetoes, the Administration also issued a Statement of Administration Policy (SAP) yesterday on the FY 2008 Commerce, Justice, Science Appropriations bill that the House will begin debating today, indicating that the President intends to veto the bill should the version the House will likely approve land on his desk. The CJS Appropriations bill, as we’ve discussed previously, contains funding for some science agencies we care about — in particular, the National Science Foundation and National Institute of Standards and Technology (as well as NASA and NOAA). The bill includes healthy increases for both NSF and NIST, in line with both the President’s American Competitiveness Initiative and the Democratic Innovation Agenda.
Despite issuing the veto threat, the President does commend the bill for its support of NSF and NIST’s research accounts, but takes issue with increases the House Appropriations Committee provided for NSF’s Education and Human Resources directorate beyond his request. The SAP also criticizes excessive earmarking in the bill and bluntly states that because the HAC failed to demonstrate offsets for the increased spending, he will veto the bill if presented to him.
This is not terribly surprising. Facing a Democratically-controlled Congress for the first time, it was likely that the President would be drawn into a political fight over spending, and his only leverage in that fight is the veto. While Congress chugs away at passing the 12 annual appropriations bills necessary to fund the operations of government, its unlikely many (if any) will pass with the majority required to override any potential presidential veto. Indeed, in the House, the “magic number” for the President is 145 — he needs just 145 out of 201 Republican members of the House to sustain any veto and provide him significant leverage in the spending negotiations that will follow. So far, none of the bills passed so far (Interior, Homeland Security, State-Foreign Operations) have had “veto-proof” majorities, so the President has retained his leverage.
It’s likely the appropriations process is again headed for a train-wreck, just as in previous years. The final form of this particular train-wreck isn’t yet known, but I tend to agree with others who expect that the end game will involve another omnibus appropriations bill in which, despite strong support for science programs in Congress and by the President, those programs will be threatened by across-the-board cuts required to get spending down to a level that the President will sign. The focus, then, of many of us in the science advocacy community once again will be on protecting the increases for science agencies approved by Congress and supported by the President in a bill in which they are just one of hundreds, if not thousands, of competing programs. The good news is that we’ve had some success with this approach in the past….
But for now, the funding levels included in both the Defense Appropriations and Commerce, Justice, Science Appropriations are powerful symbols of the support R&D issues have in Congress, even if its likely that those levels might get modified in the coming months for reasons mostly unrelated to Congress’ support of science.
We’ll, of course, have all the details here as they emerge.
The National Science Foundation has published two reports on American research and the decline of journals publishing it. The reports show that beginning in 1992 journals began to publish less American based research with a corresponding rise in research from Europe and Asia being published. In 1992, the share of American research published in journals was 37 percent and in 2003 it was 30 percent. The reports give a number of possible reasons for the decline, including the increase in scientific research being performed in Europe and Asia as well as more international collaboration on research in all fields.
Both reports are interesting and worth a read along with an article about them in Inside Higher Education. A third report on the topic is planned.
NSFs CISE Directorate awarded the first two Distinguished Education Fellow grants today to Dr. Owen Astrachan and Dr. Peter Denning. The awards are part of the CISE Pathways to Revitalized Undergraduate Computing Education (CPATH) program that CISE began last year.
New CISE Assistant Director Jeannette Wing said that CISE supports the revitalization of undergraduate education in computer science because the community needs to show that computing is about more than programming or a machine in order to attract the best minds to the field.
Astrachan, of Duke University, received his grant to explore case-based approaches to teaching computer science. Denning, of the Naval Postgraduate School, received his grant to focus on defining the principles of computer science and to distill the principles into modules that can be used in teaching.
Both awards are $250,000 grants over 2 years.
CRA participated once again in the Coalition for National Science Funding’s annual Science Exposition on Capitol Hill last week and it was a great success. The event, a science fair for Congress and staff, had 35 booths manned by researchers representing universities and scientific societies featuring some of the important research funded by the National Science Foundation. This year CRA was ably represented by Lydia Kavraki, a computer science professor from Rice University, whose research into using computational tools to solve problems in a range of areas such as biology was a hit with all those who stopped at the booth.
