So, the bloodshed appears to have ended for the moment and the Dems are now in charge of both the House and the Senate. The obvious question is: “What’s in it for us? (the computing research community)” The short answer at the moment is: I dunno. Lots of questions remain unanswered about how the remainder of the 109th Congress will play out and how the 110th Congress will organize and move forward, but here are some thoughts.
The immediate legislative concern of many of us in the science advocacy community is the status of the NSF, NIST and DOE appropriations increases called for in the President’s American Competitiveness Initiative and currently tied up in the unfinished Science, State, Justice, Commerce and Energy and Water appropriations bills. The big question is whether the current congressional leadership will want to make progress on the bills in the lame-duck session starting next week, or simply punt the problems to the Democrats in the new Congress next year. The current conventional wisdom is that the GOP will probably push through a new “continuing resolution” that will continue to fund the federal government at the FY 06 levels through February 2007 and leave the challenge of passing the 11 outstanding appropriations bills to the Democratic leadership to deal with when they take over. Part of the motivation here is that the FY 07 Defense Appropriations bill passed by Congress before the election actually busted the budget caps by about $5 billion — money that would have to be found in the remaining bills.
There is some incentive for taking care of business now on both sides of the aisle, if it can be done. One reason is that these appropriations bills are, as usual, loaded with earmarks for just about every member of Congress to insure their passage. Starting the current approps process over from scratch next Congress puts those earmarks at risk. Another motivation is that the Democrats would rather not have to make the tough decisions that will be required to hit the budget caps with the current approps bills — and starting from scratch on FY 07, while simultaneously beginning the FY 08 budget process, is a lot to do.
As we’ve noted before, we would much rather Congress take care of business now — either by passing the appropriations bills individually (under “regular order”) or as part of an omnibus that preserves the ACI increases. Passing a continuing resolution and beginning the process anew in February puts all of the ACI gains we’ve worked hard for this year at risk (at least for FY 07). It does appear that Congress — or at least the Senate — will be in session for much of December working on the confirmation of Robert Gates as the new Secretary of Defense (more on that below). So there’s at least the opportunity for Congress to act during the lame-duck to finish their work on appropriations. Just not sure there’s the will.
CRA will help make the case for acting now at an event next week we’re participating in as part of the Task Force on the Future of American Innovation. You’ll recall that the Task Force released a report last year (“Benchmarks of Our Innovation Future”) that we endorsed (and actually helped produce) that helped drive much of the debate within the Administration about the need to address some of the competitiveness concerns that American universities and, increasingly, American companies were raising. We’ve updated the report for 2006, added a bit of a national security angle as well, and will be releasing it at a press conference on Thursday, Nov 16th, with some remarks by a few Washington notables (keep tuned here for details…should be worth the wait). The point of the report is to note that though the U.S. continues to hold a dominant position in the global economy, that position isn’t guaranteed and, indeed, many trends suggest it’s at risk long-term. The report highlights the importance of federal support for fundamental research as a key point in the innovation chain necessary for insuring our continued global competitiveness. We’ll use the event to call on Congress to finish their work on ACI-related issues — especially finishing the already agreed-to but not passed appropriations bills that would fund NSF, NIST and DOE. We’ll have more on the report in a few days.
The industry members of the Task Force have also once again chosen to weigh in heavily. Most recently, the Business Roundtable today ran two <a href=nice (pdf) full-page ads (pdf) — one in the Washington Post, one in the NY Times — urging Congress to act in a bipartisan way and address the outstanding competitiveness issues.
Over the longer term (at least for FY 08 and FY 09), we should be in good shape with a Democratic congress. The Democratic Innovation Agenda was very similar to what became the President’s American Competitiveness Agenda. Both are heavily influenced by the National Academies “Rising Above the Gathering Storm” report. The Democrats might place more emphasis on federal education efforts (NSF EHR) and “applied and industrial” R&D (NIST ATP and MEP) than the Republicans have, and may place more emphasis on workforce/offshoring issues, but should otherwise share a similar commitment to increasing the research budgets of NSF, NIST, NOAA, NIH and DOE.
There are, however, a few things though that could skew the picture a bit. The first is that it’s not clear exactly how Democratic priorities will impact upcoming apporpriations. While support for the federal role in fundamental research is bipartisan at the “meta” level, there are some differences at the agency level. Though the Democrats were generally supportive of the “physical sciences” thrust of the ACI, they were not as pleased with the relative deemphasis of NIH funding in the President’s plan. Because the budget environment hasn’t changed significantly — there will still not be any significant amount of “new” money in the budget — any effort to increase the relatively flat NIH budget will necissitate cuts elsewhere. Will that put other research budgets at risk?
Another potentially complicating factor is that we have no idea at this point whether the Democratic leadership will want to make significant changes to the existing committee structure — something well within their power to do. Altering how the appropriations committees are laid out, or even how the authorizing committees are assembled (what subcommittees will exist, what their jurisdictions will be), could have a substantial impact on the way science policy gets implemented in Congress. (You can see here what we thought about Republican plans to reorganize the committee structure back in ’05.)
One other change — one that has the potential to improve the computing research community’s fortunes a bit — is the resignation of Donald Rumsfeld as Sec. of Defense and the nomination of current Texas A&M University president Robert Gates to succeed him. As a close friend of the President, Gates has, for the last couple of years, been one of the people the higher-ed community has looked to often to help carry the message of the importance of federal support for fundamental research to the Administration. As a result, he should be familiar not only with our basic issues, but also have a decent familiarity with the science advocacy community here in town. Hopefully, that means he’d be a bit more open to listening to the concerns of our community than the current DOD leadership has been.
