The Chairman of the House Budget Committee today released the “chairman’smark” (both pdf) of his committee’s FY 2008 Congressional Budget Resolution that includes funding caps large enough to accommodate the continuation of funding increases at key federal science agencies called for in both the American Competitiveness Initiative and the Democratic Innovation Agenda. The resolution contains healthy increases in a number of budget accounts designed to allow congressional appropriators the budget “room” to include increases for ACI agencies — National Science Foundation, National Institute of Standards and Technology, and Department of Energy Office of Science — as well as the National Institutes of Health and additional federal education spending at a variety of agencies.
The overall budget levels are similar to those found in the Senate version of the Congressional Budget Resolution (S. Con. Res 21), which was introduced back on March 15th and is being considered on the Senate floor now. The House bill is a bit more generous for the science accounts, but because of the convoluted way the budget process works, it’s hard to translate either set of numbers to likely actual appropriations. In each case, it’s enough to know that both the House and Senate budgeters appear to have factored in the requested increases (or greater) for key science agencies in their budgets. (Update below) The House also included “sense of the House” language that really calls out their support for science funding increases:
SENSE OF THE HOUSE ON THE INNOVATION AGENDA: A COMMITMENT TO COMPETITIVENESS TO KEEP AMERICA #1. (a) It is the sense of the House to provide sufficient funding that our Nation may continue to be the world leader in education, innovation and economic growth. This resolution provides $___ [this is still to be determined–PH] above the Presidents requested level for 2008, and additional amounts in subsequent years in Function 250 (General Science, Space and Technology) and Function 270 (Energy). Additional increases for scientific research and education are included in Function 500 (Education, Employment, Training, and Social Services), Function 550 (Health), Function 300 (Environment and Natural Resources), Function 350 (Agriculture), Function 400 (Transportation), and Function 370 (Commerce and Housing Credit), all of which receive more funding than the President requested.
(b) Americas greatest resource for innovation resides within classrooms across the country. The increased funding provided in this resolution will support important initiatives to educate 100,000 new scientists, engineers, and mathematicians, and place highly qualified teachers in math and science K12 classrooms.
(c) Independent scientific research provides the foundation for innovation and future technologies. This resolution will put us on the path toward doubling funding for the National Science Foundation, basic research in the physical sciences across all agencies, and collaborative research partnerships; and toward achieving energy independence through the development of clean and sustainable alternative energy technologies.
Both House and Senate budget chairs believe they have the votes to move the respective resolutions in their chambers. We’ll keep you posted as they move.
For those who like numbers, here are the funding levels for each budget function in the House resolution, and here are the Senate numbers (click on Sec. 103, Major Functional Categories) Update: (6:14 pm 3/21/07) — It appears I was a little quick in my analysis of the Senate version of the resolution. While the Senate does include increases for some of the budget functions that cover science agencies, it’s not clear those increases would be used for science funding. Senators Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) and Lamar Alexander (R-TN) have an amendment to the resolution that will be voted on this evening that would “restore” $1 billion to the resolution for the President’s request and to fund the provisions of the America COMPETES Act. Here’s a press release from Alexander’s office which spells out the detail.
We’ll have more after the vote. Update 2: (8:19 pm 3/21/07) — The amendment passed overwhelmingly.
One of the side effects of these exciting times for science policy in Washington is that we don’t get as much time to blog as we need to. Even as late as two years ago, the drumbeat for competitiveness and innovation — the driving themes behind most of the science policy developments over the last year — was significantly softer than it is now…almost inaudible, in fact. That gave us plenty of time to devote to lengthy coverage of just about every development in the space — every news article, every press conference, every mention by a key (or not so key) policymaker.
Well, over the last two years, the pace of developments has quickened dramatically. Nearly every day there’s some mention of innovation policy, or the importance of IT research, or the need to ramp up the federal commitment to the “physical sciences” somewhere. Our queue of potential topics for blog posts has grown considerably. Unfortunately, because we’re also out in the trenches working these developments, we don’t often get the time we need to really delve into the topics as we usually do with our posts.
Rather than let those topics grow stale in a queue that isn’t moving any faster than it ever has, we’ve decided to go a little “Web 2.0” and start a Computing Research Policy TumbleLog, on which we can post quick links to articles we find noteworthy, or quotes that resonate, or events with think are interesting. There won’t be much (or even any) analysis of the topics on the TumbleLog, just pointers to the original sources. All the meaty stuff — the analysis, the details — will still be here, with a frequency that’s hopefully unchanged.