The exhibit drew a record crowd with 493 attendees, 11 of whom were members of Congress such as Rep. Dan Lipinski (IL) who stopped to talk to Dr. Kavraki about her work. There were also a number of NSF staff members and a large contingent of Congressional staff, particularly from the House Science and Technology Committee.
As weve stated before in this space, personal visits to members of Congress and their staff are vital to getting the message about the importance of computing research out. CRA holds or participates in Congressional visit days several times throughout the year and we are always looking for participants. If you are interested in coming to Washington to visit your Representative and Senators, please contact Melissa Norr at mnorr at cra.org.
The National Research Council of the National Academies of Science released a new report on cyber security and research called “Toward a Safer and More Secure Cyberspace.” The report is available for free online at the National Academies Press.
The report lists three broad categories that lack of cyber security falls into:
First is the threat of catastrophe-a cyberattack, especially in conjunction with a physical attack, could result in thousands of deaths and many billions of dollars of damage in a very short time. Second is frictional drag on important economic and security-related processes. Today, insecurities in cyberspace systems and networks allow adversaries (in particular, criminals) to extract billions of dollars in fraud and extortion-and force businesses to expend additional resources to defend themselves against these threats. If cyberspace does not become more secure, the citizens, businesses, and governments of tomorrow will continue to face similar pressures, and most likely on a greater scale. Third, concerns about insecurity may inhibit the use of IT in the future and thus lead to a self-denial of the benefits that IT brings, benefits that will be needed for the national competitiveness of the United States as well as for national and homeland security.
It also lists a set of ten provisions that could form a Cyber Security Bill of Rights. The provisions are:
I. Availability of system and network resources to legitimate users. II. Easy and convenient recovery from successful attacks. III. Control over and knowledge of one’s own computing environment. IV. Confidentiality of stored information and information exchange. V. Authentication and provenance. VI. The technological capability to exercise fine-grained control over the flow of information in and through systems. VII. Security in using computing directly or indirectly in important applications, including financial, health care, and electoral transactions and real-time remote control of devices that interact with physical processes. VIII. The ability to access any source of information (e.g., e-mail, Web page, file) safely. IX. Awareness of what security is actually being delivered by a system or component. X. Justice for security problems caused by another party.
Please use the Category and Archive Filters below, to find older posts. Or you may also use the search bar.
Feds Seeking Input on Networking Research Plan
/In: Policy, Research /by Peter HarshaThe National Coordinating Office for Networking and Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD) — the ~$3 billion, 14 agency program that constitutes the federal effort in IT research and development — is looking for comment by the end of September on its draft plan for advanced networking research and development. Here’s the notice:
If you’ve got something to say about the federal government’s approach to networking research, this is your chance….
Women and IT in BizTech
/In: Diversity in Computing /by MelissaNorrThe BizTech blog at the Wall Street Journal had a good post today on women in IT. Some of the comments by readers are interesting but some of them are clearly part of the problem. Check it out here.
President Will Sign COMPETES Act, Will Be Law Tomorrow!
/In: American Competitiveness Initiative, Diversity in Computing, Funding, Policy, R&D in the Press /by Peter HarshaIt’s done! It’s done! By now, I expect that everyone has heard that both the House and Senate have agreed on the conference report for H.R. 2272, The America COMPETES Act and that the measure is headed to the President for his signature.
Word comes from the White House today that the President will sign the bill in a small signing-ceremony tomorrow with the Members of Congress who were instrumental in moving the bill along. While it’s a bit of a bummer that the President isn’t making a big “to-do” about this with representatives from industry and academia and lots of press — it does, after all, enact many portions of his own American Competitiveness Initiative, and it’s also an issue that polls really well, a fact you’d think would be important to both a Congress and a President who could use a few good examples of positive, bi-partisan legislation to show off — the important thing is it’s getting signed. After nearly two years of wrangling over this particular set of proposals — and a lot longer than that to get the Administration and the Congress to understand the import of the problems addressed — the President will sign the bill and its provisions will be law.
