As I noted in the last post, the Senate Appropriations Committee included language in the Senate verision of the FY 06 Defense Appropriations bill that would strip $55 million from an element of DARPA’s Cognitive Computing program — a move that seems to run counter to recent congressional sentiment on the role of computer science, especially university-led fundamental computer science, at DARPA. The “out of the blue” cut — there was no advance warning provided by appropriations staffers, no evidence that there was dissatisfaction with the program — would fall on the “Learning, Reasoning, and Integrated Cognitive Systems (pdf)” (COG-2) account. With little feedback from the Senate appropriators, we’re operating under the assumption that the main impetus for the cut was to provide an offset for increases elsewhere in the bill, though there’s been some speculation among Senate staff that the program may have suffered do to a misperception that it’s somehow similar to some of the agency’s more controversial bio-related programs.
It’s not. As we’ve tried to point out to the conferees who will have to determine whether the cut will stand in the compromise bill negotiated with the House (the House opted to fund the program at the agency’s requested level), research in learning, reasoning, and cognitive systems is focused on intelligent intrepretations of signals and data, on controlling unmanned vehicles, and on amplifying human effectiveness. Its aim is to reduce U.S. casualties by providing improved command and control and tactical planning against adversaries, as well as improved training systems. Work in this area includes research responsible for the Command Post of the Future (CPOF) — a software system currently deployed and very widely-used in Iraq to coordinate battle plans and integrate multiple intelligence reports, providing U.S. forces the capability to plan, execute and replan much faster than the enemy’s decision cycle and cited by Secretary Rumsfeld as the major contributor to victory in the first phase of Operation Iraqi Freedom. It’s also cricital to the research and development of autonomous, unmanned vehicles that amplify our warfighting capability while reducing the number of U.S. forces in harm’s way. Cutting support so significantly for this research will hamper advancements in defense-related IT in the short- and long-term and will slow technological advancements essential to current and future military operations in Iraq and around the globe.
It also runs completely counter to recent concerns of Congress, PITAC and the DOD’s Defense Science Board. All three bodies 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 these concerns.
Because these “out of the blue” cuts are so difficult to counter — they appear very late in the process with very little information about what motivated them and at a time when access to appropriations staff is most limited — we’ve focused our strategy opposing the cut by urging the members of the conference committee to abandon the Senate number and adopt the President’s budget request, the number approved by the House. You can help. We’ll tell you how soon….
Washington Post columnist Sebastian Mallaby has an interesting op-ed today inspired by news of Microsoft chairman Bill Gates’ tourofcollegecampuses, urging students to consider majoring in computer science. The piece does a good job of making the case that Gates makes in his talks to students — computing is a field with a history of producing really great stuff that promises to make even more really great stuff in the future.
In most fields of human endeavor, you hope for gradual improvements: an engine that’s somewhat more efficient, a medicine that improves life expectancy by a few months. But computer power progresses exponentially, warping social life, intellectual horizons and the business playing field.
And Mallaby lays out some examples:
Smart watches will download weather forecasts and news headlines over wireless connections. Smart phones will scan products in department stores to check where better prices can be found. Notebook computers will be portable libraries with the weight of just one novel — libraries that allow you to scribble in the margins and share your witty insights wirelessly with friends. Your home computer will respond to instructions both written and vocal, and it won’t be a computer so much as a network. Music, videos, games, photographs — oh, yes, and all your lofty intellectual outpourings — will be beamed around the house to a variety of screens and speakers. The tablet on the kitchen counter will display recipes and shopping lists. The plasma screen on the wall will be for family photos.
…All great examples of some of the foreseeable future in computing. And Gates deserves enormous credit for taking on this role of cheerleader for the field. With the current trends facing the discipline, and a general trend of US students shying away from careers in math and the sciences, this effort is sorely needed.
The only additional thing I’d wish for in these kind of presentations, especially for prospective students, would be to add more sense of purpose to the call. We’ve had a very interesting discussion about this piece amongst the members of CRA’s Government Affairs Committee, including this great observation about what could be said about the “calling” of a career in science generally, and computer science in particular, from Peter Lee at CMU (who gave me permission to post it here):
Choosing to devote your life to science and technology is not a “normal” or “safe” choice. It is a choice made by people who are exceptionally smart, caring, and idealistic. Science makes people smarter and less scared, and it also makes the world better. Becoming a scientist means joining a community of idealists.
There’s not much of that in the talks that Gates is giving, but that’s understandable. It’s easy to lose sight of intellectual and ideological appeal when the practical applications are so plainly visible.
Anyway, a digression from the piece, but something that occurred to me and many of the other members of the committee.
The meat of Mallaby’s piece comes in the final three paragraphs though, where he’s right on the money:
A lot of Washington debates are about managing bad stuff: war, terrorism, natural disasters, killer viruses, budget deficits, trade deficits, medical inflation, airline bankruptcies, imploding corporate pension plans. But policy also needs to focus on the good stuff: To figure out how we can accelerate progress. If we don’t fix the budget deficit, we will be setting ourselves up for economic punishment. But if we don’t position ourselves to take advantage of technology, we will be setting ourselves up to miss a huge economic prize.
What must we do to remain prize-worthy? The good news is that, in Gates’s estimation, between 17 and 19 of the world’s top 20 computer science faculties are American, and Microsoft hasn’t yet moved many software jobs offshore. But to keep things that way we need to step up federal research funding and relax post-Sept. 11 visa rules, so that the United States remains what Gates calls “an IQ magnet.” And because smart Indians, Chinese and others are more likely to return home as their countries grow freer and more prosperous, the United States must focus on growing its own talent. Last year two respected global surveys of math skills in eighth and ninth grades put the United States in 15th and 24th place, respectively. That isn’t good enough.
It would take fairly little to address these problems. Last week a panel convened by the National Academies proposed a package of measures that ranged from math prizes for high schoolers to pay raises for math teachers, along with a program to boost federal research funding by 10 percent annually for seven years. The total price tag comes to $10 billion annually, but the nation spends nearly twice that amount on absurd farm subsidies. What kind of priorities are those?
Maybe Mallaby’s seen that argument somewhere else 🙂
The bad news is that the stars are aligning in such a way as to guarantee that there will be no increase for computer science, or the sciences generally, in the foreseeable future. The Republican Leadership is being pushed hard at the moment to find funds to “pay for” the large emergency supplements paid out for hurricane relief. Odds are those funds will come through across-the-board cuts to non-defense, non-security related discretionary spending. Look for science agencies to suffer cuts similar to last year’s across-the-board 2 percent reduction (or worse).