So, you might want to bookmark the Computing Research Policy TumbleLog if you’re interested in some of the things we’ve found interesting to note, but keep an eye here for our usual content as well.
I’ve also attempted to set up a little widget over there on the left sidebar that shows the most recent topics on the tumblelog, but it doesn’t seem to work very well in Safari on my Mac. So if anyone has a suggestion for a better approach, please let me know! This Web 2.0 stuff is tricky. 🙂 Fixed, I think!
A proclamation from members of U.S. industry and academia (including CRA) calling on Congress to ramp up federal basic research funding, improve student performance in math and science, enable the U.S. to recruit and retain the best talent, and make permanent the R&D tax credit was officially released at a standing room only press event yesterday hosted by House Science and Technology CommitteeChairman Bart Gordon (D-TN), with speakers Norm Augustine, Craig Barrett (Chairman of Intel), Harold McGraw III (CEO of McGraw-Hill), Robert Dynes (Pres of UC Berkeley), Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ), Rep. Judy Biggert (R-IL), Rep. Vern Ehlers (R-MI), Rep. Dan Lipinsky (D-IL), and Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN). The proclamation is online and has over 270 endorsements from industry, academic, and professional groups. The proclamation was printed on parchment (an electronic version of the parchment scroll is available here) and delivered to every congressional office.
The Committee put out a press release about the event and an audio webcast is also available.
Directly following the press conference, the Committee held a hearing on two of its innovation bills, H.R. 362 and 363, “10,000 Teachers, 10 Million Minds” Science and Math Scholarship Act and Sowing the Seeds Through Science and Engineering Research Act. Both bills are designed to enact the recommendations of the oft-cited National Academies Rising Above the Gathering Storm report that are under the House S&T Committee’s jurisdiction. The bills are a parallel effort to the Senate’s America COMPETES legislation, which was introduced by the Senate leadership on March 4th and will go straight to the Senate floor.
The written testimony of the witnesses, many of whom spoke at the press conference, and a webcast of the hearing are available online.
Update: (3/12/07, 1:17 pm) — Fixed!
Original Post: Though the blog continues to work, a database issue has rendered the CRA Government Affairs website temporarily unavailable. Apologies to those trying to access the resources we’ve got on those pages, but we hope to have the site restored soon….
The High Performance Computing R&D Act, which we’ve reported on previously, was approved by the House today on a voice vote. The bill would amend the original High Performance Computing and Communications Act of 1991 (HPCC) to attempt to provide sustained, transparent access for the research community to federal HPC assets, assure a balanced research portfolio and beef up interagency planning. We like the bill and have endorsed it. (Here’s what it does (pdf) to current law.)
The bill now heads to the Senate. Previous versions of the bill in prior sessions of Congress have not fared well in the Senate, usually for reasons unrelated to the actual bill (Senate traffic jams and disputes between the House Science and Senate Commerce committees over other legislation are the most-often cited difficulties). But, talking with Senate staff, it appears the path to enactment this session is a bit smoother and freer of obstructions than in previous years. We understand that a bill very similar to the HPC R&D Act will be introduced soon in the Senate with a bipartisan set of co-sponsors — and we’ll have more detail soon.
For now, here’s a link to the House Science and Technology Committee’spress release marking the passage of the bill, and a snippet:
Research and Science Education Subcommittee Chairman Brian Baird (D-WA) sponsored the bill along with co-sponsor, Rep. Judy Biggert (R-IL) who proposed similar legislation in both the 108th and 109th Congress.
“Information technology is an engine that drives economic growth in this country,” said Chairman Baird. “It creates high-wage jobs, provides for rapid communication throughout the world, and provides tools for closing the knowledge gap. This bill will help develop and deploy the fastest, most up-to-date, and technologically advanced super-computing systems that are essential for U.S. scientific, industrial, and military competitiveness.”
The Computing Community Consortium (CCC), in consultation with the National Science Foundation, has selected the initial membership of the Science Council for the Global Environment for Networking Innovations (GENI). This GENI Science Council (GSC) will represent the computing research community in guiding the Science Plan for GENI — an experimental facility planned by NSF in collaboration with the research community, “to enable the research community to invent and demonstrate a global communications network and related services that will be qualitatively better than today’s Internet.”