That deserves some kudos, back-patting, and maybe one or two loud “whoo-hoo’s.”
Especially because this bill has a lot of good things in it. As Cameron Wilson points out over on the USACM Technology Policy Blog, the bill takes two basic routes to fostering the innovation the country will require to stay competitive in an increasingly global world. It addresses federal support for research — both authorizing large amounts of new funding for three key science agencies (National Science Foundation, NIST, and the Department of Energy’s Office of Science), setting a target to double the agencies budgets over 7 years, and by creating a new high-risk research agency at the Department of Energy (called the Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy, or ARPA-E, in a nod to the DARPA-like character Congress hopes the agency will adopt). And the bill addresses a diversity of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) Education efforts. For these, I’ll simply steal what Cameron has already written:
In addition, the bill contains two particular provisions I wanted to highlight because they’re of particular interest to the computing community:
The first is Section 7024, “High-performance Computing and Networking” (if you’re following along at home (pdf)) — the inclusion of the High-Performance Computing Research and Development Act that has been much discussed on these pages since some of the earliest days of this blog. The bill has been proposed in various forms in every session of Congress since the 106th (we’re now in the 110th) and has never gained the full approval of the Congress — almost always for reasons unrelated to the bill. The bill has, in sessions past, been approved by the House only to languish in the Senate due to jurisdictional fights over other bills, approved by the House Science committee only to run afoul of budget disputes with the GOP Leadership, and been held hostage over fights about NASA between the House and Senate. In fact, until the approval of the conference report last week, it was assumed that this version HPC R&D Act might meet a similar fate as word escaped that some of the Senate conferees thought its inclusion might cause some jurisdictional friction between two Senate committees (Energy and Commerce, who both claim HPC jurisdiction). But those problems were resolved, and the bill includes the full House-approved language, plus an extra section that authorizes efforts in “Advanced Information and Communications Technology Research” at NSF, including research on:
The provision also allows NSF to fund multiyear, multidisciplinary “Centers for Communications Research” to “generate innovative approaches to problems in information and communications technology research.”
Otherwise, the HPC R&D Act remains essentially unchanged, which means it includes two provisions we particularly like: it requires the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy to develop and maintain a research, development, and deployment roadmap for the provision of federal high-performance computing systems; and there’s now an explicit requirement that the President’s advisory committee for IT (now PCAST) review not only the goals of the federal Networking and Information Technology Research and Development program, but the funding levels as well and report the results of that review to Congress every two years.
The second noteworthy provision in the COMPETES bill is one (Sec. 7012) that was originally included in the House-passed NSF Authorization Act of 2007 (H.R. 1867), that should help clarify NSF’s role in supporting efforts that seek to encourage the participation of women and underrepresented groups in computing, science, technology, engineering and mathematics. As we noted back in March, this is a response to long-standing concerns from CRA and other members of the computing and science communities about NSF’s role. Basically, NSF’s general policy is to only support efforts that represent novel approaches. Yet, what’s often needed in these cases isn’t a novel approach, just a sustained one. The House Science and Technology Committee agreed and included language in the NSF Authorization that addresses the issue by allowing the Director of NSF to review such programs one year before their grants expire and issue extensions of up to three years without recompetition to those efforts that appear to be successful at meeting their stated goals. It also emphasizes that the committee believes this sort of effort — maintaining the strength and vitality of the U.S. science and engineering workforce — is appropriately part of the agency’s mission. So, we’re thrilled that the provision survived the conference and will become law with the President’s signature tomorrow.
This is, of course, not the end of innovation efforts in the Congress or the Administration. While this bill sets nice, juicy funding targets for NSF, NIST and DOE Office of Science, it doesn’t actually appropriate a single dime, so the focus will continue to be on House and Senate appropriators as they wind their way through the appropriations process later this year. We’re still expecting a meltdown in that process, so nothing is guaranteed, despite all the supportive words from Congress and the President. And there will be further efforts to address some of the pieces of the various innovation agendas that aren’t represented in H.R. 2272 — like a permanent extension of the R&D tax credit.