One particular computing program is under an even bigger threat. The Senate voted to approve a $55 million cut to DARPA’s cognitive computing program as part of the FY 06 Defense Appopriations bill. The out-of-the blue cut would hit DARPA’s $114 million “Learning, Reasoning, and Integrated Cognitive Systems” account, effectively cutting the program in half. The House did not call for a cut in its version of the bill, so CRA is working to urge members of the conference committee to abandon the Senate cut and embrace the House number. We’ll have all the details in the next post. I just thought it worthy of mention that at the same time the calls keep coming for increased support of computer science and the physical sciences, and as much progress as has been made to draw the linkage between federal investment in university research and our ability to continue to innovate, a significant percentage of our policy leadership still doesn’t get it.
This by now has been covered all over the place, but I’d be remiss not to add it here, too. The National Academies convened a 20-member panel last summer at the request of Sens. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) and Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), and Reps. Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY) and Bart Gordon (D-TN) to determine the “top 10 actions, in priority order, that federal policymakers could take to enhance the science and technology enterprise so the United States can successfully compete, prosper, and be secure in the global community of the twenty-first century.” The task was fast-tracked, and an august panel was put together, chaired by former Lockheed Martin CEO Norm Augustine and including folks like Intel Chairman Craig Barrett, President of Texas A&M Robert Gates, CEO of DuPont Charles Holliday, Jr., former Director of Defense Research and Engineering at DOD (and computer scientist) Anita Jones, and MIT president emeritus Chuck Vest. The committee met once, held focus groups on the five issue areas they decided merited attention (K-12 education, higher education, research, innovation and workforce issues, and national and homeland security), then put together the report they released on Wednesday, Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future.
The committee actually came up with four major recommendations, supplemented with 20 specific actions to be taken. Hard to quibble with the broad recommendations: Recommendation A: Increase America’s talent pool by vastly improving K-12 mathematics and science education.
Recruit ten thousand teachers, educate ten million minds — a program that would award competitive 4-year scholarships for students to obtain bachelor’s degrees in the physical or life sciences, engineering or mathematics with concurrent certification as K-12 math and science teachers.
Strengthen two hundred fifty thousand teachers’ skills, inspire students every day — provide summer institutes, science and mathematics master’s programs, advanced placement training, and a curriculum modeled on world-class standards for current K-12 teachers.
Enlarge the pipeline by creating opportunities and incentives for middle-school and high-school students to pursue advanced work in science and math.
Recommendation B: Sustain and strengthen the nation’s traditional commitment to the long-term basic research that has the potential to be transformational to maintain the flow of new ideas that fuel the economy, provide security, and enhance the quality of life.
Increase the federal investment in long-term basic research by 10 percent annually over the next 7 years, with special attention paid to the physical sciences, engineering, mathematics, and information sciences and to DOD basic-research funding.
Provide new research grants of $500,000 each annually, payable over 5 years, to 2000 of our most outstanding early career researchers.
Institute a National Coordination Office for Research Infrastructure to manage a centralized research-infrastructure fund of $500 million per year over the next 5 years.
Allocate at least 8 percent of the budgets of federal research agencies to high-risk, high payoff research.
Create in DOE an organziation like DARPA [hopefully in the model of “old” DARPA – ed] called ARPA-E which would be charged with R&D to meet the nation’s long-term energy challenges.
Institute a Presidential Innovation Award to stimulate scientific and engineering advances in the national interest.
Recommendation C: Make the US the most attractive setting in which to study, perform research, and commercialize technologic innovation so that we can develop, recruit, and retain the best and brightest students, scientists and engineers from within the US and throughout the world.
Provide 25,000 new 4-year undergraduate scholarships each year to US citizens attending US institutions.
Increase the number of US citizens pursuing graduate study “in areas of national need” by funding 5,000 new graduate fellowships each year.
Provide a federal tax credit to encourage employers to make continuing education available to practicing scientists and engineers.
Continue to improve visa processing for international students.
Provide a 1-year automatic visa extension to international students who receive doctorates or equivalent in STEM or other areas of national need at US institutions to remain in the US to seek employment.
Institute a new skills-based, preferential immigration option.
Reform the current system of “deemed exports”.
Recommendation D: Ensure that the US is the premier place in the world to innovate, invest in downstream activities, and create high-paying jobs that are based on innovation by modernizing the patent system, realigning tax policies to encourage innovation, and ensuring affordable broadband access.
“Enhance” intellectual-property protection for the 21st century global economy.
Enact a stronger R&D tax credit to encourage private investment in innovation.
Provide tax incentives for US-based innovation.
Ensure ubiquitous broadband Internet access.
Hard to find fault in much of that — though I’m leeriest of the IP-related “enhancements” (see the report for the details about each of the action items listed). The committee came up with a “back of the envelope” calculation of about $10 billion annually to fully implement the recommendations (the R&D tax credit recommendation is actually the costliest). While that number might seem impossibly high to achieve under the current political mindset for science funding — after all, NSF suffered a 2 percent cut in the last budget and the smart money is betting something similar for FY 06 when appropriations finally wrap up — in the grand scheme of things, $10 billion on top of an $840 billion discretionary budget is a relatively small investment for the potential benefit. If the President is looking for an initiative that would enhance his legacy, I think he’d be hard-pressed to find one with a better cost/benefit ratio.
Anyway, as I said, the report has gathered a reasonable amount of attention in the press. The New York Timeshas coverage, as does the Chronicle of Higher Education (subscription required). There are a couple of follow-up hearings planned, including one by the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources on October 18th, and the House Science Committee on October 20th.
We’ll try and have all the details here. (Thanks to Sam Liles and Spaf for the pointers!)
The Department of Defense has proposed a change to its regulations that would strengthen requirements for the control of export-controlled technologies for DOD research contractors, including universities. The proposed rule would require contractors to have an export control program that includes regular audits and training, segregated workplaces for export-controlled technologies, and “unique badging requirements for foreign nationals and foreign persons.”
While we at CRA understand and support the need for export control and deemed export regulation, we’re concerned that the proposed rule as it stands would make fundamental research subject to novel restrictions that could seriously impair the ability of colleges, universities, industrial and federal research labs to conduct fundamental research, which would have significant ramifications for America’s economic competitiveness and technological leadership in the world.