The initial members are:
Tom Anderson, University of Washington (distributed systems and networking);++
Hari Balakrishnan, MIT (wireless networking);
Joe Berthold, CIENA (optical networking);
Charlie Catlett, Argonne National Laboratory (grid computing)+;
Mike Dahlin, University of Texas (distributed systems);
Stephanie Forrest, University of New Mexico (biological system modeling, security);
Roscoe Giles, Boston University (educational technology);
Ed Lazowska, University of Washington (systems);*+
Peter Lee, Carnegie Mellon University (software);+
Helen Nissenbaum, NYU (social, ethical and political dimensions of IT);
Ellen Zegura, vice chair, Georgia Tech (networking, including wireless)*, +
* member of Interim CCC Council + member of CRA GENI Advisory Board ++ member of GENI Planning Group
The members of the GSC were selected from a pool of more than 100 specific individuals nominated by the computing community representing roughly 20 research areas.
In selecting the GSC, CCC and NSF considered a number of criteria, including trying to insure that most GENI-relevant research communities were represented on the GSC, that the members should have strong individual reputations in the GENI-relevant research communities and recognized as “deep thinkers,” and that the selection process seek diversity of all sorts: geographical, institution type, gender, ethnic, etc. In addition, the CCC intends to add representation from the networking industry that builds components and provides network engineering expertise for the alternative technologies, but will wait to add those individuals until the results of the GENI Project Office (GPO) solicitation are known. (It was felt that individuals who are likely to have key roles in the GPO shouldn’t serve on the GSC, so that the GSC can offer independent advice if requested.)
Scott Shenker will serve as Chair of the GSC, and Ellen Zegura will serve as Vice Chair. A few details remain, including establishing the terms of service (and determining the staggering of the terms of the initial appointees) — but those are expected to be worked out shortly. Additional detail (pdf) on the selection of the GENI Science Council. More on GENI. And a helpful FAQ. More on CCC.
The American Competitiveness Initiative (ACI) introduced by the President during the 2006 State of the Union is a commitment to the doubling of the research budgets for NSF, NIST, and the Department of Energy Office of Science. Much of that commitment was met by congressional appropriators in FY 07, as they increased the budgets for the three agencies in the year end “continuing resolution.” The President remained committed to ACI in his FY 08 budget request, asking for 7 to 14 percent increases for the three agencies.
The FY08 requests of $6.43 billion for NSF and $4.4 billion for the Office of Science would keep both agencies on the doubling path, which has received much bipartisan support in the past.
Senators Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) and Christopher Bond (R-MO) are circulating a letter to colleagues asking for their support of the $6.43 billion request for the National Science Foundation in FY 2008. Senators Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) and Lamar Alexander (R-TN) are circulating a similar letter to colleagues asking for their support for the Administration’s $4.4 billion request for the Department of Energy’s Office of Science in FY08. The letters will be sent to the chair and ranking member of the Senate Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee and the Energy and Water Development Appropriations Subcommittee, respectively.
So far the NSF support letter has been signed by Christopher Bond (R-MO), Joseph Lieberman (ID-CT), Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), Carl Levin (D-MI), Robert Menendez (D-NJ), Barack Obama (D-IL), Olympia Snowe (R-ME), and Debbie Stabenow (D-MI).
The Office of Science letter has been signed by Lamar Alexander (R-TN), Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), Barbara Boxer (D-CA), Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Sam Brownback (R-KS), Maria Cantwell (D-WA), Saxby Chambliss (R-GA), Hillary Clinton (D-NY), Richard Durbin (D-IL), Charles Grassley (R-IA), Tom Harkin (D-IA), John Kerry (D-MA), Carl Levin (D-MI), Joe Lieberman (I-CT), Richard Lugar (R-IN), Robert Menendez (D-NJ), Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), Barack Obama (D-IL), Pat Roberts (R-KS), John Rockefeller (D-WV), Ken Salazar (D-CO), Charles Schumer (D-NY), Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), George Voinovich (R-OH), John Warner (R-VA), and Ron Wyden (D-OR).
During the FY 07 appropriations process, these “ask” letters were remarkably influential on congressional appropriators, helping position science funding as a “national priority” and carving out increases for three key science agencies even as many other agencies were held flat or cut. We’re asking for your help in making this similar effort by Lieberman, Bond, Bingaman and Alexander equally effective. Please fax your state Senators (especially if they’re not on the list above – but even if they are) and ask them to sign on to the Lieberman/Bond and Bingaman/Alexander “Dear Colleague” letters.