But for now, I think it’s probably appropriate to take a deep breath and savor this win for a day or two. This is a big victory for the science community and a long-time coming for those of us who have been working these issues around the Hill over the better part of the last decade. We commend the President and the Congress for having the vision and the commitment to push ahead on these issues, even when it didn’t seem as politically popular as it is today. And we commend the members of the science community for speaking up on these issues, serving on the advisory committees, and partipating in the grassroots efforts to make Congress aware of the issues. Now, just make sure you go out and do world-leading science — take risks, think audaciously…demonstrate as you’ve done so well in the past why America needs to continue to be an incubator for invention, discovery, and innovation.
And keep it tuned here for all the details… 🙂
Update: (8/9/07) — It’s official!:
President George W. Bush signs H.R. 2272, The America Competes Act, Thursday, Aug. 9, 2007, in the Oval Office. Pictured with the President are, from left: Director John Marburger of the Office of Science and Technology Policy; Senator Jeff Bingaman of N.M.; Congressman Bart Gordon of Tenn.; and Senator Pete Domenici of N.M. White House photo by Chris Greenberg
Update2: (8/10/07) — Here are the President’s comments about the bill and ACI, as well as an OSTP-produced fact sheet.
Competitiveness Bills Wrapping Up?
/In: American Competitiveness Initiative, Diversity in Computing, Funding, Policy /by Peter HarshaThe long effort to address concerns about America’s future competitiveness and capacity for innovation may finally result in a bill.
For the last two years, there’s been a fairly constant drumbeat in Congress, the Administration, and federal advisory bodies over the need to prop up the U.S. innovation infrastructure — by strengthening the federal investment in basic research in the physical sciences (including computing, mathematics and engineering), by investing in new math and science teachers, by increasing the participation of US students in math and science, and by creating new research organizations to help nurture an innovative culture in some federal research agencies. There’s been a whole suite of different bills proposed to address these proposals — many inspired by the National Academies Rising Above the Gathering Storm report, or many of the other similar reports that have come out of the scientific community and American industry over the past several years. Unfortunately, though many of these bills had passed either the House or the Senate last session, none had passed both and gone on to the President.
But, that could change. As we’ve noted previously, this suite of competitiveness proposals has coaliesced into two different pieces of legislation, one House bill and one Senate bill — both essentially omnibus bills that are collections of most of the previous proposals. The Senate passed its version, S. 761 The America COMPETES Act, in May by bundling a whole bunch of proposals together and having the Senate Leader bring the package directly to the Senate floor, bypassing the Senate committee structure (which would’ve tied things up for months). The House took a more piecemeal approach, passing the “10,000 Teachers, 10 Million Minds” Science and Math Authorization Act (HR 362), the Sowing the Seeds Through Science and Engineering Act (HR 363), the High Performance Computing Research and Development Act (HR 1068), the National Science Foundation Authorization Act of 2007 (HR 1867), and the Technology Innovation and Manufacturing Stimulation Act (HR 1868), one-by-one (by overwhelming margins) over the course of several months, then combining them into one giant omnibus bill “The 21st Century Competitiveness Act” (HR 2272), which they passed by voice vote. The plan was to conference HR 2272 and S. 761 and work out a compromise bill both chambers could approve. It appears that negotiation is nearing its end and a final bill may be on its way.
We just got a notice of a meeting with Speaker Pelosi scheduled for tomorrow at which the House and Senate leadership will discuss the conference agreement. We know that the bills have been exhaustively “pre-conferenced” with the various committee staff over the last couple of weeks. The official conferees — the Representatives and Senators who were appointed to serve on the conference committee — will meet tonight to hammer out the final details. So, this time tomorrow we should have a good sense of what made the bill and what didn’t.
We’ll have all the details as they are released, of course. There are some provisions in the the House and Senate bills about which the computing research community has had particular interest. More detail on those later. But for now, it’s nice to see a light at the end of the tunnel. Congress — and the Administration — has spent a lot of time over the last two years talking about the importance of bolstering the chain of innovation that helps keep America a world leader, but they don’t have much to show for it. It appears that could change soon.
Update: (7/30/07 10 pm ET) — The conference committee has reached agreement on a compromise bill. It’s massive — 470 pages — but you can poke through it here (pdf) if you’re so inclined. We’ll have details on the bill in the next day or so, but after a brief look through the bill it’s fair to say there’s a lot of good news for the community in there — including the High Performance Computing R&D Act, which has died every previous Congress since the 106th (this is the 110th). So keep it tuned here for more detail….
President’s Remarks on Research and Innovation
/In: American Competitiveness Initiative, Funding, FY08 Appropriations, People, Research /by Peter HarshaPresident Bush yesterday presented awards to the 2005 and 2006 National Medal of Science and Technology Recipients, and in his remarks reiterated his support for a strong federal role in support of fundamental research. There’s no guarantee, of course, that the President’s strong support now will help alleviate the coming appropriations meltdown (that could threaten science funding gains), but at least it appears that his heart is in the right place. The full remarks are here, but I thought I’d just highlight a bit of them:
More on the awards, including links to pictures of each awardee receiving their medal, is here.
Appropriations Update — FY 08 Defense Approps and Commerce, Justice, Science
/In: American Competitiveness Initiative, Funding, FY08 Appropriations /by Peter HarshaTwo developments of note today in the annual appropriations cycle. First, the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense will mark up its version of the FY 2008 Defense Appropriations Bill, which includes research funding for the various service and defense-wide accounts. We’ve gotten our first look at the funding levels for the Research, Development, Testing and Evaluation title of the bill in the Chairman’s mark, and they look pretty good for most of the accounts the computing research community might care about. In general, defense basic research accounts (6.1) are up vs. the President’s request, as are most of the computing-related applied research accounts (6.2). The remainder are funded at the President’s request.
DARPA does suffer an overall cut in the bill, however, related to the fact that the committee continues to have concerns with the rate of spending at the agency. DARPA has been slow to execute programs for which it has been appropriated money either because a) the agency has been a careful steward of taxpayer dollars or b) because programs have become bottlenecked in the Director’s office, depending on whether you believe the agency’s explanation or the feeling among some congressional committee staff. As a result the committee reduced funding in the Biological Warfare, Electronics Technology, Advanced Aerospace Systems and Land Warfare Technology program elements. As a result of this spend-it-or-lose-it DC culture, the cuts would cause DARPA to lose $80 million vs. FY 2007, a reduction of 2.6 percent.
For a more-detailed look at the different accounts, take a gander at the table included in the jump. (Click on the “Continue Reading” link below). We’ll update the table as we get additional detail.
Keep in mind, however, that these numbers are just a first step. The committee needs to approve them, then the whole House, then the Senate needs to approve its version, then a compromise version between the chambers, and then, after all that, it’s likely that the President will veto the bill for being too generous. (More on that below….) So, consider these numbers a starting point in the inevitable negotiation that will occur between both the Senate and the President. But, it’s a good place to start.
Speaking of vetoes, the Administration also issued a Statement of Administration Policy (SAP) yesterday on the FY 2008 Commerce, Justice, Science Appropriations bill that the House will begin debating today, indicating that the President intends to veto the bill should the version the House will likely approve land on his desk. The CJS Appropriations bill, as we’ve discussed previously, contains funding for some science agencies we care about — in particular, the National Science Foundation and National Institute of Standards and Technology (as well as NASA and NOAA). The bill includes healthy increases for both NSF and NIST, in line with both the President’s American Competitiveness Initiative and the Democratic Innovation Agenda.
Despite issuing the veto threat, the President does commend the bill for its support of NSF and NIST’s research accounts, but takes issue with increases the House Appropriations Committee provided for NSF’s Education and Human Resources directorate beyond his request. The SAP also criticizes excessive earmarking in the bill and bluntly states that because the HAC failed to demonstrate offsets for the increased spending, he will veto the bill if presented to him.
This is not terribly surprising. Facing a Democratically-controlled Congress for the first time, it was likely that the President would be drawn into a political fight over spending, and his only leverage in that fight is the veto. While Congress chugs away at passing the 12 annual appropriations bills necessary to fund the operations of government, its unlikely many (if any) will pass with the majority required to override any potential presidential veto. Indeed, in the House, the “magic number” for the President is 145 — he needs just 145 out of 201 Republican members of the House to sustain any veto and provide him significant leverage in the spending negotiations that will follow. So far, none of the bills passed so far (Interior, Homeland Security, State-Foreign Operations) have had “veto-proof” majorities, so the President has retained his leverage.
It’s likely the appropriations process is again headed for a train-wreck, just as in previous years. The final form of this particular train-wreck isn’t yet known, but I tend to agree with others who expect that the end game will involve another omnibus appropriations bill in which, despite strong support for science programs in Congress and by the President, those programs will be threatened by across-the-board cuts required to get spending down to a level that the President will sign. The focus, then, of many of us in the science advocacy community once again will be on protecting the increases for science agencies approved by Congress and supported by the President in a bill in which they are just one of hundreds, if not thousands, of competing programs. The good news is that we’ve had some success with this approach in the past….
But for now, the funding levels included in both the Defense Appropriations and Commerce, Justice, Science Appropriations are powerful symbols of the support R&D issues have in Congress, even if its likely that those levels might get modified in the coming months for reasons mostly unrelated to Congress’ support of science.
We’ll, of course, have all the details here as they emerge.
Read more →
NSF Reports on Research Publishing
/In: R&D in the Press, Research /by MelissaNorrThe National Science Foundation has published two reports on American research and the decline of journals publishing it. The reports show that beginning in 1992 journals began to publish less American based research with a corresponding rise in research from Europe and Asia being published. In 1992, the share of American research published in journals was 37 percent and in 2003 it was 30 percent. The reports give a number of possible reasons for the decline, including the increase in scientific research being performed in Europe and Asia as well as more international collaboration on research in all fields.
Both reports are interesting and worth a read along with an article about them in Inside Higher Education. A third report on the topic is planned.
CISE Awards Distinguished Education Fellow Grants
/In: Funding, People, Research /by MelissaNorrNSFs CISE Directorate awarded the first two Distinguished Education Fellow grants today to Dr. Owen Astrachan and Dr. Peter Denning. The awards are part of the CISE Pathways to Revitalized Undergraduate Computing Education (CPATH) program that CISE began last year.
New CISE Assistant Director Jeannette Wing said that CISE supports the revitalization of undergraduate education in computer science because the community needs to show that computing is about more than programming or a machine in order to attract the best minds to the field.
Astrachan, of Duke University, received his grant to explore case-based approaches to teaching computer science. Denning, of the Naval Postgraduate School, received his grant to focus on defining the principles of computer science and to distill the principles into modules that can be used in teaching.
Both awards are $250,000 grants over 2 years.
CRA at CNSF Exhibit on Hill
/In: CRA, Events, Funding, People, Research /by MelissaNorrCRA participated once again in the Coalition for National Science Funding’s annual Science Exposition on Capitol Hill last week and it was a great success. The event, a science fair for Congress and staff, had 35 booths manned by researchers representing universities and scientific societies featuring some of the important research funded by the National Science Foundation. This year CRA was ably represented by Lydia Kavraki, a computer science professor from Rice University, whose research into using computational tools to solve problems in a range of areas such as biology was a hit with all those who stopped at the booth.
As weve stated before in this space, personal visits to members of Congress and their staff are vital to getting the message about the importance of computing research out. CRA holds or participates in Congressional visit days several times throughout the year and we are always looking for participants. If you are interested in coming to Washington to visit your Representative and Senators, please contact Melissa Norr at mnorr at cra.org.
Cyber Security Report Released
/In: Events, People, Policy, Research, Security /by MelissaNorrThe National Research Council of the National Academies of Science released a new report on cyber security and research called “Toward a Safer and More Secure Cyberspace.” The report is available for free online at the National Academies Press.
The report lists three broad categories that lack of cyber security falls into:
It also lists a set of ten provisions that could form a Cyber Security Bill of Rights. The provisions are: