For several years now CRA has sent anyone who was interested an electronic bulletin containing links to items of interest to the computing research community. While the content was always useful, the desire to aggregate links and not bombard subscribers with e-mail after e-mail meant that we’d let the bulletin ripen until we’d accumulated enough entries to make it worthwhile to send out. This had the disadvantage of making things a little less-than-timely. So it was time to evolve the format.
Behold, the new CRA Bulletin, now a blog complete with RSS feed for easy subscribing. CRA’s Jay Vegso is the curator of the blog. Here’s his description for the blog’s function:
The focus of the bulletin will be student/faculty demographic, workforce, and R&D information. My intention is to create a source for reliable information, like footnotes, rather than ‘breaking news’ or editorials. Rather than deal with large reports in a single entry, individual graphs or issues will be given their own entries. For example, Science & Engineering Indicators might have 10 entries, viewable by clicking on the S&E Indicators ‘category’ in the right-side menu.
Expect frequent cross-links from here to there as Jay comes across more juicy morsels to post. There’s already plenty of good content there, like Growth Among Computer/Math Sciences Workforce in the late 1990s, NSF Reports on Academic R&D Expenditures for FY 2002, Close to 40% of Those Employed in Computer and Math Science Occupations Do Not Have a B.S. Degree, and a whole lot more.
Two interesting stories came through the Triangle (North Carolina) Business Journal over the weekend focusing on the lack of undergraduates majoring in CS and CE. The first one, entitled “Fewer students majoring in industry could lead to labor shortage,” notes that CS enrollments in at North Carolina State and the UNC campuses have dropped from 1,988 in 2000-01 to 1,333 in 2004-05. The story was picked up and nationally syndicated by MSNBC. A second story focuses on the lack of minorities entering CS-related fields.
Both stories quote Andrew Bernat and cite the CRA as a key source. Could this be a sign that at least the business media are showing an increased interest in computing research and its effects on the American economy?
Additional news stories mentioning CRA can be found at http://www.cra.org/reports/news/index.html.
As you may have noted from the post below, there’s a new face at CRA World HQ. For the first year, CRA is participating in the Tisdale Fellowship Program, which has been bringing college students to Washington, D.C. for internships that explore current public policy issues of critical importance to the high technology sector of the economy. Other participants in the program include HP, Agilent, Dell, CSPP, BSA and Infotech.
CRA’s fellow is Daniel Rothschild, who received his Master of Public Policy this May from the University of Michigan. Dan’s interests are in the interactions between technology and society — in particular, regulatory issues, federal funding of research activities, and information and network economics. You’ll see his (hopefully frequent) contributions to the blog — like today’s post on Commerce’s proposed changes to the deemed export regulations — throughout the summer as he serves his time chained to the CRA intern desk.
The Bureau of Industry and Security at the US Department of Commerce has promulgated an advance notice of proposed rulemaking that seeks to change American policy regarding deemed exports. A deemed export occurs when a foreign national “uses” technology subject to export restrictions while in the United States. The proposed rule would make a number of significant changes:
Deemed export applications would be evaluated not just on country of citizenship and permanent residence, but on country of birth as well;
Expand the definition of use of controlled technologies to any form of instruction on their operation, including access to manuals and, by a conservative reading, visual access to a machine or source code; and
Exclude from the fundamental research exemption all research conducted under government sponsorship that is subject, either by regulation or prudential practice, to prepublication review.
Clearly, these changes would have a significant impact on the way that fundamental research is conducted in the United States. On Sunday, CRA submitted these comments to inform rulemakers about our objections to these proposals.
There are a number of problems with these proposals. First, it is unjust and anti-democratic to judge people based on their country of birth. The country of birth rule would create the perception that America is hostile towards foreign scientist and students at a time when their presence here is vital to our economy and national security. Worse, it would create castes of citizens so that, for instance, some British citizens would be more equal than others.
Second, the rule changes are confusing, especially as they relate to the word “use.” The report from Commerce’s Inspector General that gave rise to these proposed rule changes dilutes the definition of “use” to the point that it lacks meaning. Even seeing a machine could count as “use” under the report’s rules — but the burden of determining when “use” occurs would fall on researchers and their institutions.