A sample letter you can use can be found at CRA’s Advocacy web page — please FAX it to your Senators offices as soon as possible. The deadline for signers is Monday, March 12. Please also fax a copy of your letter to Melissa Norr at 202.667.1066.
Find out who your Senators are at Senators of the 110th Congress.
The Computing Research Association is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Edward Lazowska, Bill & Melinda Gates Chair in Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington, as the inaugural Chair of the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) Council. This appointment was made after extensive consultations with computing research leaders, the Interim CCC Council and the National Science Foundation.
“CRA is delighted that our colleague, Ed Lazowska, has accepted this important role” said Daniel A. Reed, Chair of the CRA Board and Director of the Renaissance Computing Institute at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
Dr. Lazowska has a distinguished career in computing research, public service, and service to the computing research community, including time spent as co-chair of the President’s Information Technology Advisory Committee and the Defense Advanced Projects Agency Information Science and Technology study group. Dr. Lazowska is a Member of the National Academy of Engineering, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, the Association for Computing Machinery, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
In his new role, Dr. Lazowska will lead the CCC — a consortium of experts drawn from and chosen by the computing research community — as it seeks to stimulate scientific leadership and vision on issues related to computing research and future large-scale computing research projects. The CCC, established by CRA in partnership with NSF, will catalyze the computing research community to debate long-range research challenges, to build consensus around research visions, to articulate those visions, and to develop the most promising visions into clearly defined initiatives. The next step in its implementation is populating the CCC Council, which will facilitate the processes by which the consortium will do its work.
About CRA. The CRA was established 30 years ago and has members at more than 250 research entities in academia, industry and government. Its mission is to strengthen research and advance education in the computing fields, expand opportunities for women and minorities, and improve public and policymaker understanding of the importance of computing and computing research in society.
For more on the CCC: http://www.cra.org/ccc Previous posts on the CCC.
Bill Gates, chairman of Microsoft Corp, testified before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee on competitiveness issues this morning. A web cast of the hearing is available here. He emphasized three areas: educating students and workers, immigration, and federal funding of basic research and R&D tax credit. His extensive written testimony (where he cites CRAs own Jay Vegso!) goes into great detail on each of these three issues.
Gates hit the competitiveness high notes that are found in the Rising Above the Gathering Storm and Tapping Americas Potential reports including recruiting more high school science and math teachers, doubling the number of math, science, and engineering graduates, increasing basic science R&D at the major research agencies by 10% over the next 7 years, and increasing visas for high skilled workers. He used computing as an example in both his oral and written testimony. His written testimony states:
We cannot possibly sustain an economy founded on technology pre-eminence without a citizenry educated in core technology disciplines such as mathematics, computer science, engineering, and the physical sciences. The economys need for workers trained in these fields is massive and growing. The U.S. Department of Labor has projected that, in the decade ending in 2014, there will be over two million job openings in the United States in these fields. Yet in 2004, just 11 percent of all higher education degrees awarded in the U.S. were in engineering, mathematics, and the physical sciences a decline of about a third since 1960.
Recent declines are particularly pronounced in computer science. The percentage of college freshmen planning to major in computer science dropped by 70 percent between 2000 and 2005.3 In an economy in which computing has become central to innovation in nearly every sector, this decline poses a serious threat to American competitiveness. Indeed, it would not be an exaggeration to say that every significant technological innovation of the 21st century will require new software to make it happen.
To combat this decline, Gates takes a recommendation straight from the Gathering Storm report and calls for 25,000 4-year undergraduate scholarships in the STEM fields. He also said that the opportunities for innovation in computing are greater than most people, especially students, realize.
The America COMPETES (Creating Opportunities to Meaningfully Promote Excellence in Technology, Education, and Science) Act will be introduced in the US Senate on Monday. The bill is a compilation of provisions and language from past innovation legislation like the National Competitiveness Investment Act, American Innovation and Competitiveness Act of 2006, and Protecting Americas Competitive Edge Through Energy Act of 2006. We don’t yet have a draft of the actual bill language, but a summary of the bill states: the America COMPETES Act focuses on three primary areas of importance to maintaining and improving United States innovation in the 21st Century: (1) increasing research investment, (2) strengthening educational opportunities in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics from elementary through graduate school, and (3) developing an innovation infrastructure.