This concern stems in large part from the fact that the proposed rule doesn’t reference the fundamental research exemption, as found in a Reagan-era National Security Decision Directive still in effect (NSDD 189). Though it appears that the authors of the proposed rule didn’t intend to add new burdens for universities — rather, intended the change to clarify existing regulations — the worry is that without an explicit mention of NSDD-189, DOD agencies might incorrectly interpret compliance requirements to require access controls in all instances, even when fundamental research is being performed. There’s also a concern that the new rule would prompt DOD program managers and contract officers to include overly restrictive language in DOD contracts in order to protect themselves from any potential liability or culpability. As the Association of American Universitiespoints out (pdf), this likely would exacerbate the already significant problems that universities have experienced with troublesome clauses in contracts from industry.
So, as we did when the Department of Commerce announced they were considering a similar rule change (and still haven’t decided), CRA filed comments (pdf) with DOD, along with more than 100 other respondents. USACM also filed comments regarding the proposed rule, which you can find — along with a good blog post from David Padgham highlighting some of the other comments received — over at the USACM Technology Policy Blog.
We’ll keep track on the rule-making progress as it moves forward at both Commerce and DOD in the coming weeks….
A quick pointer to two interesting not-directly-related pieces running today. First is Aliya Sternstein’s article in Federal Computer Week that fleshes out the PITAC to PCAST switch we noted back on September 30th. She quotes CRA Chair Dan Reed and ITAA president Harris Miller:
Former PITAC member Dan Reed, vice chancellor of IT and chief information officer at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, applauded [PCAST co-Chair Floyd] Kvamme’s idea to examine the federal government’s commitment to IT R&D.
“IT pervades so many aspects of science, technology and education that examining it in a holistic context has great value,” he said.
“PCAST is really the pre-eminent scientific advisory group to the president,” Reed said. “In some ways, this elevates the IT issues to a higher level.”
Some industry observers displayed mixed emotions about the turn of events, saying they will hold their breath until PCAST’s new lineup materializes and follows through on its promises.
“Having PITAC become part of PCAST is better than nothing, but frankly, I don’t think it’s an adequate solution,” said Harris Miller, president of the IT Association of America, which represents high-tech companies.
Although PCAST is more prestigious and well-regarded by the administration, the members already have too much on their plates, he said, adding that they likely cannot handle PCAST’s huge program plus all the items that the PITAC docket would add.
(There’s a brief comment from me in there as well.)
The other interesting piece is by ZDNet News’ Declan McCullagh and Anne Broache. It’s titled “U.S. cybersecurity due for FEMA-like calamity?” and it covers the lack of adequate attention the Department of Homeland Security has paid to cyber threats to critical infrastructures.
Auditors had warned months before Hurricane Katrina that FEMA’s internal procedures for handling people and equipment dispatched to disasters were lacking. In an unsettling parallel, government auditors have been saying that Homeland Security has failed to live up to its cybersecurity responsibilities and may be “unprepared” for emergencies.
“When you look at the events of Katrina, you kind of have to ask yourself the question, ‘Are we ready?'” said Paul Kurtz, president of the Cyber Security Industry Alliance, a public policy and advocacy group. “Are we ready for a large-scale cyberdisruption or attack? I believe the answer is clearly no.”
The article also features a nice quote from CRA government affairs committee co-Chair Ed Lazowska that sums up the concerns about the agency’s research efforts:
But the right tools and funding have to be in place, too, said Ed Lazowska, a computer science professor at the University of Washington. He co-chaired the president’s Information Technology Advisory Committee, which published a report in February that was critical of federal cybersecurity efforts.
“DHS has an appropriately large focus on weapons of mass destruction but an inappropriately small focus on critical infrastructure protection, and particularly on cybersecurity,” Lazowska said in an e-mail interview.
The department is currently spending roughly $17 million of its $1.3 billion science-and-technology budget on cybersecurity, he said. His committee report calls for a $90 million increase in National Science Foundation funding for cybersecurity research and development.
Until then, Lazowska said, “the nation is applying Band-Aids, rather than developing the inherently more secure information technology that our nation requires.”
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich joined yesterday’s meeting of the National Academies’Computer Science and Telecommunications Board, ostensibly to talk about health care and IT — though he probably only spent a couple of minutes total on the topic. Instead, the board and those of us in the audience got Gingrich’s take on what’s wrong with America’s innovation ecosystem and his plan for addressing it. The presentation was very interesting — Gingrich is a remarkable extemporaneous speaker, even in front of an audience that I suspect was not full of Gingrich “fans.” I jotted down some brief notes as he outlined his recommendations and I reprint them here, just because I thought it was a nicely structured approach. According to Gingrich, we need to:
1) Dramatically, radically overhaul math and science education by:
paying students in grades 7-12 a wage equivalent to what they’d make at McDonald’s if they earn “B’s” or better.
eliminating regulation that prevents those with subject expertise from teaching that subject in schools (retired scientists and engineers, for example)
2) Triple the size of NSF
The Administration’s budget priorities are wrong. Congress is wrong. Regrets that his biggest mistake as speaker was not tripling NSF when they doubled NIH
3) Establish a national library of science similar to PubMed
especially needed for adults looking to further education
4) Need to dramatically deregulate our markets (presumably telecom)
need to have the highest capital investment in new technologies of any country in the world
5) We need to have “a vision of a dynamic successful future” in order to recruit the next generation of scientists and engineers
President has the right instinct with moon/mars, but the wrong program
there’s no coherent vision now of a scientifically exciting future
While he says it’s important to have a positive vision of the future for attracting future scientists and engineers, policymakers need to be motivated by the negatives. The current budget situation is a total mess, he said, but messes can be great opportunities. Increasing federal support for fundamental R&D is a really large change and “really large change is a long-wave process.” CEOs need to say to policymakers “here is what you have to do” and then communicate the downside:
We will lose without investment in NSF – “Do you want US to be the new Europe?”
The US is in a dominating position, but that position is not permanent. “We are temporarily and briefly the most powerful country in the world.”
Unfortunately, making the case is like the challenge of convincing relatively healthy people they should eat healthy and exercise. They don’t see a pressing need, even though the change would help them live longer, healthier lives. The US can “decay elegantly forever.” The challenge is to reverse that.
I thought it was a very interesting talk.
John Markoff, tech reporter for the NY Times (we’ve covered a fewofhis stories, including this really important one, here in this space) also participated in the meeting, running through his history of the rise of the personal computer, as told in his book What the Dormouse Said. Markoff also talked a bit about his frustration with what’s happening with tech coverage in journalism and at the Times — a move to cover much more of the business side of technology with less emphasis on the exciting stories about the science — but understood the pressures facing the publishers given the absolutely grim financial situations newspapers find themselves in at the moment. We’ve seen this in the advocacy community. The one “case” for the need to support fundamental research that seems to get the most traction both in the press and among policymakers at the moment is the “innovation” case — that is, the linkage between fundamental research performed by the nation’s universities and federal labs and innovation in U.S. industries. I suppose that’s not surprising. But more often it would be nice, I think — especially if one of our goals is inspiring the next generation of scientists and engineers — to see stories covering the excitement of the path to discovery, the quest for knowledge….
Anyway, on the whole, I thought it was a very enjoyable morning at the National Academies.
Ben Worthen has a great interview with former President’s IT Advisory Committee co-Chair Ed Lazowska in CIO Magazine in which Lazowska, freed from his role as presidential advisor after the President allowed PITAC’s charterto expire, pulls no punches describing the failure of the Administration to adequately support and prioritize cyber security research and development. Here’s a snippet:
[Lazowska:] Long-range R&D has always been the role of the national government. And the trend, despite repeated denials from the White House to the Department of Defense, has decreased funding for R&D. And of the R&D that does get funded, more and more of it is on the development side as opposed to longer-range research, which is where the big payoffs are in the long term. That’s a more fundamental problem that CIOs aren’t responsible for. [Worthen:] You feel strongly that the government’s treatment of cybersecurity R&D has been particularly neglectful.
[Lazowska:] PITAC found that the government is currently failing to fulfill this responsibility. (The word failing was edited out of our report, but it was the committee’s finding.) Let me talk very quickly about three federal agencies that you might think are focusing on this but are not:
» 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.”
» Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is investing in cybersecurity, but has classified all of its recent new program starts in this field. It’s fine to do classified research, but we must also recognize the negative consequences, and we should (but don’t) fund nonclassified research to make up for it. One negative consequence is that classified research is very slow to impact commercial IT systems, on which the entire nation, and even much of the Department of Defense, relies. Another negative consequence is that the nation’s university-based researchers cannot participate, because universities do not perform classified research. This eliminates many of the nation’s best cybersecurity researchers. It also means that students are not trained in cybersecuritythe training of students is an important byproduct of research.
President Bush ordered today that the President’s Council of Advisors for Science and Technology shall now serve as the President’s Information Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC), answering the question about what would become of PITAC after the President allowed that committee’s charter to expire last June. I’m not sure how the new responsibilities will be handled by PCAST — presumably the committee will be expanded somewhat to handle the load, but we’ll see.
I’m of two minds about the move. On the one hand, the membership of PCAST is top-notch. Having advisors of that stature become interested and invested in some of the issues of great concern to the IT community (like the overall level of federal support and the changing landscape for computing research) would add even more weight to our position. But I’m worried that the committee, which has a much broader charter than PITAC’s narrow focus on IT issues, won’t be able to examine the issues with the same depth that an independent IT advisory committee may have.
Anyway, we’ll keep a close eye on developments and report them here. Update: (five minutes after I posted above) The National Coordinating Office for IT is calling this an elevation of the role of external information technology advice in the White House. Here’s the <a href=OSTP press release. (pdf)
The release points out that PCAST is also the National Nanotechnology Advisory Panel and that the committee established a “technical advisory group” comprising of “about 50 top government and private sector nanotechnology scientists” that has proved “highly beneficial” to PCAST’s NNI assessments. They plan to do something similar for IT.
As more details are revealed, I’m thinking the positives outweigh the negatives. …
On September 15th, the Senate approved the FY 2006 Commerce, Science, Justice appropriations bill (its version of the House’s Science, State, Justice, Commerce bill, which the House approved back in June), approving funding for a number of science agencies for the coming year. As we noted back in June, the Senate indicated it was going to be less generous than the House for some key science agencies, and that indication held true. With the Senate’s action, we now have a substantial piece of the puzzle that is the annual appropriations process for science, so it seems like an appropriate time to summarize where we stand. After the agency-by-agency summaries, see the “outlook” section for the reasons why things will probably get even worse.
National Science Foundation (in millions of dollars)
FY05
FY06 Budget Request
FY06 House
FY06 Senate
House vs. FY05 (%)
Senate vs. FY05 (%)
Research and Related Activities
4,220.6
4,333.5
4,310
4,345.2
2.1%
3.0%
MREFC
173.7
250
193.4
193.4
11.3%
11.3%
Education and Human Resources
841.4
737
807
747
-4.1%
-11.2%
Salaries and Expenses
223.2
269
250
229.9
12.0%
3.0%
National Science Board
4
4
4
4
0%
0%
Office of the Inspector General
10
11.5
11.5
11.5
15%
15%
Total NSF
5,472.9
5,605
5,643.3
5,531
3.1%
1.1%
While the Senate increase of 1.1 percent for FY 2006 would be well below the expected rate of inflation over the next year (meaning its increase is actually a small cut in real-dollar terms), even the slightly-more-reasonable increase approved by the House would still be a decline in real dollars of $114 million over the FY 2004 level, marking the second straight year of real-dollar budget cuts to the only federal agency focused exclusively on basic research.
National Institute of Standards and Technology (in millions of dollars)
FY05
FY06 Budget Request
FY06 House
FY06 Senate
House vs. FY05 (%)
Senate vs. FY05 (%)
STRS (NIST Labs)
378.7
426.3
397.7
399.9
5.0%
5.6%
Computer Science and Applied Mathematics
65.4
Industrial Tech Services
247.9
46.8
106
246
-57.2%
-0.8%
MEP
107.5
46.8
106
106
-1.4%
-1.4%
ATP
0
140
Construction of Research Facilities
72.5
58.9
45
198.6
-37.9%
173.9%
Total NIST
699.1
532
548.7
844.5
-21.5%
20.8%
These numbers are subject to significant change during conference, as conferees will have to reconcile the $140 million discrepancy between the House and Senate numbers for NIST’s controversial Advanced Technology Program. Unfortunately, either NIST Labs or construction of research facilities will likely bear the brunt of the reconciliation.
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (in millions of dollars)
FY05
FY06 Budget Request
FY06 House
FY06 Senate
House vs. FY05 (%)
Senate vs. FY05 (%)
Science, Aeronautics and Exploration
7,806.13
9,661
9,725.8
9,761
24.6%
25.0%
Exploration Capabilities
8,358.4
6,763
6,712.9
6,603
-19.7%
-21.0%
Office of the Inspector General
31.3
32.4
32.4
32.4
3.5%
3.5%
Total NASA
16,195.8
16,456.4
16,471.1
16,396.4
1.7%
1.2%
3 Includes $126.0 million in supplemental appropriations
Note: NASA moved some programmatic funds between the Science and the Exploration Capabilities account for FY 06, resulting in the big net changes shown in the figures above.
National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (in millions of dollars)
FY05
FY06 Budget Request
FY06 House
FY06 Senate
House vs. FY05 (%)
Senate vs. FY05 (%)
Operations Research and Facilities
2,793.61
2,531.2
2,447
3,203
12.4%
14.7%
Total NOAA
3,925.12
3,581.2
3,429
4,476
-12.6%
14.0%
1 Includes $24.0 million in supplemental appropriations 2 Includes $58.9 million in supplemental appropriations
The House and Senate funding levels are so far apart for NOAA it’s hard to imagine where the final number will be after the conference, or what other agency funding will look like as a result. It’s possible that the Senate could back off the NOAA number and use the difference to increase funding for NSF (the Senate did include some glowing praise for NSF in its report, just no significant funding), but it’s unclear anyone knows what the final outcome will be.
Outlook
In theory, with the Senate’s consideration of the Commerce, Science, Justice bill we should have a more complete view of how federal science agencies should fare in the FY 06 appropriations process. But in reality, even with the Senate and House numbers, there are other factors at play that make predicting a “final” number impossible at this point.
The most significant “X” factor is the impact of the federal response to Hurricane Katrina — ultimately expected to exceed over $200 billion in emergency spending. As that number grows, so does the chorus of voices calling for other cuts in federal spending to mitigate the blow to the budget (including efforts in the blogospheregainingsomeattention). The House Republican Study Committee — which numbers about 100 GOP congressmen — has already announced “Operation Offset,” a list of budget cuts (pdf) that could be used to help offset the predicted spending. Included in the recommendations are cuts to the NSF Math and Science Program (saving $188 million this year), canceling NASA’s Moon/Mars Initiative (saving $1.5 billion), and eliminating ATP and MEP ($140 million and $110 million respectively).
While it’s not likely that budget cuts will happen line-by-line as the RSC suggests, it’s possible that the leadership could adopt an across-the-board recision to all federal agencies as they did last year — which cost NSF (and every other Science agency, save NASA’s shuttle and moon/mars program) 2% of their FY 05 appropriation. Another slightly less likely possibility is that the appropriators decide to punt on FY 06 funding and pass a Continuing Resolution that lasts the duration of the fiscal year, freezing funding across the board.
With ten appropriations bills still unfinished and the start of the 2006 fiscal year only 5 days away, Congress will have to pass a Continuing Resolution to keep the federal government operating after October 1st. The first CR will hit the House floor on Wednesday and will likely keep things running through early November, absent the resolution of all outstanding appropriations bills. Funding in the CR will be set at either the lower of the Senate or House approved levels, or at the current level, with no new starts (or programs cancelled). There is some interest within the congressional leadership for sidestepping some of the concerns about Katrina offsets and the effect on the budget reconciliation process by passing a CR that would be in effect for all of FY 06.
Any of the scenarios above puts science funding in jeopardy for FY 06 and would prove very difficult for the science community to combat. The decision will be purely political, based on the extent of the leadership’s fears that they’ll be punished by conservatives in the 06 elections for spending so freely.
That noted, the science community still needs to weigh in on the appropriations debate. CRA’s Computing Research Advocacy Network will be doing its part with an activity targeted at urging House members to support — at the very least — the increases they’ve already approved for NSF, NIST, and DOE Science (including ASC) in conference, and urging Senate members to the House number. If you haven’t yet joined CRAN, now’s your chance. CRAN members, keep your eyes peeled for the next CRAN alert, which will provide all the details.
The Globe and Mail has an interesting article today and the disconnect between the perception of the computing job market (bad) and the reality (good).
David Kellam can do but he’s opting to teach.
He graduated from Queen’s University last year with a degree in computing. But he’s turning away from the tech sector as a long-term career prospect. Instead, the 23-year-old went back to Queen’s and enrolled in the faculty of education.
“I see no need to get myself stuck in a grey box somewhere pounding out code that may or may not be used inside some whale of an application,” Mr. Kellam says.
He is among a growing number of North American students and grads steering away from tech-sector jobs, presuming the industry is still in a post-bubble slump, with little in the way of employment opportunities.
How wrong they are, according to industry experts, who point to strong evidence that the tech industry is on the rise again and facing a supply-and-demand hiring disconnect.
It’s a good read.
The article cites data from CRA’s Taulbee Survey. If you haven’t checked out the new CRA Bulletin (now in Blog form!), it’s compiled by CRA’s Manager of Membership and Information Services Jay Vegso, who along with Survey’s and Evaluation coordinator Betsy Bizot, helps pull together all the Taulbee data every year. Jay has a number of informative posts on the IT workforce debate, the Taulbee data, workforce projections, and overall high-tech employment. A worthy addition to your blog roll….
Please use the Category and Archive Filters below, to find older posts. Or you may also use the search bar.
Senate Approves Nearly 50 Percent Cut to DARPA IT R&D Account
/In: FY06 Appropriations /by Peter HarshaAs I noted in the last post, the Senate Appropriations Committee included language in the Senate verision of the FY 06 Defense Appropriations bill that would strip $55 million from an element of DARPA’s Cognitive Computing program — a move that seems to run counter to recent congressional sentiment on the role of computer science, especially university-led fundamental computer science, at DARPA. The “out of the blue” cut — there was no advance warning provided by appropriations staffers, no evidence that there was dissatisfaction with the program — would fall on the “Learning, Reasoning, and Integrated Cognitive Systems (pdf)” (COG-2) account. With little feedback from the Senate appropriators, we’re operating under the assumption that the main impetus for the cut was to provide an offset for increases elsewhere in the bill, though there’s been some speculation among Senate staff that the program may have suffered do to a misperception that it’s somehow similar to some of the agency’s more controversial bio-related programs.