So lots of changes ahead, but much of the agenda — at least the agenda related to issues important to the computing research community — will likely remain the same. We’ll have additional updates when we have some sense of how the Democrats and GOP will choose to organize their leadership and committee structures. And we’ll provide quick updates as soon as we know anything at all about how appropriations are going to shake out. Update: From today’s Washington Post:
Pelosi said that Democratic leaders want to demonstrate their effectiveness, and build up some trust with the White House, by tackling legislation that will have bipartisan support. Bush’s “innovation agenda,” laid out last year in his State of the Union address, has largely lain dormant. Democrats would like to take up Bush’s proposals to expand funding for basic research and alternative energy sources such as ethanol, she said.
We are pleased to announce that the following individuals have agreed to serve on the interim CCC Council. The interim Council will begin immediately to implement the activities envisioned in the CCC proposal (see www.cra.org/ccc or the November 2006 Computing Research News).
Greg Andrews, Arizona
Bill Feiereisen, LANL
Susan Graham, California-Berkeley
Jessica Hodgins, CMU
John Hollerbach, Utah
Daniel Jackson, MIT
Anita Jones, Virginia
Dick Karp, California-Berkeley
Ken Kennedy, Rice
John King, Michigan
Peter Kogge, Notre Dame
Ed Lazowska, Washington
Ran Liebskind-Hadas, HMC
Dan Ling, Microsoft
Dan Reed, UNC
Frances Sullivan, IDA
David Tennenhouse, A9
Ellen Zegura, Georgia Tech
We are currently constituting a Nominating Committee to generate potential appointees to the more permanent (rotating three-year terms) CCC Council and Chair. Our intent is to move quickly towards appointing this group.
CSIA R&D Strategic Issues
CSIA R&D Technical Topics and Priorities (as listed in the request)
CSIA R&D Roadmap
R&D Recommendations in the Federal Plan
CSIA is looking for papers to be submitted by November 30 but the submission guidelines state: White papers submitted by January 31, 2007 will be used to the greatest extent possible.
For questions or more information visit the web site or contact Dr. Ernest McDuffie at csia-comments@nitrd.gov or 703.292.4504.
The Government Accountability Office has just released its report (pdf) on the state of Federal Coordination for Cyber Security R&D requested by the House Committee on Government Reform. It’s goal wasn’t to assess the state of the research portfolio, but to look at how the agencies coordinate. Here’s what they recommended:
To strengthen cyber security research and development programs, we recommend that the Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy take the following action:
Establish firm timelines for the completion of the federal cyber security R&D agenda that includes near-term, mid-term, and long-term research. Such an agenda should include the following elements:
timelines and milestones for conducting research and development activities;
goals and measures for evaluating research and development activities;
assignment of responsibility for implementation, including the accomplishment of the focus areas and suggested research priorities; and
the alignment of funding priorities with technical priorities.
We also recommend that the Director of the Office of Management and Budget implement the following action:
Issue guidance to agencies on reporting information about federally funded cyber security R&D projects to the governmentwide repositories.
The report is here (pdf). It’s a pretty quick read at only 30 pages. GCN.com have online coverage here.
OSTP apparently had no comment on the recommendations in the GAO report. The establishment of a research agenda for federal cyber security R&D was also a recommendation and focus of the PITAC report Cyber Security R&D: A Crisis of Prioritization. The committee laid out in the 2005 report ten specific research areas it felt warranted prioritization, along with recommending immediate increases to the cyber security research budgets of NSF, DARPA and DHS (but especially NSF, which they felt was really carrying the load for fundamental, long-term cyber security research). While progress on these funding recommendations has been slow, NITRD has added a Cyber Security and Information Assurance working group into its interagency planning effort….
While CRA highly encourages all computing research community members to attend the annual Congressional Visit Days held in Washington, DC throughout the year, we know it is sometimes difficult to take two or three days to come to the Capitol. Since it is important that everyone be involved in the process and meet with their Representative and Senators, we are adding a space to the CRA Government Affairs web site regarding advocacy through district visits. Visiting your members of Congress while they are in your neighborhood is an equally effective and less time consuming way to express how important federal funding for computer research is to you and your community and is usually more low-key and less chaotic than similar meetings in DC. In doing a district visit, please be sure to keep your institutions government affairs contact informed as he or she can give valuable advice and assistance. To find out who your Representative is, visit Write Your Representative.
The 2007 Congressional and Senate calendars have not been published and things are a bit up in the air regarding sessions at the end of this year. As soon as recess schedules are announced we will list them on the web site. Please visit the new District Visits portion of the web site for updates to the recess listings and as always if you have questions or need assistance with making an appointment, contact Melissa Norr in CRA’s Government Affairs office at mnorr@cra.org or 202.234.2111 ext. 111.
Steve Lohr has a great piece today in the NY Times on the state of CS, called “Computing, 2016: What Won’t be Possible?” The essay was apparently spurred by last week’s CSTB’s 20th Anniversary symposium, which I regret that I couldn’t attend. (Fortunately Cameron and David from ACM’s U.S. Public Policy Committee did and have some greatwrite-ups.)
Here’s a snippet from the NY Times piece:
Computer science is not only a comparatively young field, but also one that has had to prove it is really science. Skeptics in academia would often say that after Alan Turing described the concept of the universal machine in the late 1930s the idea that a computer in theory could be made to do the work of any kind of calculating machine, including the human brain all that remained to be done was mere engineering.
The more generous perspective today is that decades of stunningly rapid advances in processing speed, storage and networking, along with the development of increasingly clever software, have brought computing into science, business and culture in ways that were barely imagined years ago. The quantitative changes delivered through smart engineering opened the door to qualitative changes.