Provisions in the bill include:
Double funding for NSF and Department of Energy Office of Science by FY2011
Direct federal agencies that fund S&T research to set a goal of 8% of their R&D budgets to fund high-risk frontier research
Authorize NIST at $937 million by FY2011 and requiring NIST to use a minimum of 8% of its funding for high-risk, high-reward research
Authorize competitive grants to States for elementary and secondary education alignment with the requirements of post-secondary education, the 21st century workforce, and the Armed Services
Establish training and education programs at summer institutes hosted at the National Laboratories and increase support for the Teacher Institutes for the 21st Century program at NSF
Expand the Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program at NSF
Assist States in establishing or expanding statewide specialty schools in math and science that students from across the state would be eligible to attend and providing expert assistance in teaching from National Laboratories staff at those schools
Increase the number of teachers prepared to teach AP/IB and pre-AP/IB math, science, and foreign language courses
Develop and implement programs for bachelors degrees in math, science, engineering, and critical foreign languages with concurrent teaching credentials and part-time masters in education programs for math, science, and critical foreign language teachers to enhance both content knowledge and teaching skills
Create partnerships between National Laboratories and local high-need high schools to establish centers of excellence in math and science education
Expand NSF graduate research fellowship and traineeship programs, require NSF to work with institutions of higher education to facilitate the development of professional science masters degree programs, and expand NSFs science, mathematics, engineering and technology talent program
Once the bill is introduced and the actual language is available, we will be back with more details. Update: We’ve been told that the bill will not go through a committee and will instead be placed directly on the Senate calendar so that the Leadership can act on it at any time.
Also, the Senators who are sponsoring the bill and putting it forward are: Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), Pete Domenici (R-NM), Daniel Inouye (D-HI), Ted Stevens (R-AK), Ted Kennedy (D-MA), Mike Enzi (R-WY), Joseph Lieberman (I-CT), John Ensign (R-NV), Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), Lamar Alexander (R-TN), Bill Nelson (R-FL), and Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX).
Please use the Category and Archive Filters below, to find older posts. Or you may also use the search bar.
Innovation Funding Featured in House Budget Resolution
/In: American Competitiveness Initiative, Funding, FY08 Appropriations, Policy /by Peter HarshaThe Chairman of the House Budget Committee today released the “chairman’s mark” (both pdf) of his committee’s FY 2008 Congressional Budget Resolution that includes funding caps large enough to accommodate the continuation of funding increases at key federal science agencies called for in both the American Competitiveness Initiative and the Democratic Innovation Agenda. The resolution contains healthy increases in a number of budget accounts designed to allow congressional appropriators the budget “room” to include increases for ACI agencies — National Science Foundation, National Institute of Standards and Technology, and Department of Energy Office of Science — as well as the National Institutes of Health and additional federal education spending at a variety of agencies.
The overall budget levels are similar to those found in the Senate version of the Congressional Budget Resolution (S. Con. Res 21), which was introduced back on March 15th and is being considered on the Senate floor now. The House bill is a bit more generous for the science accounts, but because of the convoluted way the budget process works, it’s hard to translate either set of numbers to likely actual appropriations.
In each case, it’s enough to know that both the House and Senate budgeters appear to have factored in the requested increases (or greater) for key science agencies in their budgets.(Update below) The House also included “sense of the House” language that really calls out their support for science funding increases:Both House and Senate budget chairs believe they have the votes to move the respective resolutions in their chambers. We’ll keep you posted as they move.
For those who like numbers, here are the funding levels for each budget function in the House resolution, and here are the Senate numbers (click on Sec. 103, Major Functional Categories)
Update: (6:14 pm 3/21/07) — It appears I was a little quick in my analysis of the Senate version of the resolution. While the Senate does include increases for some of the budget functions that cover science agencies, it’s not clear those increases would be used for science funding. Senators Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) and Lamar Alexander (R-TN) have an amendment to the resolution that will be voted on this evening that would “restore” $1 billion to the resolution for the President’s request and to fund the provisions of the America COMPETES Act. Here’s a press release from Alexander’s office which spells out the detail.
We’ll have more after the vote.
Update 2: (8:19 pm 3/21/07) — The amendment passed overwhelmingly.
Announcing the Computing Research Policy TumbleLog
/In: CRA /by Peter HarshaOne of the side effects of these exciting times for science policy in Washington is that we don’t get as much time to blog as we need to. Even as late as two years ago, the drumbeat for competitiveness and innovation — the driving themes behind most of the science policy developments over the last year — was significantly softer than it is now…almost inaudible, in fact. That gave us plenty of time to devote to lengthy coverage of just about every development in the space — every news article, every press conference, every mention by a key (or not so key) policymaker.