It’s not. As we’ve tried to point out to the conferees who will have to determine whether the cut will stand in the compromise bill negotiated with the House (the House opted to fund the program at the agency’s requested level), research in learning, reasoning, and cognitive systems is focused on intelligent intrepretations of signals and data, on controlling unmanned vehicles, and on amplifying human effectiveness. Its aim is to reduce U.S. casualties by providing improved command and control and tactical planning against adversaries, as well as improved training systems. Work in this area includes research responsible for the Command Post of the Future (CPOF) — a software system currently deployed and very widely-used in Iraq to coordinate battle plans and integrate multiple intelligence reports, providing U.S. forces the capability to plan, execute and replan much faster than the enemy’s decision cycle and cited by Secretary Rumsfeld as the major contributor to victory in the first phase of Operation Iraqi Freedom. It’s also cricital to the research and development of autonomous, unmanned vehicles that amplify our warfighting capability while reducing the number of U.S. forces in harm’s way. Cutting support so significantly for this research will hamper advancements in defense-related IT in the short- and long-term and will slow technological advancements essential to current and future military operations in Iraq and around the globe.
It also runs completely counter to recent concerns of Congress, PITAC and the DOD’s Defense Science Board. All three bodies 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 these concerns.
Because these “out of the blue” cuts are so difficult to counter — they appear very late in the process with very little information about what motivated them and at a time when access to appropriations staff is most limited — we’ve focused our strategy opposing the cut by urging the members of the conference committee to abandon the Senate number and adopt the President’s budget request, the number approved by the House. You can help. We’ll tell you how soon….
Washington Post OpEd: Ready for High-Tech Progress?
/In: R&D in the Press /by Peter HarshaWashington Post columnist Sebastian Mallaby has an interesting op-ed today inspired by news of Microsoft chairman Bill Gates’ tour of college campuses, urging students to consider majoring in computer science. The piece does a good job of making the case that Gates makes in his talks to students — computing is a field with a history of producing really great stuff that promises to make even more really great stuff in the future.
And Mallaby lays out some examples:
…All great examples of some of the foreseeable future in computing. And Gates deserves enormous credit for taking on this role of cheerleader for the field. With the current trends facing the discipline, and a general trend of US students shying away from careers in math and the sciences, this effort is sorely needed.
The only additional thing I’d wish for in these kind of presentations, especially for prospective students, would be to add more sense of purpose to the call. We’ve had a very interesting discussion about this piece amongst the members of CRA’s Government Affairs Committee, including this great observation about what could be said about the “calling” of a career in science generally, and computer science in particular, from Peter Lee at CMU (who gave me permission to post it here):
There’s not much of that in the talks that Gates is giving, but that’s understandable. It’s easy to lose sight of intellectual and ideological appeal when the practical applications are so plainly visible.
Anyway, a digression from the piece, but something that occurred to me and many of the other members of the committee.
The meat of Mallaby’s piece comes in the final three paragraphs though, where he’s right on the money:
Maybe Mallaby’s seen that argument somewhere else 🙂
The bad news is that the stars are aligning in such a way as to guarantee that there will be no increase for computer science, or the sciences generally, in the foreseeable future. The Republican Leadership is being pushed hard at the moment to find funds to “pay for” the large emergency supplements paid out for hurricane relief. Odds are those funds will come through across-the-board cuts to non-defense, non-security related discretionary spending. Look for science agencies to suffer cuts similar to last year’s across-the-board 2 percent reduction (or worse).
One particular computing program is under an even bigger threat. The Senate voted to approve a $55 million cut to DARPA’s cognitive computing program as part of the FY 06 Defense Appopriations bill. The out-of-the blue cut would hit DARPA’s $114 million “Learning, Reasoning, and Integrated Cognitive Systems” account, effectively cutting the program in half. The House did not call for a cut in its version of the bill, so CRA is working to urge members of the conference committee to abandon the Senate cut and embrace the House number. We’ll have all the details in the next post. I just thought it worthy of mention that at the same time the calls keep coming for increased support of computer science and the physical sciences, and as much progress as has been made to draw the linkage between federal investment in university research and our ability to continue to innovate, a significant percentage of our policy leadership still doesn’t get it.
New National Academies Report Warns Congress “Decisive Action Needed Now” to Preserve US Competitive Edge
/In: Policy /by Peter HarshaThis by now has been covered all over the place, but I’d be remiss not to add it here, too. The National Academies convened a 20-member panel last summer at the request of Sens. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) and Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), and Reps. Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY) and Bart Gordon (D-TN) to determine the “top 10 actions, in priority order, that federal policymakers could take to enhance the science and technology enterprise so the United States can successfully compete, prosper, and be secure in the global community of the twenty-first century.” The task was fast-tracked, and an august panel was put together, chaired by former Lockheed Martin CEO Norm Augustine and including folks like Intel Chairman Craig Barrett, President of Texas A&M Robert Gates, CEO of DuPont Charles Holliday, Jr., former Director of Defense Research and Engineering at DOD (and computer scientist) Anita Jones, and MIT president emeritus Chuck Vest. The committee met once, held focus groups on the five issue areas they decided merited attention (K-12 education, higher education, research, innovation and workforce issues, and national and homeland security), then put together the report they released on Wednesday, Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future.
The committee actually came up with four major recommendations, supplemented with 20 specific actions to be taken. Hard to quibble with the broad recommendations:
Recommendation A: Increase America’s talent pool by vastly improving K-12 mathematics and science education.
Recommendation B: Sustain and strengthen the nation’s traditional commitment to the long-term basic research that has the potential to be transformational to maintain the flow of new ideas that fuel the economy, provide security, and enhance the quality of life.
Recommendation C: Make the US the most attractive setting in which to study, perform research, and commercialize technologic innovation so that we can develop, recruit, and retain the best and brightest students, scientists and engineers from within the US and throughout the world.
Recommendation D: Ensure that the US is the premier place in the world to innovate, invest in downstream activities, and create high-paying jobs that are based on innovation by modernizing the patent system, realigning tax policies to encourage innovation, and ensuring affordable broadband access.
Hard to find fault in much of that — though I’m leeriest of the IP-related “enhancements” (see the report for the details about each of the action items listed). The committee came up with a “back of the envelope” calculation of about $10 billion annually to fully implement the recommendations (the R&D tax credit recommendation is actually the costliest). While that number might seem impossibly high to achieve under the current political mindset for science funding — after all, NSF suffered a 2 percent cut in the last budget and the smart money is betting something similar for FY 06 when appropriations finally wrap up — in the grand scheme of things, $10 billion on top of an $840 billion discretionary budget is a relatively small investment for the potential benefit. If the President is looking for an initiative that would enhance his legacy, I think he’d be hard-pressed to find one with a better cost/benefit ratio.
Anyway, as I said, the report has gathered a reasonable amount of attention in the press. The New York Times has coverage, as does the Chronicle of Higher Education (subscription required). There are a couple of follow-up hearings planned, including one by the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources on October 18th, and the House Science Committee on October 20th.
We’ll try and have all the details here.
(Thanks to Sam Liles and Spaf for the pointers!)
CRA Comments on DOD Export Regulations
/In: Policy /by Peter HarshaThe Department of Defense has proposed a change to its regulations that would strengthen requirements for the control of export-controlled technologies for DOD research contractors, including universities. The proposed rule would require contractors to have an export control program that includes regular audits and training, segregated workplaces for export-controlled technologies, and “unique badging requirements for foreign nationals and foreign persons.”
While we at CRA understand and support the need for export control and deemed export regulation, we’re concerned that the proposed rule as it stands would make fundamental research subject to novel restrictions that could seriously impair the ability of colleges, universities, industrial and federal research labs to conduct fundamental research, which would have significant ramifications for America’s economic competitiveness and technological leadership in the world.
This concern stems in large part from the fact that the proposed rule doesn’t reference the fundamental research exemption, as found in a Reagan-era National Security Decision Directive still in effect (NSDD 189). Though it appears that the authors of the proposed rule didn’t intend to add new burdens for universities — rather, intended the change to clarify existing regulations — the worry is that without an explicit mention of NSDD-189, DOD agencies might incorrectly interpret compliance requirements to require access controls in all instances, even when fundamental research is being performed. There’s also a concern that the new rule would prompt DOD program managers and contract officers to include overly restrictive language in DOD contracts in order to protect themselves from any potential liability or culpability. As the Association of American Universities points out (pdf), this likely would exacerbate the already significant problems that universities have experienced with troublesome clauses in contracts from industry.
So, as we did when the Department of Commerce announced they were considering a similar rule change (and still haven’t decided), CRA filed comments (pdf) with DOD, along with more than 100 other respondents.
USACM also filed comments regarding the proposed rule, which you can find — along with a good blog post from David Padgham highlighting some of the other comments received — over at the USACM Technology Policy Blog.
We’ll keep track on the rule-making progress as it moves forward at both Commerce and DOD in the coming weeks….
Two News Pieces: PCAST and Cyber Security
/In: R&D in the Press /by Peter HarshaA quick pointer to two interesting not-directly-related pieces running today. First is Aliya Sternstein’s article in Federal Computer Week that fleshes out the PITAC to PCAST switch we noted back on September 30th. She quotes CRA Chair Dan Reed and ITAA president Harris Miller:
(There’s a brief comment from me in there as well.)
The other interesting piece is by ZDNet News’ Declan McCullagh and Anne Broache. It’s titled “U.S. cybersecurity due for FEMA-like calamity?” and it covers the lack of adequate attention the Department of Homeland Security has paid to cyber threats to critical infrastructures.
The article also features a nice quote from CRA government affairs committee co-Chair Ed Lazowska that sums up the concerns about the agency’s research efforts:
Both are worth a read!
Gingrich and Markoff at CSTB
/In: Policy /by Peter HarshaFormer House Speaker Newt Gingrich joined yesterday’s meeting of the National Academies’ Computer Science and Telecommunications Board, ostensibly to talk about health care and IT — though he probably only spent a couple of minutes total on the topic. Instead, the board and those of us in the audience got Gingrich’s take on what’s wrong with America’s innovation ecosystem and his plan for addressing it. The presentation was very interesting — Gingrich is a remarkable extemporaneous speaker, even in front of an audience that I suspect was not full of Gingrich “fans.” I jotted down some brief notes as he outlined his recommendations and I reprint them here, just because I thought it was a nicely structured approach. According to Gingrich, we need to:
I thought it was a very interesting talk.
John Markoff, tech reporter for the NY Times (we’ve covered a few of his stories, including this really important one, here in this space) also participated in the meeting, running through his history of the rise of the personal computer, as told in his book What the Dormouse Said. Markoff also talked a bit about his frustration with what’s happening with tech coverage in journalism and at the Times — a move to cover much more of the business side of technology with less emphasis on the exciting stories about the science — but understood the pressures facing the publishers given the absolutely grim financial situations newspapers find themselves in at the moment. We’ve seen this in the advocacy community. The one “case” for the need to support fundamental research that seems to get the most traction both in the press and among policymakers at the moment is the “innovation” case — that is, the linkage between fundamental research performed by the nation’s universities and federal labs and innovation in U.S. industries. I suppose that’s not surprising. But more often it would be nice, I think — especially if one of our goals is inspiring the next generation of scientists and engineers — to see stories covering the excitement of the path to discovery, the quest for knowledge….
Anyway, on the whole, I thought it was a very enjoyable morning at the National Academies.
Lazowska on Cyber Security and the Failure of the Administration
/In: Policy /by Peter HarshaBen Worthen has a great interview with former President’s IT Advisory Committee co-Chair Ed Lazowska in CIO Magazine in which Lazowska, freed from his role as presidential advisor after the President allowed PITAC’s charter to expire, pulls no punches describing the failure of the Administration to adequately support and prioritize cyber security research and development. Here’s a snippet:
There’s also a great sidebar: Blame the Internet
And the main editorial for the issue: Who Owns Security?
All worth the read.
PCAST to Assume PITAC’s Role
/In: Policy /by Peter HarshaPresident Bush ordered today that the President’s Council of Advisors for Science and Technology shall now serve as the President’s Information Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC), answering the question about what would become of PITAC after the President allowed that committee’s charter to expire last June. I’m not sure how the new responsibilities will be handled by PCAST — presumably the committee will be expanded somewhat to handle the load, but we’ll see.
I’m of two minds about the move. On the one hand, the membership of PCAST is top-notch. Having advisors of that stature become interested and invested in some of the issues of great concern to the IT community (like the overall level of federal support and the changing landscape for computing research) would add even more weight to our position. But I’m worried that the committee, which has a much broader charter than PITAC’s narrow focus on IT issues, won’t be able to examine the issues with the same depth that an independent IT advisory committee may have.
Anyway, we’ll keep a close eye on developments and report them here.
Update: (five minutes after I posted above) The National Coordinating Office for IT is calling this an elevation of the role of external information technology advice in the White House. Here’s the <a href=OSTP press release. (pdf)
The release points out that PCAST is also the National Nanotechnology Advisory Panel and that the committee established a “technical advisory group” comprising of “about 50 top government and private sector nanotechnology scientists” that has proved “highly beneficial” to PCAST’s NNI assessments. They plan to do something similar for IT.
As more details are revealed, I’m thinking the positives outweigh the negatives. …
FY 06 Appropriations Update: A biggie
/In: FY06 Appropriations /by Peter HarshaOn September 15th, the Senate approved the FY 2006 Commerce, Science, Justice appropriations bill (its version of the House’s Science, State, Justice, Commerce bill, which the House approved back in June), approving funding for a number of science agencies for the coming year. As we noted back in June, the Senate indicated it was going to be less generous than the House for some key science agencies, and that indication held true. With the Senate’s action, we now have a substantial piece of the puzzle that is the annual appropriations process for science, so it seems like an appropriate time to summarize where we stand. After the agency-by-agency summaries, see the “outlook” section for the reasons why things will probably get even worse.
Latest Agency Funding Levels
NSF:
(in millions of dollars)
Budget Request
House
Senate
FY05 (%)
FY05 (%)
While the Senate increase of 1.1 percent for FY 2006 would be well below the expected rate of inflation over the next year (meaning its increase is actually a small cut in real-dollar terms), even the slightly-more-reasonable increase approved by the House would still be a decline in real dollars of $114 million over the FY 2004 level, marking the second straight year of real-dollar budget cuts to the only federal agency focused exclusively on basic research.
NIST:
(in millions of dollars)
Budget Request
House
Senate
FY05 (%)
FY05 (%)
Computer Science and Applied Mathematics
MEP
ATP
These numbers are subject to significant change during conference, as conferees will have to reconcile the $140 million discrepancy between the House and Senate numbers for NIST’s controversial Advanced Technology Program. Unfortunately, either NIST Labs or construction of research facilities will likely bear the brunt of the reconciliation.
Energy:
(in millions of dollars)
Budget Request
House
Senate
FY05 (%)
FY05 (%)
Basic Energy Science
Advanced Scientific Computing
NASA:
(in millions of dollars)
Budget Request
House
Senate
FY05 (%)
FY05 (%)
Note: NASA moved some programmatic funds between the Science and the Exploration Capabilities account for FY 06, resulting in the big net changes shown in the figures above.
It’s not clear yet how how supercomputing at NASA Ames would be further affected by these numbers….
NOAA:
(in millions of dollars)
Budget Request
House
Senate
FY05 (%)
FY05 (%)
2 Includes $58.9 million in supplemental appropriations
The House and Senate funding levels are so far apart for NOAA it’s hard to imagine where the final number will be after the conference, or what other agency funding will look like as a result. It’s possible that the Senate could back off the NOAA number and use the difference to increase funding for NSF (the Senate did include some glowing praise for NSF in its report, just no significant funding), but it’s unclear anyone knows what the final outcome will be.
Outlook
In theory, with the Senate’s consideration of the Commerce, Science, Justice bill we should have a more complete view of how federal science agencies should fare in the FY 06 appropriations process. But in reality, even with the Senate and House numbers, there are other factors at play that make predicting a “final” number impossible at this point.
The most significant “X” factor is the impact of the federal response to Hurricane Katrina — ultimately expected to exceed over $200 billion in emergency spending. As that number grows, so does the chorus of voices calling for other cuts in federal spending to mitigate the blow to the budget (including efforts in the blogosphere gaining some attention). The House Republican Study Committee — which numbers about 100 GOP congressmen — has already announced “Operation Offset,” a list of budget cuts (pdf) that could be used to help offset the predicted spending. Included in the recommendations are cuts to the NSF Math and Science Program (saving $188 million this year), canceling NASA’s Moon/Mars Initiative (saving $1.5 billion), and eliminating ATP and MEP ($140 million and $110 million respectively).
While it’s not likely that budget cuts will happen line-by-line as the RSC suggests, it’s possible that the leadership could adopt an across-the-board recision to all federal agencies as they did last year — which cost NSF (and every other Science agency, save NASA’s shuttle and moon/mars program) 2% of their FY 05 appropriation. Another slightly less likely possibility is that the appropriators decide to punt on FY 06 funding and pass a Continuing Resolution that lasts the duration of the fiscal year, freezing funding across the board.
With ten appropriations bills still unfinished and the start of the 2006 fiscal year only 5 days away, Congress will have to pass a Continuing Resolution to keep the federal government operating after October 1st. The first CR will hit the House floor on Wednesday and will likely keep things running through early November, absent the resolution of all outstanding appropriations bills. Funding in the CR will be set at either the lower of the Senate or House approved levels, or at the current level, with no new starts (or programs cancelled). There is some interest within the congressional leadership for sidestepping some of the concerns about Katrina offsets and the effect on the budget reconciliation process by passing a CR that would be in effect for all of FY 06.
Any of the scenarios above puts science funding in jeopardy for FY 06 and would prove very difficult for the science community to combat. The decision will be purely political, based on the extent of the leadership’s fears that they’ll be punished by conservatives in the 06 elections for spending so freely.
That noted, the science community still needs to weigh in on the appropriations debate. CRA’s Computing Research Advocacy Network will be doing its part with an activity targeted at urging House members to support — at the very least — the increases they’ve already approved for NSF, NIST, and DOE Science (including ASC) in conference, and urging Senate members to the House number. If you haven’t yet joined CRAN, now’s your chance. CRAN members, keep your eyes peeled for the next CRAN alert, which will provide all the details.
Where the Jobs are and Students aren’t
/In: People /by Peter HarshaThe Globe and Mail has an interesting article today and the disconnect between the perception of the computing job market (bad) and the reality (good).
It’s a good read.
The article cites data from CRA’s Taulbee Survey. If you haven’t checked out the new CRA Bulletin (now in Blog form!), it’s compiled by CRA’s Manager of Membership and Information Services Jay Vegso, who along with Survey’s and Evaluation coordinator Betsy Bizot, helps pull together all the Taulbee data every year. Jay has a number of informative posts on the IT workforce debate, the Taulbee data, workforce projections, and overall high-tech employment. A worthy addition to your blog roll….