Computing changes what can be seen, simulated and done. So in science, computing makes it possible to simulate climate change and unravel the human genome. In business, low-cost computing, the Internet and digital communications are transforming the global economy. In culture, the artifacts of computing include the iPod, YouTube and computer-animated movies.
Whats next? That was the subject of a symposium in Washington this month held by the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board, which is part of the National Academies and the nations leading advisory board on science and technology.
Glad to see that the CSTB event succeeded in getting the message across that computing is a discipline still rich with challenges and contributions to make. Let’s hope this piece gets as wide a circulation (and has as big an impact) as this previous NY Times piece….
You can read all of Lohr’s piece today here.
The Homeland Security Appropriations were passed last week before Congress went home to campaign. The news is mixed with the total appropriations for R&D coming in at $838 million more than either the House or the Senate recommended individually. The cyber security R&D program will see an increase of $3.3 million to $20 million, up from $16.7 million in FY2006. While it’s nice that there’s an increase to the cyber security account, the level is still well below “adequate,” as PITAC pointed out last year in its report on the federal cyber security research effort Cyber Security R&D: A Crisis of Prioritization. Ed Lazowska, former Chair of PITAC, put it nicely in this interview with CIO Magazine last year:
Most egregiously, the Department of Homeland Security simply doesn’t get cybersecurity. DHS has a science and technology (S&T) budget of more than a billion dollars annually. Of this, [only] $18 million is devoted to cybersecurity. For FY06, DHS’s S&T budget is slated to go up by more than $200 million, but the allocation to cybersecurity will decrease to $17 million! It’s also worth noting that across DHS’s entire S&T budget, only about 10 percent is allocated to anything that might reasonably be called “research” rather than “deployment.”
Hopefully, this is high on the agenda of the Department’s new Assistant Secretary for Cyber Security and Telecommunications, Greg Garcia, who was appointed to the post on September 18th.
Further bad news in the R&D section is that University Programs received $50 million, which is less than the $62 million appropriated last year and below the Presidents request of $51.9 million.
Congress used the appropriations bill to express its displeasure with the way Homeland Security S&T has been managed and its expectation that things must improve if S&T is to get any increased appropriations in the future. In fact, Congress expressly withheld $50 million from the R&D budget until the office presents, and Congress approves, a report prepared by the Under Secretary of Science and Technology that describes the progress to address financial management deficiencies, improve its management controls, and implement performance measures and evaluations. They also included language requiring a hearing within 60 days of enactment on the University-Based Centers of Excellence Program goals for fiscal year 2007 and outcomes projected for each center for the next three years.
As the bill has not yet been signed by the President (although it is expected to be), the Department is operating under a continuing resolution extending the FY2006 budget numbers.
As we noted last week, the National Science Foundation has tasked CRA with establishing a Computing Community Consortium that can provide scientific leadership and vision on issues related to computing research and future large-scale computing research projects. Today, the CCC Planning Group released a white paper (pdf, 210kb) with much more detail on the structure and purpose of the CCC. They’ve also released a timeline of future activities.
The first step in “Bootstrapping Phase 1” has been completed with the naming of an interim CRA GENI Community Advisory Board. Its members are:
Charlie Catlett, Argonne National Lab
Vint Cerf, Google
Susan Graham, University of California, Berkeley
Ron Johnson, University of Washington
Anita Jones, University of Virginia
Ed Lazowska, University of Washington (Chair)
Peter Lee, Carnegie Mellon University
Ellen Zegura, Georgia Tech
With the members of the 109th Congress getting ready to leave town this week and not come back until mid-November (giving them plenty of time for last-minute campaigning in their home districts), it seems appropriate to take a look at what they’ve accomplished in addressing some of the innovation and competitiveness issues that have been so well-covered here this year.
Though there was movement on competitiveness issues in Congress at the end of last year, the inclusion by President Bush of an “American Competitiveness Initiative” in his State of the Union speech at the end of January clearly catalyzed the action on innovation and competitiveness issues this year. The President’s plan included a number of different provisions addressing different portions of the innovation/competitiveness chain:
First, double, over 10 years, the Federal support for fundamental research in the physical sciences and engineering at the National Science Foundation, National Institute of Standards and Technology, and the Department of Energy’s Office of Science;
Second, make permanent the R&D Tax Credit;
Third, encourage more children to take more math and science, and encourage more math and science professionals to teach;
Fourth, provide more worker training options;
and, Fifth, increase our ability to compete for and retain the best and the brightest talent in the world.
Congress, too, had it’s own ideas — many gleaned from influential reports like the National Academies’ Rising Above the Gathering Storm and the Council on Competitiveness’ Innovate America reports — and reflected them in a number of pieces of legislation introduced throughout the year. It was enough to make the science advocacy community somewhat giddy. After all, we’d been fighting for several years to convince the Administration and Congress that the federal investment in fundamental research, despite being an absolutely crucial part of the the chain of innovation that keeps America dominant in an increasingly competitive world, was inadequately supported within the Federal budget — a fact that put our future competitiveness at risk. But until this year, beyond a few sympathetic ears in Congress, that argument had gained no traction. Then, a change in attitude in the White House and some real leadership on both sides of the aisle in Congress (folks like Reps. Frank Wolf (R-VA), Sherry Boehlert (R-NY), the House Democratic Leadership, Sens. Lamar Alexander (R-TN), Joe Lieberman (D-CT), Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), Pete Domenici (R-NM), John Ensign (R-NV), and Barbara Mikulski (D-MD)) and the tide turned dramatically. Soon the President was on the road making the case for increased funding for science and members were scrambling to claim some legislative ground by introducing a plethora of competitiveness bills.