Well, over the last two years, the pace of developments has quickened dramatically. Nearly every day there’s some mention of innovation policy, or the importance of IT research, or the need to ramp up the federal commitment to the “physical sciences” somewhere. Our queue of potential topics for blog posts has grown considerably. Unfortunately, because we’re also out in the trenches working these developments, we don’t often get the time we need to really delve into the topics as we usually do with our posts.
Rather than let those topics grow stale in a queue that isn’t moving any faster than it ever has, we’ve decided to go a little “Web 2.0” and start a Computing Research Policy TumbleLog, on which we can post quick links to articles we find noteworthy, or quotes that resonate, or events with think are interesting. There won’t be much (or even any) analysis of the topics on the TumbleLog, just pointers to the original sources. All the meaty stuff — the analysis, the details — will still be here, with a frequency that’s hopefully unchanged.
So, you might want to bookmark the Computing Research Policy TumbleLog if you’re interested in some of the things we’ve found interesting to note, but keep an eye here for our usual content as well.
I’ve also attempted to set up a little widget over there on the left sidebar that shows the most recent topics on the tumblelog,
but it doesn’t seem to work very well in Safari on my Mac. So if anyone has a suggestion for a better approach, please let me know! This Web 2.0 stuff is tricky.🙂 Fixed, I think!Innovation Press Conference and Hearing
/In: American Competitiveness Initiative, Policy /by MelissaNorrA proclamation from members of U.S. industry and academia (including CRA) calling on Congress to ramp up federal basic research funding, improve student performance in math and science, enable the U.S. to recruit and retain the best talent, and make permanent the R&D tax credit was officially released at a standing room only press event yesterday hosted by House Science and Technology Committee Chairman Bart Gordon (D-TN), with speakers Norm Augustine, Craig Barrett (Chairman of Intel), Harold McGraw III (CEO of McGraw-Hill), Robert Dynes (Pres of UC Berkeley), Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ), Rep. Judy Biggert (R-IL), Rep. Vern Ehlers (R-MI), Rep. Dan Lipinsky (D-IL), and Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN). The proclamation is online and has over 270 endorsements from industry, academic, and professional groups. The proclamation was printed on parchment (an electronic version of the parchment scroll is available here) and delivered to every congressional office.
The Committee put out a press release about the event and an audio webcast is also available.
Directly following the press conference, the Committee held a hearing on two of its innovation bills, H.R. 362 and 363, “10,000 Teachers, 10 Million Minds” Science and Math Scholarship Act and Sowing the Seeds Through Science and Engineering Research Act. Both bills are designed to enact the recommendations of the oft-cited National Academies Rising Above the Gathering Storm report that are under the House S&T Committee’s jurisdiction. The bills are a parallel effort to the Senate’s America COMPETES legislation, which was introduced by the Senate leadership on March 4th and will go straight to the Senate floor.
The written testimony of the witnesses, many of whom spoke at the press conference, and a webcast of the hearing are available online.
CRA Gov Affairs Site Down…
/In: CRA /by Peter HarshaUpdate: (3/12/07, 1:17 pm) — Fixed!
Original Post:
Though the blog continues to work, a database issue has rendered the CRA Government Affairs website temporarily unavailable. Apologies to those trying to access the resources we’ve got on those pages, but we hope to have the site restored soon….HPC R&D Act Passes House
/In: Policy /by Peter HarshaThe High Performance Computing R&D Act, which we’ve reported on previously, was approved by the House today on a voice vote. The bill would amend the original High Performance Computing and Communications Act of 1991 (HPCC) to attempt to provide sustained, transparent access for the research community to federal HPC assets, assure a balanced research portfolio and beef up interagency planning. We like the bill and have endorsed it. (Here’s what it does (pdf) to current law.)
The bill now heads to the Senate. Previous versions of the bill in prior sessions of Congress have not fared well in the Senate, usually for reasons unrelated to the actual bill (Senate traffic jams and disputes between the House Science and Senate Commerce committees over other legislation are the most-often cited difficulties). But, talking with Senate staff, it appears the path to enactment this session is a bit smoother and freer of obstructions than in previous years. We understand that a bill very similar to the HPC R&D Act will be introduced soon in the Senate with a bipartisan set of co-sponsors — and we’ll have more detail soon.
For now, here’s a link to the House Science and Technology Committee’s press release marking the passage of the bill, and a snippet:
Previous coverage.
GENI Science Council Named
/In: Computing Community Consortium (CCC), Research /by Peter HarshaThe Computing Community Consortium (CCC), in consultation with the National Science Foundation, has selected the initial membership of the Science Council for the Global Environment for Networking Innovations (GENI). This GENI Science Council (GSC) will represent the computing research community in guiding the Science Plan for GENI — an experimental facility planned by NSF in collaboration with the research community, “to enable the research community to invent and demonstrate a global communications network and related services that will be qualitatively better than today’s Internet.”
The initial members are:
* member of Interim CCC Council
+ member of CRA GENI Advisory Board
++ member of GENI Planning Group
The members of the GSC were selected from a pool of more than 100 specific individuals nominated by the computing community representing roughly 20 research areas.
In selecting the GSC, CCC and NSF considered a number of criteria, including trying to insure that most GENI-relevant research communities were represented on the GSC, that the members should have strong individual reputations in the GENI-relevant research communities and recognized as “deep thinkers,” and that the selection process seek diversity of all sorts: geographical, institution type, gender, ethnic, etc. In addition, the CCC intends to add representation from the networking industry that builds components and provides network engineering expertise for the alternative technologies, but will wait to add those individuals until the results of the GENI Project Office (GPO) solicitation are known. (It was felt that individuals who are likely to have key roles in the GPO shouldn’t serve on the GSC, so that the GSC can offer independent advice if requested.)
Scott Shenker will serve as Chair of the GSC, and Ellen Zegura will serve as Vice Chair. A few details remain, including establishing the terms of service (and determining the staggering of the terms of the initial appointees) — but those are expected to be worked out shortly.
Additional detail (pdf) on the selection of the GENI Science Council.
More on GENI. And a helpful FAQ.
More on CCC.
Support ACI FY08 Funding
/In: American Competitiveness Initiative, Funding, FY08 Appropriations /by MelissaNorrThe American Competitiveness Initiative (ACI) introduced by the President during the 2006 State of the Union is a commitment to the doubling of the research budgets for NSF, NIST, and the Department of Energy Office of Science. Much of that commitment was met by congressional appropriators in FY 07, as they increased the budgets for the three agencies in the year end “continuing resolution.” The President remained committed to ACI in his FY 08 budget request, asking for 7 to 14 percent increases for the three agencies.
The FY08 requests of $6.43 billion for NSF and $4.4 billion for the Office of Science would keep both agencies on the doubling path, which has received much bipartisan support in the past.
Senators Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) and Christopher Bond (R-MO) are circulating a letter to colleagues asking for their support of the $6.43 billion request for the National Science Foundation in FY 2008. Senators Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) and Lamar Alexander (R-TN) are circulating a similar letter to colleagues asking for their support for the Administration’s $4.4 billion request for the Department of Energy’s Office of Science in FY08. The letters will be sent to the chair and ranking member of the Senate Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee and the Energy and Water Development Appropriations Subcommittee, respectively.
So far the NSF support letter has been signed by Christopher Bond (R-MO), Joseph Lieberman (ID-CT), Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), Carl Levin (D-MI), Robert Menendez (D-NJ), Barack Obama (D-IL), Olympia Snowe (R-ME), and Debbie Stabenow (D-MI).
The Office of Science letter has been signed by Lamar Alexander (R-TN), Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), Barbara Boxer (D-CA), Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Sam Brownback (R-KS), Maria Cantwell (D-WA), Saxby Chambliss (R-GA), Hillary Clinton (D-NY), Richard Durbin (D-IL), Charles Grassley (R-IA), Tom Harkin (D-IA), John Kerry (D-MA), Carl Levin (D-MI), Joe Lieberman (I-CT), Richard Lugar (R-IN), Robert Menendez (D-NJ), Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), Barack Obama (D-IL), Pat Roberts (R-KS), John Rockefeller (D-WV), Ken Salazar (D-CO), Charles Schumer (D-NY), Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), George Voinovich (R-OH), John Warner (R-VA), and Ron Wyden (D-OR).
During the FY 07 appropriations process, these “ask” letters were remarkably influential on congressional appropriators, helping position science funding as a “national priority” and carving out increases for three key science agencies even as many other agencies were held flat or cut. We’re asking for your help in making this similar effort by Lieberman, Bond, Bingaman and Alexander equally effective. Please fax your state Senators (especially if they’re not on the list above – but even if they are) and ask them to sign on to the Lieberman/Bond and Bingaman/Alexander “Dear Colleague” letters.