Third, there would be tremendous costs to researchers, their institutions, and the Department of Commerce if these rules pass. The number of deemed export applications would skyrocket and institutions — still trying to understand SEVIS compliance rules — would have another bureaucratic hurdle to jump, which is especially detrimental as Congress continues to cut research funding.
Fourth, the proposal shows a misunderstanding of editorial review and how scientific research works. The proposal would remove the fundamental research exemption from any research that is internally vetted prior to publications. It is not hard to see that this turns editorial review on its head: the reason review takes place is to double-check that nothing sensitive is published, not because researchers expect to release sensitive information.
Fifth and finally, we have not seen any credible evidence that a problem exists. Much of the information protected by export rules is freely available on the internet, and some technologies — such as computers that exceed 190,000 MTOPS — are hardly cutting edge. We are unaware of any evidence that the current regulations create any serious threats to America’s ability to control the flow of sensitive information that would be remedied by the new provisions.
The American economy and our national security depend on the work done here by foreign scientists, engineers, and graduate students. As then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice wrote in November 2001:
The key to maintaining US technological preeminence is to encourage open and collaborative basic research. The linkage between the free exchange of ideas and scientific innovation, prosperity, and national security is undeniable.
We couldn’t agree more.
Keep your eyes on this blog for news as it breaks. We don’t know when these rules will be accepted or rejected — it could be weeks or it could be months — but we will blog about it when a decision comes down.
The Grokster decision is out. USACM has been following the case (and joined an amicus brief (pdf) on the case themselves) and is one of a whole bunch of sites with info on the impact of today’s ruling against Grokster (and StreamCast) on technology and innovation.
My non-lawyerly, first reading of the ruling (pdf) is that the “loss” for Grokster in the case may not be the blow to innovation technologists were concerned it could have been. The court seems to have ruled against the software companies not because they thought the safe harbor established in the Betamax case was too broad (Betamax established the concept of relief from secondary liability for companies that produce products that could be used to infringe copyright if there are “substantial non-infringing uses” of the technology); rather, the court felt that these two defendants had actively induced the infringement and profited from it. Here’s what the ruling says:
We adopt [the inducement rule] here, holding that one who distributes a device with the object of promoting is use to infringe copyright, as shown by clear expression or other affirmative steps taken to foster infringement, is liable for the resulting acts of infringement by third parties. We are, of course, mindful of the need to keep from trenching on regular commerce or discouraging the development of technologies with lawful and unlawful potential. Accordingly, just as Sony [the Betamax case] did not find intentional inducement despite the knowledge of the VCR manufacturer that it’s device could be used to infringe…mere knowledge of infringing potential or of actual infringing uses would not be enough here to subject a distributor to liability. Nor would ordinary acts incident to product distribution, such as offering customers technical support or product updates, support liability in themselves. The inducement rule, instead, premises liability on purposeful, culpable expression and conduct, and thus does nothing to compromise legitimate commerce or discourage innovation having a lawful promise.
There’s much more informed discussion of the ruling over at the SCOTUSblog, including the participation of computer scientist Ed Felten (who normally lives at Freedom-to-Tinker). Update: Felten has some deeper analysis than mine with reasons to be concerned. Update: Cameron Wilson has more deep thoughts (and USACM’s press release on the decision) at the USACM Tech Blog.
Aliya Sternstein of Federal Computer Week has a piece today on the demise of the latest iteration of PITAC. It’s a good summary of the situation, which we’ve covered in this space previously. Plus, it’s got a good quote from Dan Reed, the incoming Chair of CRA:
“People are a little demoralized about the fact that PITAC hasnt been renewed,” Reed said.
It would be unfortunate if PITAC does not get the chance to review the nation’s IT research, Reed said. “Six years in the information technology business is a lifetime, and it seems opportune,” he said today. “My personal hope is that PITAC will be reconstituted quickly.”
Tuesday marked the 11th annual Coalition for National Science Funding science exhibition and reception on Capitol Hill, an event that brings together 31 universities and scientific associations (including CRA) to highlight for Members of Congress and staff some of the interesting and important research supported by the National Science Foundation. This year CRA was ably represented by Professor James Hendler and his colleagues and students from the Mind Lab of the University of Maryland, who demonstrated their research into the Semantic Web. Dr. Hendler’s group put together a great exhibit featuring some examples of semantic web applications in science and in anti-terrorism efforts. Group member and terrorism expert Aaron Mannes demonstrated how the semantic web app has helped him explore links between terrorists operating in Iraq and elsewhere around the globe — including an eye-catching web of links between leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi and Osama Bin Laden.
To demonstrate the power of structured data, the group members snapped photos of visitors to the booth, uploaded the shots to their web app running on a server under the display table, plugged in some metadata about the individual and demonstrated how the application could dynamically link their information to a variety of other sources. Visitors to the booth — including the Chairman of the House Science Committee’s Research Subcommittee Bob Inglis (R-SC) and a number of key committee staffers — seemed to grasp the import of what they were seeing. Indeed, as Inglis watched the terrorism web demonstration dynamically create new linkages between persons in the database as new information was entered, he recognized another potential use of the technology. “This would be really useful for my campaign database,” he said. Which led to a brief discussion of the open-source nature of the tools….
The exhibition was remarkably well-attended — there was barely enough room to stand at points during the event — and there were a fair number of “key” attendees besides Rep. Inglis, including House Science Committee Chairman Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY), Rep. Bob Etheridge (D-NC), NSF Deputy Director Appointee Kathie Olson, and a large number of interested congressional staffers.
Thanks to Dr. Hendler and the members of his research group — Jennifer Golbeck, Chris Halaschek-Wiener, Ron Alford, Daniel Krech, Aaron Mannes, Aditya Kalyanpur, Evren Sirin, and Amy Alford — for their willingness to take time out of their schedules and fight through DC traffic and Capitol Hill security to make sure the computing research community was well-represented among the exhibits this year.
If you’re at a CRA member institution, interested in showing off your NSF-supported research and representing your colleagues in the computing research community at a future Hill event, drop me a line! Recent participants have included DK Panda and his students at Ohio State University in 2004; Tim Finin and his colleagues and students at University of Maryland, Baltimore County in 2003; and Thad Starner and Janet Kolodner of Georgia Tech in 2002.
The first details from the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice and Science markup of its FY 2006 appropriations bill seem to indicate the panel has placed a significantly lower priority on the National Science Foundation than their colleagues in the House. Details are scant at the moment — we’ll know more when the committee report accompanying the Senate bill is released later today or tomorrow — but from the committee’s press release it appears NSF would receive $5.5 billion for FY 2006, an increase of just $58.1 million over the FY 2005 estimated level, but $113 million less than the House approved last week. Given that some portion of the $58 million will have to be used by NSF to cover their new obligation to reimburse the U.S. Coast Guard for icebreaking efforts in support of the Foundation’s polar programs, it’s not clear that the agency’s research programs will benefit much, if at all, from the subcommittee’s increase.
Instead of a focus on NSF within the science portion of the bill, the subcommittee parted ways with the House by including a significant increase for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration — $551 million above the FY 2005 level and $895 million above the President’s request for FY 06 — and by funding NIST’s controversial Advanced Technology Program (ATP) at $140 million for FY 06. The House version of the bill cut NOAA funding and provided zero support for ATP.
The full appropriations committee is expected to mark up the Senate CJS bill on Thursday, so further detail should become available. There will be opportunities to address the inadequate support level for NSF apparently provided by the subcommittee. The bill will be open to amendment when it comes to the Senate floor — but as with the House process, those amendments must be zero-sum, taking funding from one agency within the bill to pay for increases elsewhere — and priorities can shift significantly during the conference process with the House. The widely differing priorities within the House and Senate versions has virtually guaranteed a contentious conference process, so the science community (including CRA) will have to continue to stay engaged to make sure NSF and the other science agencies receive as much support as possible. Watch this space for opportunities to be part of that process. If you haven’t yet signed up for CRA’s Computing Research Advocacy Network, now would be a great time….
Computational science is now indispensable to the solution of complex problems in every sector, from traditional science and engineering domains to such key areas as national security, public health, and economic innovation. Advances in computing and connectivity make it possible to develop computational models and capture and analyze unprecedented amounts of experimental and observational data to address problems previously deemed intractable or beyond imagination. Yet, despite the great opportunities and needs, universities and the Federal government have not effectively recognized the strategic significance of computational science in either their organizational structures or their research and educational planning. These inadequacies compromise U.S. scientific leadership, economic competitiveness, and national security.
In order to address the inadequacies, the committee made two principal recommendations: universities and the Federal government need to make “fundamental, structural changes” to remove the boundaries that inhibit multidisciplinary science; and the community (led by the National Academies) must develop and maintain a “multi-decade roadmap for computational science and the fields that require it.”
The committee also found that the “computational science ecosystem” is unbalanced, especially in the area of research in enabling software and applications. “[T]he imbalance forces researchers to build atop inadequate and crumbling foundations rather than on a modern, high-quality software base. The result is greatly diminished productivity for both researchers and computing systems.” The committee recommends building an interconnected environment of software sustainability centers — whose charge is “to harden, document, support, and maintain vital computational science software whose useful lifetime may be measured in decades” — national data and software repositories, and national high-end computing centers that are “readily accessible and available to researchers with the most demanding computing requirements.”
Finally, the committee recommends “long-term, balanced R&D investments in software, hardware, data, networking, and human resources.” The committee finds the current federal effort is “inadequately investing in robust, easy-to-use software, an excessive focus on peak hardware performance, limited investments in architectures well matched to computational science needs, and inadequate support for data infrastructure.” The Federal government must rebalance the computational science R&D portfolio to invest in a new generation of software that can reduce the “complexity and time to solution” and create accurate models and simulations; design new hardware architectures “that can deliver larger fractions of peak hardware performance on key applications”; and, focus on sensor- and data-intensive applications.
The universality of computational science is its intellectual strength. It is also its political weakness. Because all research domains benefit from computational science but none is solely defined by it, the discipline has historically lacked the cohesive, well-organized community of advocates found in other disciplines. As a result, the United States risks losing its leadership and opportunities to more nimble international competitors. We are now at a pivotal point, with generation-long consequences for scientific leadership, economic competitiveness, and national security if we fail to act with vision and commitment. We must undertake a new, large-scale, long-term partnership among government, academia, and industry to ensure that the United States possesses the computational science expertise and resources to assure continuing leadership, prosperity, and security in the 21st century.
The report was produced by the PITAC Subcommittee on Computational Science, which was chaired by Dan Reed, Vice-Chancellor and CIO of UNC, Director of the Institute for Renaissance Computing, and incoming chair of CRA. The report is here (pdf).
Just updating yesterday’s post, the amendment to the House FY 06 Science, State, Justice, Commerce Appropriations Act offered by Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) that would strip $126 million from NSF’s research account to pay for an increase to the Community Oriented Policing Program (COPS), has been soundly defeated by the House. The final vote was 396-31 against the amendment.
Though there were a few factors at play in the rejection of the amendment, it still is a good sign for NSF that the members of the House weren’t willing to cut funding for the agency, even to support local programs.
Please use the Category and Archive Filters below, to find older posts. Or you may also use the search bar.
CRA Bulletin Now a Blog
/In: CRA /by Peter HarshaFor several years now CRA has sent anyone who was interested an electronic bulletin containing links to items of interest to the computing research community. While the content was always useful, the desire to aggregate links and not bombard subscribers with e-mail after e-mail meant that we’d let the bulletin ripen until we’d accumulated enough entries to make it worthwhile to send out. This had the disadvantage of making things a little less-than-timely. So it was time to evolve the format.
Behold, the new CRA Bulletin, now a blog complete with RSS feed for easy subscribing. CRA’s Jay Vegso is the curator of the blog. Here’s his description for the blog’s function:
Expect frequent cross-links from here to there as Jay comes across more juicy morsels to post. There’s already plenty of good content there, like Growth Among Computer/Math Sciences Workforce in the late 1990s, NSF Reports on Academic R&D Expenditures for FY 2002, Close to 40% of Those Employed in Computer and Math Science Occupations Do Not Have a B.S. Degree, and a whole lot more.
Media noticing lack of CS/CE majors
/In: R&D in the Press /by DanRothschildTwo interesting stories came through the Triangle (North Carolina) Business Journal over the weekend focusing on the lack of undergraduates majoring in CS and CE. The first one, entitled “Fewer students majoring in industry could lead to labor shortage,” notes that CS enrollments in at North Carolina State and the UNC campuses have dropped from 1,988 in 2000-01 to 1,333 in 2004-05. The story was picked up and nationally syndicated by MSNBC. A second story focuses on the lack of minorities entering CS-related fields.
Both stories quote Andrew Bernat and cite the CRA as a key source. Could this be a sign that at least the business media are showing an increased interest in computing research and its effects on the American economy?
Additional news stories mentioning CRA can be found at http://www.cra.org/reports/news/index.html.
CRA Welcomes New Fellow
/In: CRA /by Peter HarshaAs you may have noted from the post below, there’s a new face at CRA World HQ. For the first year, CRA is participating in the Tisdale Fellowship Program, which has been bringing college students to Washington, D.C. for internships that explore current public policy issues of critical importance to the high technology sector of the economy. Other participants in the program include HP, Agilent, Dell, CSPP, BSA and Infotech.
CRA’s fellow is Daniel Rothschild, who received his Master of Public Policy this May from the University of Michigan. Dan’s interests are in the interactions between technology and society — in particular, regulatory issues, federal funding of research activities, and information and network economics. You’ll see his (hopefully frequent) contributions to the blog — like today’s post on Commerce’s proposed changes to the deemed export regulations — throughout the summer as he serves his time chained to the CRA intern desk.
Commerce seeks to change “deemed export” regs
/In: Policy /by DanRothschildThe Bureau of Industry and Security at the US Department of Commerce has promulgated an advance notice of proposed rulemaking that seeks to change American policy regarding deemed exports. A deemed export occurs when a foreign national “uses” technology subject to export restrictions while in the United States. The proposed rule would make a number of significant changes:
Clearly, these changes would have a significant impact on the way that fundamental research is conducted in the United States. On Sunday, CRA submitted these comments to inform rulemakers about our objections to these proposals.
There are a number of problems with these proposals. First, it is unjust and anti-democratic to judge people based on their country of birth. The country of birth rule would create the perception that America is hostile towards foreign scientist and students at a time when their presence here is vital to our economy and national security. Worse, it would create castes of citizens so that, for instance, some British citizens would be more equal than others.
Second, the rule changes are confusing, especially as they relate to the word “use.” The report from Commerce’s Inspector General that gave rise to these proposed rule changes dilutes the definition of “use” to the point that it lacks meaning. Even seeing a machine could count as “use” under the report’s rules — but the burden of determining when “use” occurs would fall on researchers and their institutions.
Third, there would be tremendous costs to researchers, their institutions, and the Department of Commerce if these rules pass. The number of deemed export applications would skyrocket and institutions — still trying to understand SEVIS compliance rules — would have another bureaucratic hurdle to jump, which is especially detrimental as Congress continues to cut research funding.
Fourth, the proposal shows a misunderstanding of editorial review and how scientific research works. The proposal would remove the fundamental research exemption from any research that is internally vetted prior to publications. It is not hard to see that this turns editorial review on its head: the reason review takes place is to double-check that nothing sensitive is published, not because researchers expect to release sensitive information.
Fifth and finally, we have not seen any credible evidence that a problem exists. Much of the information protected by export rules is freely available on the internet, and some technologies — such as computers that exceed 190,000 MTOPS — are hardly cutting edge. We are unaware of any evidence that the current regulations create any serious threats to America’s ability to control the flow of sensitive information that would be remedied by the new provisions.
The American economy and our national security depend on the work done here by foreign scientists, engineers, and graduate students. As then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice wrote in November 2001:
We couldn’t agree more.
Keep your eyes on this blog for news as it breaks. We don’t know when these rules will be accepted or rejected — it could be weeks or it could be months — but we will blog about it when a decision comes down.
Grokster Loses Unanimously
/In: Policy /by Peter HarshaThe Grokster decision is out. USACM has been following the case (and joined an amicus brief (pdf) on the case themselves) and is one of a whole bunch of sites with info on the impact of today’s ruling against Grokster (and StreamCast) on technology and innovation.
My non-lawyerly, first reading of the ruling (pdf) is that the “loss” for Grokster in the case may not be the blow to innovation technologists were concerned it could have been. The court seems to have ruled against the software companies not because they thought the safe harbor established in the Betamax case was too broad (Betamax established the concept of relief from secondary liability for companies that produce products that could be used to infringe copyright if there are “substantial non-infringing uses” of the technology); rather, the court felt that these two defendants had actively induced the infringement and profited from it. Here’s what the ruling says:
There’s much more informed discussion of the ruling over at the SCOTUSblog, including the participation of computer scientist Ed Felten (who normally lives at Freedom-to-Tinker).
Update: Felten has some deeper analysis than mine with reasons to be concerned.
Update: Cameron Wilson has more deep thoughts (and USACM’s press release on the decision) at the USACM Tech Blog.
FCW Covers PITAC’s Expiration
/In: Policy, R&D in the Press /by Peter HarshaAliya Sternstein of Federal Computer Week has a piece today on the demise of the latest iteration of PITAC. It’s a good summary of the situation, which we’ve covered in this space previously. Plus, it’s got a good quote from Dan Reed, the incoming Chair of CRA:
Read the whole thing here.
CNSF Exhibition: Science on Capitol Hill
/In: CRA /by Peter HarshaTuesday marked the 11th annual Coalition for National Science Funding science exhibition and reception on Capitol Hill, an event that brings together 31 universities and scientific associations (including CRA) to highlight for Members of Congress and staff some of the interesting and important research supported by the National Science Foundation. This year CRA was ably represented by Professor James Hendler and his colleagues and students from the Mind Lab of the University of Maryland, who demonstrated their research into the Semantic Web.
Dr. Hendler’s group put together a great exhibit featuring some examples of semantic web applications in science and in anti-terrorism efforts. Group member and terrorism expert Aaron Mannes demonstrated how the semantic web app has helped him explore links between terrorists operating in Iraq and elsewhere around the globe — including an eye-catching web of links between leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi and Osama Bin Laden.
To demonstrate the power of structured data, the group members snapped photos of visitors to the booth, uploaded the shots to their web app running on a server under the display table, plugged in some metadata about the individual and demonstrated how the application could dynamically link their information to a variety of other sources. Visitors to the booth — including the Chairman of the House Science Committee’s Research Subcommittee Bob Inglis (R-SC) and a number of key committee staffers — seemed to grasp the import of what they were seeing. Indeed, as Inglis watched the terrorism web demonstration dynamically create new linkages between persons in the database as new information was entered, he recognized another potential use of the technology. “This would be really useful for my campaign database,” he said. Which led to a brief discussion of the open-source nature of the tools….
The exhibition was remarkably well-attended — there was barely enough room to stand at points during the event — and there were a fair number of “key” attendees besides Rep. Inglis, including House Science Committee Chairman Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY), Rep. Bob Etheridge (D-NC), NSF Deputy Director Appointee Kathie Olson, and a large number of interested congressional staffers.
Thanks to Dr. Hendler and the members of his research group — Jennifer Golbeck, Chris Halaschek-Wiener, Ron Alford, Daniel Krech, Aaron Mannes, Aditya Kalyanpur, Evren Sirin, and Amy Alford — for their willingness to take time out of their schedules and fight through DC traffic and Capitol Hill security to make sure the computing research community was well-represented among the exhibits this year.
If you’re at a CRA member institution, interested in showing off your NSF-supported research and representing your colleagues in the computing research community at a future Hill event, drop me a line! Recent participants have included DK Panda and his students at Ohio State University in 2004; Tim Finin and his colleagues and students at University of Maryland, Baltimore County in 2003; and Thad Starner and Janet Kolodner of Georgia Tech in 2002.
Appropriations Update: Senate CJS Less Generous than House for NSF
/In: Funding, FY06 Appropriations /by Peter HarshaThe first details from the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice and Science markup of its FY 2006 appropriations bill seem to indicate the panel has placed a significantly lower priority on the National Science Foundation than their colleagues in the House. Details are scant at the moment — we’ll know more when the committee report accompanying the Senate bill is released later today or tomorrow — but from the committee’s press release it appears NSF would receive $5.5 billion for FY 2006, an increase of just $58.1 million over the FY 2005 estimated level, but $113 million less than the House approved last week. Given that some portion of the $58 million will have to be used by NSF to cover their new obligation to reimburse the U.S. Coast Guard for icebreaking efforts in support of the Foundation’s polar programs, it’s not clear that the agency’s research programs will benefit much, if at all, from the subcommittee’s increase.
Instead of a focus on NSF within the science portion of the bill, the subcommittee parted ways with the House by including a significant increase for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration — $551 million above the FY 2005 level and $895 million above the President’s request for FY 06 — and by funding NIST’s controversial Advanced Technology Program (ATP) at $140 million for FY 06. The House version of the bill cut NOAA funding and provided zero support for ATP.
The full appropriations committee is expected to mark up the Senate CJS bill on Thursday, so further detail should become available. There will be opportunities to address the inadequate support level for NSF apparently provided by the subcommittee. The bill will be open to amendment when it comes to the Senate floor — but as with the House process, those amendments must be zero-sum, taking funding from one agency within the bill to pay for increases elsewhere — and priorities can shift significantly during the conference process with the House. The widely differing priorities within the House and Senate versions has virtually guaranteed a contentious conference process, so the science community (including CRA) will have to continue to stay engaged to make sure NSF and the other science agencies receive as much support as possible. Watch this space for opportunities to be part of that process. If you haven’t yet signed up for CRA’s Computing Research Advocacy Network, now would be a great time….
PITAC Issues Computational Science Report
/In: Policy /by Peter HarshaThe last report of the most recent incarnation of the President’s Information Technology Advisory Committee — now expired — has been released. Computational Science: Ensuring America’s Competitiveness is the committee’s in-depth look at the state of the federal R&D effort in computational science — an effort, the committee found, that is hobbled by “inadequate and outmoded structures within the Federal government and the academy.”
The committee’s principal finding:
In order to address the inadequacies, the committee made two principal recommendations: universities and the Federal government need to make “fundamental, structural changes” to remove the boundaries that inhibit multidisciplinary science; and the community (led by the National Academies) must develop and maintain a “multi-decade roadmap for computational science and the fields that require it.”
The committee also found that the “computational science ecosystem” is unbalanced, especially in the area of research in enabling software and applications. “[T]he imbalance forces researchers to build atop inadequate and crumbling foundations rather than on a modern, high-quality software base. The result is greatly diminished productivity for both researchers and computing systems.” The committee recommends building an interconnected environment of software sustainability centers — whose charge is “to harden, document, support, and maintain vital computational science software whose useful lifetime may be measured in decades” — national data and software repositories, and national high-end computing centers that are “readily accessible and available to researchers with the most demanding computing requirements.”
Finally, the committee recommends “long-term, balanced R&D investments in software, hardware, data, networking, and human resources.” The committee finds the current federal effort is “inadequately investing in robust, easy-to-use software, an excessive focus on peak hardware performance, limited investments in architectures well matched to computational science needs, and inadequate support for data infrastructure.” The Federal government must rebalance the computational science R&D portfolio to invest in a new generation of software that can reduce the “complexity and time to solution” and create accurate models and simulations; design new hardware architectures “that can deliver larger fractions of peak hardware performance on key applications”; and, focus on sensor- and data-intensive applications.
The report was produced by the PITAC Subcommittee on Computational Science, which was chaired by Dan Reed, Vice-Chancellor and CIO of UNC, Director of the Institute for Renaissance Computing, and incoming chair of CRA. The report is here (pdf).
Appropriations Update: Weiner Amendment Targeting NSF Defeated
/In: FY06 Appropriations /by Peter HarshaJust updating yesterday’s post, the amendment to the House FY 06 Science, State, Justice, Commerce Appropriations Act offered by Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) that would strip $126 million from NSF’s research account to pay for an increase to the Community Oriented Policing Program (COPS), has been soundly defeated by the House. The final vote was 396-31 against the amendment.
Though there were a few factors at play in the rejection of the amendment, it still is a good sign for NSF that the members of the House weren’t willing to cut funding for the agency, even to support local programs.