So as we approach the end of this legislative session, where did all of this activity get us? How will the science community fare as a result of “competitiveness” and “innovation” becoming hot topics?
The short answer seems to be: we’ll probably do pretty well.
For those of us who have a great interest in seeing university research in the physical sciences (which, in DC parlance, includes mathematics, computer science, physics, chemistry, etc) receive more support, the clear number one priority was seeing the President’s number one priority — starting NSF, NIST and DOE Office of Science, on the path to doubling their budgets in 10 years — enacted in the FY 2007 appropriations bills. And despite some early mixed-signals from the House Republican leadership, both the full House and the Senate Appropriations Committee have approved appropriations bills that would provide those agencies with the full funding they requested under ACI.
[There is one potential hurdle ahead in the form of the appropriations “end-game.” It’s clear that Congress will not conclude work on the appropriations bills before the November election, which means they’ll need to pass a “continuing resolution” that would provide funding for the federal government past the Oct 1, 2006 beginning of the 2007 fiscal year. What is unclear is whether Congress will elect to return after the election in “lame duck” session and pass the appropriations bills as freestanding pieces of legislation (unlikely), as part of a giant omnibus appropriation with all bills rolled into one (pretty likely), or simply “punt” on the whole issue and extend the “continuing resolution” (CR) through Sept. 30, 2007.
That last option is the most problematic for the science community. A CR typically directs federal agencies to continue to spend in the new fiscal year, but only at the same rate as the previous fiscal year — with no new starts or programs. A similar CR this year would wipe out all the gains we’ve worked to achieve through the President’s ACI and the House and Senate appropriations committees and send us back to square one next year. While it’s unlikely Congress would take the CR option this year — a CR would wipe out any earmarks won by lawmakers as well, unless they were explicitly included — it’s not completely out of the question, and the uncertainty about which party will lead each chamber doesn’t make the prognosticating any easier. So CRA, along with the rest of the science community, will continue to take the message “omnibus, not CR!” to the congressional leadership throughout the end of this legislative session.]
Beyond funding increases for the agencies, however, things aren’t quite as clear. Several bills were introduced in Congress this year that attempt to “authorize” specific provisions of ACI, or the various recommendations of the Gathering Storm or Innovate America reports. The table below shows what some of those bills contain and what their current and likely future status is. In every case, it appears the bills will fall short of the actions required to enact them. The biggest hurdle, it appears, is the White House’s continuing insistence that the programs contained in the ACI don’t require additional authorizations (and so they’re reluctant to allow Congress to put its stamp on programs in authorizations), and the House Leadership’s continuing reluctance to pass “high-dollar” authorizations at a time when it’s trying to demonstrate fiscal restraint. (This despte the fact that the authorizations don’t actually obligate any funding — it’s just “bad optics.”)
With only a short time remaining in the 109th Congress’ legislative calendar — really, only the days the Members are willing to sit in “lame duck” session after the election — it becomes increasingly unlikely (though not impossible) that any of the congressional competitiveness bills will make it to the President’s desk. So, despite yesterday’s introduction by the Senate Majority and Minority Leaders of the National Competitiveness Investment Act (not yet online) — an omnibus-like complilation of a number of different Senate approaches into one 209-page bill — it’s not clear that any of the bill will get the necessary consideration in the House to move it towards passage.
It would be nice symbolism to see these Congressional authorizations passed overwhelmingly, but it’s not a particularly big loss that they likely won’t be. In fact, from our perspective, there’s a benefit in not having these particular bills get enacted. One key element of increasing the Nation’s innovative capacity is insuring that we have a diverse, well-educated workforce. And a key part of that is by increasing the participation of underrepresented groups in math and science — particularly in computer science. Though the various authorization bills listed below have a number of good things in them, none is particularly strong in promoting the participation of women or minorities in math and science. Having to begin the process of working through these bills with the next Congress beginning in January actually presents an opportunity for us to continue to make the case for increasing support for programs that aim to create a more diverse workforce, with the hope of seeing that reflected in whatever bill finally moves towards passage.
But, for now, the real key for those of us who represent those who do fundamental research in the physical sciences is to see the appropriations requested by the President enacted in full. And on that score, we should do quite well this session.
Authorizes a scholarship program for teachers in K-12 math and science;
Encourages school and university partnerships in math and science education through a specialized master’s degree program as well as a mentor program for AP teachers and their students;
Allows NSF to fund centers to improve undergraduate education.
Last night, the House overwhelming approved a compromise version (pdf) of the FY 2007 Defense Appropriations bill after House and Senate negotiators agreed last Friday to mitigate some of the significant cuts in the Senate version. As we’ve noted previously, a key area of concern for the computing research community was the large cut by the Senate to DARPA’s Cognitive Computing program, particularly their $60 million cut to “Integrated Cognitive Systems” account. As we pointed out then, the cuts to the ICS account run counter to the recent concerns of Congress, PITAC, and DOD Defense Science Board, who all have raised strong concerns about the shift of DARPA resources away from fundamental research at universities, especially in information technology. The Cognitive Computing program is one area where DARPA has responded positively to those concerns.
While the community attempted to resist the cuts, the compromise version of the bill still contains a $30 million reduction from the President’s requested level for Integrated Cognitive Systems for FY 2007 — part of a $159 million reduction to DARPA’s overall requested budget. While these cuts to the requested budget are not good, they are a marked improvement from the Senate numbers, which included a $433 million cut to DARPA’s requested budget. Fortunately, even with the cut to its requested budget, Cognitive Computing will still see an increase over its FY 06 estimated level (about 10.6 percent).
The Senate had also approved a $14 million cut to the requested budget for the Information and Communications Technology line. That cut was mitigated to $8 million in the conference report ($3.9 million from the Responsive Computing Architectures account, $1 million from Security-Aware Systems, and $3 million from the Automated Speech and Text Exploitation in Multiple Languages account).
Overall, 6.1 (Basic) research at DOD fared pretty well (5.6 percent increase over FY 06) and 6.2 (Applied) overall did OK, too (2.2 percent increase). 6.1 “Defense-wide” (DARPA and OSD, basically) went up 14.8 percent, and 6.2 “Defense-wide” went up about 3.5 percent.
The folks at the Coalition for National Security Research have put together a handy little chart of the various DOD R&D accounts in the bill (thanks to Jason Van Wey of MIT). You can get it here (pdf).
Senate approval of the conference bill is expected today and the President is expected to sign the bill. When signed, the bill will represent the only one of the 13 annual appropriations bills necessary to fund the operations of government that Congress will have completed before the start of the new fiscal year October 1st. Congress also hopes to complete work on the FY 07 Homeland Security Appropriations bill before it recesses at the end of the week (so that members can return to their states/districts in time for last-minute campaigning before the November elections), but it’s not clear whether that will happen. We’ll have further details on the Homeland Security bill conference as soon as they become available….
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Post-Election: Where do we stand?
/In: American Competitiveness Initiative, Funding, FY07 Appropriations, Policy /by Peter HarshaSo, the bloodshed appears to have ended for the moment and the Dems are now in charge of both the House and the Senate. The obvious question is: “What’s in it for us? (the computing research community)” The short answer at the moment is: I dunno. Lots of questions remain unanswered about how the remainder of the 109th Congress will play out and how the 110th Congress will organize and move forward, but here are some thoughts.
The immediate legislative concern of many of us in the science advocacy community is the status of the NSF, NIST and DOE appropriations increases called for in the President’s American Competitiveness Initiative and currently tied up in the unfinished Science, State, Justice, Commerce and Energy and Water appropriations bills. The big question is whether the current congressional leadership will want to make progress on the bills in the lame-duck session starting next week, or simply punt the problems to the Democrats in the new Congress next year. The current conventional wisdom is that the GOP will probably push through a new “continuing resolution” that will continue to fund the federal government at the FY 06 levels through February 2007 and leave the challenge of passing the 11 outstanding appropriations bills to the Democratic leadership to deal with when they take over. Part of the motivation here is that the FY 07 Defense Appropriations bill passed by Congress before the election actually busted the budget caps by about $5 billion — money that would have to be found in the remaining bills.
There is some incentive for taking care of business now on both sides of the aisle, if it can be done. One reason is that these appropriations bills are, as usual, loaded with earmarks for just about every member of Congress to insure their passage. Starting the current approps process over from scratch next Congress puts those earmarks at risk. Another motivation is that the Democrats would rather not have to make the tough decisions that will be required to hit the budget caps with the current approps bills — and starting from scratch on FY 07, while simultaneously beginning the FY 08 budget process, is a lot to do.
As we’ve noted before, we would much rather Congress take care of business now — either by passing the appropriations bills individually (under “regular order”) or as part of an omnibus that preserves the ACI increases. Passing a continuing resolution and beginning the process anew in February puts all of the ACI gains we’ve worked hard for this year at risk (at least for FY 07). It does appear that Congress — or at least the Senate — will be in session for much of December working on the confirmation of Robert Gates as the new Secretary of Defense (more on that below). So there’s at least the opportunity for Congress to act during the lame-duck to finish their work on appropriations. Just not sure there’s the will.
CRA will help make the case for acting now at an event next week we’re participating in as part of the Task Force on the Future of American Innovation. You’ll recall that the Task Force released a report last year (“Benchmarks of Our Innovation Future”) that we endorsed (and actually helped produce) that helped drive much of the debate within the Administration about the need to address some of the competitiveness concerns that American universities and, increasingly, American companies were raising. We’ve updated the report for 2006, added a bit of a national security angle as well, and will be releasing it at a press conference on Thursday, Nov 16th, with some remarks by a few Washington notables (keep tuned here for details…should be worth the wait). The point of the report is to note that though the U.S. continues to hold a dominant position in the global economy, that position isn’t guaranteed and, indeed, many trends suggest it’s at risk long-term. The report highlights the importance of federal support for fundamental research as a key point in the innovation chain necessary for insuring our continued global competitiveness. We’ll use the event to call on Congress to finish their work on ACI-related issues — especially finishing the already agreed-to but not passed appropriations bills that would fund NSF, NIST and DOE. We’ll have more on the report in a few days.
The industry members of the Task Force have also once again chosen to weigh in heavily. Most recently, the Business Roundtable today ran two <a href=nice (pdf) full-page ads (pdf) — one in the Washington Post, one in the NY Times — urging Congress to act in a bipartisan way and address the outstanding competitiveness issues.
Over the longer term (at least for FY 08 and FY 09), we should be in good shape with a Democratic congress. The Democratic Innovation Agenda was very similar to what became the President’s American Competitiveness Agenda. Both are heavily influenced by the National Academies “Rising Above the Gathering Storm” report. The Democrats might place more emphasis on federal education efforts (NSF EHR) and “applied and industrial” R&D (NIST ATP and MEP) than the Republicans have, and may place more emphasis on workforce/offshoring issues, but should otherwise share a similar commitment to increasing the research budgets of NSF, NIST, NOAA, NIH and DOE.
There are, however, a few things though that could skew the picture a bit. The first is that it’s not clear exactly how Democratic priorities will impact upcoming apporpriations. While support for the federal role in fundamental research is bipartisan at the “meta” level, there are some differences at the agency level. Though the Democrats were generally supportive of the “physical sciences” thrust of the ACI, they were not as pleased with the relative deemphasis of NIH funding in the President’s plan. Because the budget environment hasn’t changed significantly — there will still not be any significant amount of “new” money in the budget — any effort to increase the relatively flat NIH budget will necissitate cuts elsewhere. Will that put other research budgets at risk?
Another potentially complicating factor is that we have no idea at this point whether the Democratic leadership will want to make significant changes to the existing committee structure — something well within their power to do. Altering how the appropriations committees are laid out, or even how the authorizing committees are assembled (what subcommittees will exist, what their jurisdictions will be), could have a substantial impact on the way science policy gets implemented in Congress. (You can see here what we thought about Republican plans to reorganize the committee structure back in ’05.)
One other change — one that has the potential to improve the computing research community’s fortunes a bit — is the resignation of Donald Rumsfeld as Sec. of Defense and the nomination of current Texas A&M University president Robert Gates to succeed him. As a close friend of the President, Gates has, for the last couple of years, been one of the people the higher-ed community has looked to often to help carry the message of the importance of federal support for fundamental research to the Administration. As a result, he should be familiar not only with our basic issues, but also have a decent familiarity with the science advocacy community here in town. Hopefully, that means he’d be a bit more open to listening to the concerns of our community than the current DOD leadership has been.
So lots of changes ahead, but much of the agenda — at least the agenda related to issues important to the computing research community — will likely remain the same. We’ll have additional updates when we have some sense of how the Democrats and GOP will choose to organize their leadership and committee structures. And we’ll provide quick updates as soon as we know anything at all about how appropriations are going to shake out.
Update: From today’s Washington Post:
So, that’s a good thing.
From “Reid, Pelosi Expected to Keep Tight Rein in Both Chambers.”
CRA Appoints Interim Computing Community Consortium Council
/In: Computing Community Consortium (CCC), CRA /by Peter HarshaFrom CRA Executive Director Andy Bernat:
Previous coverage of the CCC.
Cyber Security Road Map
/In: Policy, Research, Security /by MelissaNorrNITRD is asking the computing community for input on a roadmap for cyber security R&D called for in the Federal Plan for Cyber Security and Information Assurance Research and Development. Individuals from academic institutions, industry, government research labs and development centers, and international organizations are encouraged to submit white papers. The request was put out by the Cyber Security and Information Assurance Interagency Working Group.
The CSIA request includes submission guidelines, background and scope, and questions that the white papers need to address. The broad topics that the questions are under are:
CSIA is looking for papers to be submitted by November 30 but the submission guidelines state: White papers submitted by January 31, 2007 will be used to the greatest extent possible.
For questions or more information visit the web site or contact Dr. Ernest McDuffie at csia-comments@nitrd.gov or 703.292.4504.
GAO Report on Cyber Security R&D
/In: Security /by Peter HarshaThe Government Accountability Office has just released its report (pdf) on the state of Federal Coordination for Cyber Security R&D requested by the House Committee on Government Reform. It’s goal wasn’t to assess the state of the research portfolio, but to look at how the agencies coordinate. Here’s what they recommended:
The report is here (pdf). It’s a pretty quick read at only 30 pages.
GCN.com have online coverage here.
OSTP apparently had no comment on the recommendations in the GAO report. The establishment of a research agenda for federal cyber security R&D was also a recommendation and focus of the PITAC report Cyber Security R&D: A Crisis of Prioritization. The committee laid out in the 2005 report ten specific research areas it felt warranted prioritization, along with recommending immediate increases to the cyber security research budgets of NSF, DARPA and DHS (but especially NSF, which they felt was really carrying the load for fundamental, long-term cyber security research). While progress on these funding recommendations has been slow, NITRD has added a Cyber Security and Information Assurance working group into its interagency planning effort….
Visiting Congress At Home
/In: Events, People, Policy /by MelissaNorrWhile CRA highly encourages all computing research community members to attend the annual Congressional Visit Days held in Washington, DC throughout the year, we know it is sometimes difficult to take two or three days to come to the Capitol. Since it is important that everyone be involved in the process and meet with their Representative and Senators, we are adding a space to the CRA Government Affairs web site regarding advocacy through district visits. Visiting your members of Congress while they are in your neighborhood is an equally effective and less time consuming way to express how important federal funding for computer research is to you and your community and is usually more low-key and less chaotic than similar meetings in DC. In doing a district visit, please be sure to keep your institutions government affairs contact informed as he or she can give valuable advice and assistance. To find out who your Representative is, visit Write Your Representative.
The 2007 Congressional and Senate calendars have not been published and things are a bit up in the air regarding sessions at the end of this year. As soon as recess schedules are announced we will list them on the web site. Please visit the new District Visits portion of the web site for updates to the recess listings and as always if you have questions or need assistance with making an appointment, contact Melissa Norr in CRA’s Government Affairs office at mnorr@cra.org or 202.234.2111 ext. 111.
NY Times on Computing’s Future
/In: R&D in the Press /by Peter HarshaSteve Lohr has a great piece today in the NY Times on the state of CS, called “Computing, 2016: What Won’t be Possible?” The essay was apparently spurred by last week’s CSTB’s 20th Anniversary symposium, which I regret that I couldn’t attend. (Fortunately Cameron and David from ACM’s U.S. Public Policy Committee did and have some great write-ups.)
Here’s a snippet from the NY Times piece:
Glad to see that the CSTB event succeeded in getting the message across that computing is a discipline still rich with challenges and contributions to make. Let’s hope this piece gets as wide a circulation (and has as big an impact) as this previous NY Times piece….
You can read all of Lohr’s piece today here.
Homeland Security Appropriations
/In: Funding, FY07 Appropriations, Policy, Research, Security /by MelissaNorrThe Homeland Security Appropriations were passed last week before Congress went home to campaign. The news is mixed with the total appropriations for R&D coming in at $838 million more than either the House or the Senate recommended individually. The cyber security R&D program will see an increase of $3.3 million to $20 million, up from $16.7 million in FY2006. While it’s nice that there’s an increase to the cyber security account, the level is still well below “adequate,” as PITAC pointed out last year in its report on the federal cyber security research effort Cyber Security R&D: A Crisis of Prioritization. Ed Lazowska, former Chair of PITAC, put it nicely in this interview with CIO Magazine last year:
Hopefully, this is high on the agenda of the Department’s new Assistant Secretary for Cyber Security and Telecommunications, Greg Garcia, who was appointed to the post on September 18th.
Further bad news in the R&D section is that University Programs received $50 million, which is less than the $62 million appropriated last year and below the Presidents request of $51.9 million.
Congress used the appropriations bill to express its displeasure with the way Homeland Security S&T has been managed and its expectation that things must improve if S&T is to get any increased appropriations in the future. In fact, Congress expressly withheld $50 million from the R&D budget until the office presents, and Congress approves, a report prepared by the Under Secretary of Science and Technology that describes the progress to address financial management deficiencies, improve its management controls, and implement performance measures and evaluations. They also included language requiring a hearing within 60 days of enactment on the University-Based Centers of Excellence Program goals for fiscal year 2007 and outcomes projected for each center for the next three years.
As the bill has not yet been signed by the President (although it is expected to be), the Department is operating under a continuing resolution extending the FY2006 budget numbers.
Computing Community Consortium Ramps Up
/In: Computing Community Consortium (CCC), CRA /by Peter HarshaAs we noted last week, the National Science Foundation has tasked CRA with establishing a Computing Community Consortium that can provide scientific leadership and vision on issues related to computing research and future large-scale computing research projects. Today, the CCC Planning Group released a white paper (pdf, 210kb) with much more detail on the structure and purpose of the CCC. They’ve also released a timeline of future activities.
The first step in “Bootstrapping Phase 1” has been completed with the naming of an interim CRA GENI Community Advisory Board. Its members are:
Finally, we’ve set up a page for all CCC related information: http://www.cra.org/ccc.
Innovation and Competitiveness: How’d we do?
/In: American Competitiveness Initiative /by Peter HarshaWith the members of the 109th Congress getting ready to leave town this week and not come back until mid-November (giving them plenty of time for last-minute campaigning in their home districts), it seems appropriate to take a look at what they’ve accomplished in addressing some of the innovation and competitiveness issues that have been so well-covered here this year.
Though there was movement on competitiveness issues in Congress at the end of last year, the inclusion by President Bush of an “American Competitiveness Initiative” in his State of the Union speech at the end of January clearly catalyzed the action on innovation and competitiveness issues this year. The President’s plan included a number of different provisions addressing different portions of the innovation/competitiveness chain:
Congress, too, had it’s own ideas — many gleaned from influential reports like the National Academies’ Rising Above the Gathering Storm and the Council on Competitiveness’ Innovate America reports — and reflected them in a number of pieces of legislation introduced throughout the year. It was enough to make the science advocacy community somewhat giddy. After all, we’d been fighting for several years to convince the Administration and Congress that the federal investment in fundamental research, despite being an absolutely crucial part of the the chain of innovation that keeps America dominant in an increasingly competitive world, was inadequately supported within the Federal budget — a fact that put our future competitiveness at risk. But until this year, beyond a few sympathetic ears in Congress, that argument had gained no traction. Then, a change in attitude in the White House and some real leadership on both sides of the aisle in Congress (folks like Reps. Frank Wolf (R-VA), Sherry Boehlert (R-NY), the House Democratic Leadership, Sens. Lamar Alexander (R-TN), Joe Lieberman (D-CT), Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), Pete Domenici (R-NM), John Ensign (R-NV), and Barbara Mikulski (D-MD)) and the tide turned dramatically. Soon the President was on the road making the case for increased funding for science and members were scrambling to claim some legislative ground by introducing a plethora of competitiveness bills.
So as we approach the end of this legislative session, where did all of this activity get us? How will the science community fare as a result of “competitiveness” and “innovation” becoming hot topics?
The short answer seems to be: we’ll probably do pretty well.
For those of us who have a great interest in seeing university research in the physical sciences (which, in DC parlance, includes mathematics, computer science, physics, chemistry, etc) receive more support, the clear number one priority was seeing the President’s number one priority — starting NSF, NIST and DOE Office of Science, on the path to doubling their budgets in 10 years — enacted in the FY 2007 appropriations bills. And despite some early mixed-signals from the House Republican leadership, both the full House and the Senate Appropriations Committee have approved appropriations bills that would provide those agencies with the full funding they requested under ACI.
[There is one potential hurdle ahead in the form of the appropriations “end-game.” It’s clear that Congress will not conclude work on the appropriations bills before the November election, which means they’ll need to pass a “continuing resolution” that would provide funding for the federal government past the Oct 1, 2006 beginning of the 2007 fiscal year. What is unclear is whether Congress will elect to return after the election in “lame duck” session and pass the appropriations bills as freestanding pieces of legislation (unlikely), as part of a giant omnibus appropriation with all bills rolled into one (pretty likely), or simply “punt” on the whole issue and extend the “continuing resolution” (CR) through Sept. 30, 2007.
That last option is the most problematic for the science community. A CR typically directs federal agencies to continue to spend in the new fiscal year, but only at the same rate as the previous fiscal year — with no new starts or programs. A similar CR this year would wipe out all the gains we’ve worked to achieve through the President’s ACI and the House and Senate appropriations committees and send us back to square one next year. While it’s unlikely Congress would take the CR option this year — a CR would wipe out any earmarks won by lawmakers as well, unless they were explicitly included — it’s not completely out of the question, and the uncertainty about which party will lead each chamber doesn’t make the prognosticating any easier. So CRA, along with the rest of the science community, will continue to take the message “omnibus, not CR!” to the congressional leadership throughout the end of this legislative session.]
Beyond funding increases for the agencies, however, things aren’t quite as clear. Several bills were introduced in Congress this year that attempt to “authorize” specific provisions of ACI, or the various recommendations of the Gathering Storm or Innovate America reports. The table below shows what some of those bills contain and what their current and likely future status is. In every case, it appears the bills will fall short of the actions required to enact them. The biggest hurdle, it appears, is the White House’s continuing insistence that the programs contained in the ACI don’t require additional authorizations (and so they’re reluctant to allow Congress to put its stamp on programs in authorizations), and the House Leadership’s continuing reluctance to pass “high-dollar” authorizations at a time when it’s trying to demonstrate fiscal restraint. (This despte the fact that the authorizations don’t actually obligate any funding — it’s just “bad optics.”)
With only a short time remaining in the 109th Congress’ legislative calendar — really, only the days the Members are willing to sit in “lame duck” session after the election — it becomes increasingly unlikely (though not impossible) that any of the congressional competitiveness bills will make it to the President’s desk. So, despite yesterday’s introduction by the Senate Majority and Minority Leaders of the National Competitiveness Investment Act (not yet online) — an omnibus-like complilation of a number of different Senate approaches into one 209-page bill — it’s not clear that any of the bill will get the necessary consideration in the House to move it towards passage.
It would be nice symbolism to see these Congressional authorizations passed overwhelmingly, but it’s not a particularly big loss that they likely won’t be. In fact, from our perspective, there’s a benefit in not having these particular bills get enacted. One key element of increasing the Nation’s innovative capacity is insuring that we have a diverse, well-educated workforce. And a key part of that is by increasing the participation of underrepresented groups in math and science — particularly in computer science. Though the various authorization bills listed below have a number of good things in them, none is particularly strong in promoting the participation of women or minorities in math and science. Having to begin the process of working through these bills with the next Congress beginning in January actually presents an opportunity for us to continue to make the case for increasing support for programs that aim to create a more diverse workforce, with the hope of seeing that reflected in whatever bill finally moves towards passage.
But, for now, the real key for those of us who represent those who do fundamental research in the physical sciences is to see the appropriations requested by the President enacted in full. And on that score, we should do quite well this session.
Compromise Reached on FY 07 Defense Approps; Cognitive Computing Suffers Cut
/In: FY07 Appropriations /by Peter HarshaLast night, the House overwhelming approved a compromise version (pdf) of the FY 2007 Defense Appropriations bill after House and Senate negotiators agreed last Friday to mitigate some of the significant cuts in the Senate version. As we’ve noted previously, a key area of concern for the computing research community was the large cut by the Senate to DARPA’s Cognitive Computing program, particularly their $60 million cut to “Integrated Cognitive Systems” account. As we pointed out then, the cuts to the ICS account run counter to the recent concerns of Congress, PITAC, and DOD Defense Science Board, who all have raised strong concerns about the shift of DARPA resources away from fundamental research at universities, especially in information technology. The Cognitive Computing program is one area where DARPA has responded positively to those concerns.
While the community attempted to resist the cuts, the compromise version of the bill still contains a $30 million reduction from the President’s requested level for Integrated Cognitive Systems for FY 2007 — part of a $159 million reduction to DARPA’s overall requested budget. While these cuts to the requested budget are not good, they are a marked improvement from the Senate numbers, which included a $433 million cut to DARPA’s requested budget. Fortunately, even with the cut to its requested budget, Cognitive Computing will still see an increase over its FY 06 estimated level (about 10.6 percent).
The Senate had also approved a $14 million cut to the requested budget for the Information and Communications Technology line. That cut was mitigated to $8 million in the conference report ($3.9 million from the Responsive Computing Architectures account, $1 million from Security-Aware Systems, and $3 million from the Automated Speech and Text Exploitation in Multiple Languages account).
Overall, 6.1 (Basic) research at DOD fared pretty well (5.6 percent increase over FY 06) and 6.2 (Applied) overall did OK, too (2.2 percent increase). 6.1 “Defense-wide” (DARPA and OSD, basically) went up 14.8 percent, and 6.2 “Defense-wide” went up about 3.5 percent.
The folks at the Coalition for National Security Research have put together a handy little chart of the various DOD R&D accounts in the bill (thanks to Jason Van Wey of MIT). You can get it here (pdf).
Senate approval of the conference bill is expected today and the President is expected to sign the bill. When signed, the bill will represent the only one of the 13 annual appropriations bills necessary to fund the operations of government that Congress will have completed before the start of the new fiscal year October 1st. Congress also hopes to complete work on the FY 07 Homeland Security Appropriations bill before it recesses at the end of the week (so that members can return to their states/districts in time for last-minute campaigning before the November elections), but it’s not clear whether that will happen. We’ll have further details on the Homeland Security bill conference as soon as they become available….