A sample letter you can use can be found at CRA’s Advocacy web page — please FAX it to your Senators offices as soon as possible. The deadline for signers is Monday, March 12. Please also fax a copy of your letter to Melissa Norr at 202.667.1066.
Find out who your Senators are at Senators of the 110th Congress.
Lazowska Named Chair of Computing Community Consortium
/In: Computing Community Consortium (CCC), CRA, People /by Peter HarshaThe Computing Research Association is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Edward Lazowska, Bill & Melinda Gates Chair in Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington, as the inaugural Chair of the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) Council. This appointment was made after extensive consultations with computing research leaders, the Interim CCC Council and the National Science Foundation.
“CRA is delighted that our colleague, Ed Lazowska, has accepted this important role” said Daniel A. Reed, Chair of the CRA Board and Director of the Renaissance Computing Institute at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
Dr. Lazowska has a distinguished career in computing research, public service, and service to the computing research community, including time spent as co-chair of the President’s Information Technology Advisory Committee and the Defense Advanced Projects Agency Information Science and Technology study group. Dr. Lazowska is a Member of the National Academy of Engineering, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, the Association for Computing Machinery, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
In his new role, Dr. Lazowska will lead the CCC — a consortium of experts drawn from and chosen by the computing research community — as it seeks to stimulate scientific leadership and vision on issues related to computing research and future large-scale computing research projects. The CCC, established by CRA in partnership with NSF, will catalyze the computing research community to debate long-range research challenges, to build consensus around research visions, to articulate those visions, and to develop the most promising visions into clearly defined initiatives. The next step in its implementation is populating the CCC Council, which will facilitate the processes by which the consortium will do its work.
About CRA. The CRA was established 30 years ago and has members at more than 250 research entities in academia, industry and government. Its mission is to strengthen research and advance education in the computing fields, expand opportunities for women and minorities, and improve public and policymaker understanding of the importance of computing and computing research in society.
For more on the CCC: http://www.cra.org/ccc
Previous posts on the CCC.
Bill Gates Testifies on Competitiveness Issues
/In: American Competitiveness Initiative, Funding, Policy, Research /by MelissaNorrBill Gates, chairman of Microsoft Corp, testified before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee on competitiveness issues this morning. A web cast of the hearing is available here. He emphasized three areas: educating students and workers, immigration, and federal funding of basic research and R&D tax credit. His extensive written testimony (where he cites CRAs own Jay Vegso!) goes into great detail on each of these three issues.
Gates hit the competitiveness high notes that are found in the Rising Above the Gathering Storm and Tapping Americas Potential reports including recruiting more high school science and math teachers, doubling the number of math, science, and engineering graduates, increasing basic science R&D at the major research agencies by 10% over the next 7 years, and increasing visas for high skilled workers. He used computing as an example in both his oral and written testimony. His written testimony states:
To combat this decline, Gates takes a recommendation straight from the Gathering Storm report and calls for 25,000 4-year undergraduate scholarships in the STEM fields. He also said that the opportunities for innovation in computing are greater than most people, especially students, realize.
New Competitiveness Legislation
/In: American Competitiveness Initiative, Policy /by MelissaNorrThe America COMPETES (Creating Opportunities to Meaningfully Promote Excellence in Technology, Education, and Science) Act will be introduced in the US Senate on Monday. The bill is a compilation of provisions and language from past innovation legislation like the National Competitiveness Investment Act, American Innovation and Competitiveness Act of 2006, and Protecting Americas Competitive Edge Through Energy Act of 2006. We don’t yet have a draft of the actual bill language, but a summary of the bill states: the America COMPETES Act focuses on three primary areas of importance to maintaining and improving United States innovation in the 21st Century: (1) increasing research investment, (2) strengthening educational opportunities in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics from elementary through graduate school, and (3) developing an innovation infrastructure.
Provisions in the bill include:
Once the bill is introduced and the actual language is available, we will be back with more details.
Update: We’ve been told that the bill will not go through a committee and will instead be placed directly on the Senate calendar so that the Leadership can act on it at any time.
Also, the Senators who are sponsoring the bill and putting it forward are: Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), Pete Domenici (R-NM), Daniel Inouye (D-HI), Ted Stevens (R-AK), Ted Kennedy (D-MA), Mike Enzi (R-WY), Joseph Lieberman (I-CT), John Ensign (R-NV), Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), Lamar Alexander (R-TN), Bill Nelson (R-FL), and Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX).