The House today concluded its first day of debate on the FY 2006 Science, State, Justice, Commerce Appropriations Act (H.R. 2682), a bill that would grant an increase in funding for the National Science Foundation and restore some science and aeronautics funding to NASA. This is the first time the House has considered NSF and NASA funding since the two agencies were removed from the jurisdiction of the Veterans’ Affairs-Housing and Urban Development Appropriations subcommittee, so it’s interesting to see how science will fare under the new organization. From today’s debate, it appears that the competing agencies may have changed, but the competition for funding remains the same.
In previous years, NASA and NSF struggled for prominence in a bill that included funding for two relative behemoths in VA and HUD. We’ve detailed the disadvantage the two science agencies faced in that situation inafewpostsduring the debate on the appropriations reorganization last winter. In their new home, the agencies (as well as NOAA and NIST) find themselves competing with the Department of State and Department of Justice. While the science agencies did fairly well in the appropriations committee markup, given the current budget constraints — the committee approved a 3.1 percent increase over FY 2005 for NSF and $15 million more for NASA — on the House floor, both NSF and NASA find themselves at risk from amendments that would strip funding for them in favor of other priorities. This “robbing one agency to pay for an increase at another” is the result of the House rule under which appropriations bills are considered (Rule XXI, for those interested) that says that an amendment to an appropriations bill must only deal with agencies in that bill (can’t cut NIH to pay for NSF, for example — they’re in different bills) and can’t increase the level of budget authority or outlays in the bill. So it’s a zero-sum game.
In previous years, because of their location in the VA-HUD bill, NSF and NASA were often targeted for cuts to pay for increases in Section 8 housing assistance, increases in veterans benefits and AIDS hospice care. This year, the threat comes from grants to State and local law enforcement agencies, the Community Oriented Policing program (COPS), and, in the case of NOAA, the “State Criminal Alien Assistance Program.” (Rep. David Drier (R-CA) was successful in passing an amendment that would strip $50 million in funding for “operations, research and facilities at NOAA” to provide an additional $50 million for State Criminal Alien Assistance Program, which provides “federal payments to States and localities that incurred correctional officer salary costs for incarcerating undocumented criminal aliens with at least one felony or two misdemeanor convictions for violations of State or local law, and incarcerated for at least 4 consecutive days.”)
Most worrisome to the science community is a draft amendment (pdf) from Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY), circulated today but likely to be offered tomorrow, that would strip $147 million from NSF’s research account to increase the COPS program by an equal amount. The cut would leave just a $10 million “increase” to NSF research efforts for FY 2006, assuming no other amendments affect the funding level (and that increase is debatable, given a new obligation for NSF to reimburse the U.S. Coast Guard for icebreaking services at its polar facilities…see below for more detail). The science community has mobilized to urge Members of Congress to reject the amendment. The latest word is that Rep. Weiner is “redrafting” the amendment, but no indication whether that means he’s found another target for his offset or not. We’ll have more details as the debate continues tomorrow.
In the meantime, it’s worth looking at what’s in the bill as drafted that’s relevant to the computing research community. Here’s a summary: Office of Science and Technology Policy: The bill would fund the White House’s science policy shop at the President’s requested level of $5.6 million for FY 2006. The appropriations committee, however, had some pointed words for the office in the committee report accompanying the bill, urging them to take seriously threats to American competitiveness that result from deprioritizing support for fundamental research:
The Committee is deeply concerned about the state of the Nation’s dedication to maintaining our position as the world leader in science, technology and innovation. Further, the Committee is convinced that bold and dramatic commitments are necessary to ensure the United States’ economic leadership in the 21st Century and a rising standard of living for all Americans. In this regard, the Committee encourages OSTP to ensure that Executive branch policy makers and budget officials understand the impact of stagnation in science and technology on all areas of national life. The Committee expects that future budget requests for science and technology programs will reflect the importance of these investments to the competitive and economic future of the nation.
NASA: The bill would provide $16.5 billion for the space and aeronautics agency for FY 2006, an increase of $14.7 million over the budget request and $275 million more than the agency received in FY 2005 (which includes $126 million from last year’s FY 05 emergency supplemental appropriation). The committee reversed cuts to the agency’s science, aeronautics and exploration account included in the President’s FY 06 request and instead would provide an increase of $265 million in FY 06, bringing total funding in the account to $9.7 billion. NSF: NSF would increase 3.1 percent in FY 06 under the bill, to $5.6 billion — an increase of $171 million over FY 05. The Research and Related Activities account would grow 3.7 percent to $4.4 billion in FY 06 — an increase of $157 million over FY 05. However, included in that increase is funding to cover the reimbursement of icebreaking activities performed for NSF by the U.S. Coast Guard, so gauging the actual amount of increase to NSF research activities is a little tricky (it appears to me that the increase for the icebreaking expenses amount to about $75 million, but I’d appreciate some clarification from someone with better numbers…). The committee also didn’t specify funding levels for individual directorates — other than noting Polar Programs were to be provided up to $425 million, the same as the President’s request. Rather, the committee would order NSF to submit to the committee its plan for disbursing the money within 60 days of the passsage of the act. The committee report also includes language that would authorize NSF to offer “innovation inducement prizes,” an idea subcommittee chairman Frank Wolf (R-VA) is especially enamored with. Here’s the relevant language from the report:
The concept of inducement awards to encourage broad involvement in solving a specifically stated scientific problem has been a catalyst for scientific advancement since at least the early 18th century. In 1999, a National Academies workshop on this topic encouraged Federal agencies to make more extensive use of this mechanism to pursue particular scientific and technological objectives. The Committee expects NSF to engage the National Academies to craft a prize or categories of prizes that would be of an appropriate scale and to develop the rules and conditions for awarding prizes, and to report back to the Committee on plans to initiate a prize program in fiscal year 2006. The Committee strongly encourages NSF to use this mechanism, particularly in programs that specifically emphasize innovation, to focus on high risk/high payoff research projects. The Committee also expects NSF to encourage private sector involvement in the effort to create a prize program.
NSF’s Major Research Equipment and Facilities Construction account would see a slight increase of $19.7 million for FY 06, but no new starts, as requested in the President’s budget.
The bill would also reverse some of the cuts to the Education and Human Resources division included in the President’s budget, but would still cut the account by more than $34 million. The bill includes “the full request” for the President’s Math and Science Partnerships: 60 million — a cut of $20 million from FY 05. Overall, the EHR account would decline to $807 million for FY 06. NIST: NIST core research account would see an increase of 6.5 percent in the bill to $398 million in FY 06 — an increase of $24 million over FY 2005. The bill would provide zero funding for the agency’s controversial Advanced Technology Program (ATP), as requested in the President’s budget, but would provide a slight increase in funding for the Manufacturing Extension Partnership program (MEP). The President had requested a cut to the program of more than 55 percent. The bill would provide $106 million for MEP, an increase of 1.4 percent; $59 million more than the President’s request.
Though the NIST labs appear to do well under the bill, uncertainty over the disposition of ATP, as usual, clouds the picture for them. By providing no funding for ATP in FY 06, NIST may be forced to pay the “closing costs” for the grant program out of other funding in the agency. Typically, those costs have come out of the NIST core research programs. It’s not hard to see that $24 million increase to NIST’s core research account disappear in part or completely in the scramble to come up with funding to shut ATP down.
Tomorrow the House will likely complete debate on the bill and pass it. We’ll have all the details. The Senate has yet to mark up its version of the bill, but is expected to shortly. Senate floor consideration likely won’t happen until at least July. Update: (6/15/05 – 11:54 am) — Weiner offered his amendment this morning, slightly modified — it strips $126 million from NSF rather than $147 million. Opposing the amendment on the floor were Appropriations Subcommittee Chair Frank Wolf (R-VA), Science Committee Chair Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY), and Appropriations Committee Ranking Member David Obey (D-WI). The amendment didn’t prevail on a voice vote, but Weiner asked for a recorded vote that should occur around 1 pm. Update: (6/15/05 – 2:22 pm) — The amendment was defeated. More detail in this new post.
The Mercury News has another nice piece today relating to the history of computing (see yesterday’s post on the Merc’s coverage of the history of SRI). This time the focus is on Vint Cerf and his thoughts about the Internet he helped enable, in advance of ACM’s awarding of Cerf and his former research partner Bob Kahn the prestigious Turing Award tomorrow night. Here’s a quick snippet:
Vint Cerf is often called “the father of the Internet,” and he talks about his virtual offspring with paternal pride.
He believes the decentralized nature of the Internet makes it less vulnerable to attack. And that same decentralization encourages people to experiment with new applications, producing swift and widespread innovation.
“What’s lovely about this principle is that you don’t have to get permission from somebody to go try something out. You just do it,” Cerf said Thursday when he came to the Bay Area to receive an award for his work.
“So when voice-over-IP started showing up in the commercial sector, you didn’t have to go to your ISP and say, ‘Please, can I do VoIP?’ you just downloaded the software and did it, which is why Skype is such an interesting phenomenon,” he said, referring to the free Internet phone service.
The Mercury News has an interesting piece today on a new book by Don Nielson detailing the important history of SRI (formerly Stanford Research Insitute). The institute, founded in 1946 at Stanford University, has played a role in an number of significant innovations in IT including serving as one of the first four nodes on the ARPAnet, the invention of the mouse, packet-switched radio, and wireless communications. Neilson’s history apparently focuses on about 50 of the projects the institute was responsible for, though he had nearly 50,000 projects over the institute’s 59 years to choose from.
One quote in the article struck me and I thought I’d note it here. It’s a perspective that’s very useful to remember in these times of uncertain funding for research that’s increasingly short-term.
Paul Saffo, director of the Institute of the Future in Menlo Park, believes that SRI’s most important legacy is the swath of engineers, scientists and other researchers who have passed through it.
“You can focus on the inventions, but the inventions are literally an artifact of the most important thing that SRI did. It trained a whole generation of engineers,” Saffo said. “That kind of long-term look was damn scarce back then and today it’s scarcer than ever. Today, it’s swimming against a stream at a time when the whole country is obsessively focused on the short term and a federal government that has crippled DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency).”
Researchers and engineers have founded a host of companies upon leaving SRI, a list that Nielson includes at the back of his book. He noted the list is by no means comprehensive, as SRI does not really keep track of how many of its former employees start companies. The list of companies ranges from early valley pioneers such as Granger Associates and Raychem to software developers Symantec and ANSA Software, online trading system developer E-Trade Financial, market researcher Dataquest (now owned by Gartner Group) and the Institute of the Future.
Saffo, who was not part of the Institute of the Future’s founding team from SRI, also noted that swarms of former SRI engineers who worked at companies ranging from Apple Computer to Cisco Systems have led revolutions of their own.
Anyway, the book looks very interesting. Maybe I’ll take it up after I finish my current “metro reading” book: What the Dormouse Said: How the ’60s Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer by John Markoff. Jim Horning, who “was there” during the relevant period, has a good review of the Markoff book….
After two productive years in which they produced three important reports on various aspects of the federal IT R&D portfolio, the President’s Information Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC) ceased to be on June 1st after the President’s executive order establishing the most recent committee expired and the committee member’s terms were not renewed. The committee had completed three reports requested by the Administration — on IT in the health care sector (pdf), cyber security R&D (pdf), and the state of computational science (pdf) — and appeared ready to take what they had learned in that process and apply it to a review of the overall federal IT R&D portfolio when their charter lapsed. Despite prodding from a number of different sources, including questions at a recent hearing by House Science Committee Chairman Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY) to the Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, John Marburger, the President opted to allow the review to stop and the committee memberships to expire.
This is very disappointing for the computing research community, which endured two years after President Bush was elected in which the statutorily-madated committee was chartered but was without members (the President didn’t name the most recent PITAC members until May 28, 2003). PITAC performs an important cross-check on the federal Networking and Information Technology R&D program — the overall federal IT R&D program — serving as a largely independent review of the interagency planning process. The most recent PITAC was directed to review slivers of that process and in doing so, learned that the federal IT R&D landscape had changed considerably since the last “full” review of the program by the last PITAC in 1999.
At the last full meeting of the most recent committee, there appeared to be consensus among the members that because work on the three reports requested by the President was then complete, it was time to turn the committee’s attention to the full portfolio, executing their statutory obligation to assess the overall federal investment in IT R&D and applying the lessons they’d learned in the process of completing the three requested reports. The last report on the overall portfolio, the ’99 PITAC report Investing in Our Future, found that the nation was considerably underinvested in IT R&D given the “spectacular” return on the federal investment in long-term IT R&D. That committee’s recommendations included specific funding levels for the program through FY 2004 — funding levels that the federal government has never met (the FY 2006 budget request is still $527 million short of the PITAC recommendation for FY 04).
There is undoubtedly concern within the Administration whether a new review of the overall IT R&D portfolio would find similar problems with the current federal effort, perhaps recommending funding increases that would prove politically challenging in the current budget environment. But as we’ve notedhere frequently, the federal landscape for computing research has changed dramatically since that last review — agencies that have typically been strong supporters of university computing research have significantly curtailed that research, other agencies have stepped up their investments considerably, policy changes at agencies across the board have affected the character of the research that’s funded. The most recent PITAC reports show the evidence of all of those changes. It not only makes sense for PITAC to undertake a review of the overall portfolio, it is, in fact, what PITAC was chartered by Congress (in the original 1991 High Performance Computing Act) to do. This point is emphasized in the High Performance Computing Authorization Act of 2005, already approved by the House, which would require that PITAC undertake such a review every two years.
So, I hope that the President acts quickly to either re-charter the committee and reinstate the current members (who have climbed a steep learning curve in learning about the intricacies of federal IT R&D portfolio) or to move swiftly to name new members of equal stature to the committee to undertake the review of the overall effort that’s sorely needed. As Congress continues to demonstrate its concernwith the current stateof computer science research in the U.S., the one advisory body most well-suited to the task of assessing that state shouldn’t be allowed to lapse.
The New York Timeseditorializes today that, despite the very real threat, the nation continues to be woefully unprepared to defend against a “cyberattack” on our critical infrastructure.
Power grids, water treatment and distribution systems, major dams, and oil and chemical refineries are all controlled today by networked computers. Computers make the nation’s infrastructure far more efficient, but they also make it more vulnerable. A well-planned cyberattack could black out large parts of the country, cut off water supplies or worse. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission found that in 2003 a malicious, invasive program called the Slammer worm infected the computer network at a nuclear power plant and disabled its safety monitoring system for nearly five hours.
Despite the warnings after 9/11 – and again after the 2003 blackout – disturbingly little has been done. The Government Accountability Office did a rigorous review of the Department of Homeland Security’s progress on every aspect of computer security, and its findings are not reassuring. It found that the department has not yet developed assessments of the threat of a cyberattack or of how vulnerable major computer systems are to such an attack, nor has it created plans for recovering key Internet functions in case of an attack. The report also expressed concern that many of the department’s senior cybersecurity officials have left in the past year. Representative Zoe Lofgren, the California Democrat who was among those who requested the G.A.O. report, said last week that it proved that “a national plan to secure our cybernetworks is virtually nonexistent.”
As we’ve noted previously, the President’s IT Advisory Committee came to a similar conclusion in its report (pdf) on Cyber Security R&D, released last March. That report concluded that the federal government is largely failing in its responsibility to protect the nation from cyberthreats and recommended an immediate increase in the amount of support for cyber security research at NSF, DHS, and DARPA, and greater emphasis on civilian networks in addition to military-oriented networks.
Unfortunately, the early results of this appropriations season show that the recommendations for DHS continue to go largely unheeded…. Update:Ed Felten has a thoughtful post at Freedom to Tinker on the difficulty of addressing the cyberthreat problem with government action.
Career Mentoring Workshops: which bring together junior women in academic careers with women already established in their fields to provide practical information and advice, as well as opportunities for networking and peer support.
Distributed Mentoring Project: which aims to increase the number of women entering graduate school, by matching outstanding female undergraduates with female mentors for a summer of research at the mentor’s institution.
Collaborative Research Experiences for Undergraduates: which aims to increase the numbers of women and minorities who continue on to graduate school, by providing positive research experiences for teams of undergraduates who work during the academic year at their home institutions.
Of course, this isn’t the first award for CRA-W. Last year, the committee was recognized by President George W. Bush as a winner of the Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics, and Engineering Mentoring. CRA-W is among the most energized, hardest-working committees of CRA, so it’s great to see them continue to earn plaudits for their efforts. Given the current situation, the effort is surely needed….
ACM’sU.S. Public Policy Committee puts together a great monthly newsletter with all the DC happenings of interest to the tech community. The May edition is out now and chock full of good stuff, including updates on ACM’s Voter Registration Database study, the Real ID Act, spyware legislation, and a look ahead to June.
Check it out here.
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has been a leader and innovator in basic scientific research and defense science and technology for decades. Originally chartered to prevent technological surprise, DARPA promotes revolutionary technology innovations by focusing on high-risk, high-payoff technologies that offer new military capabilities and complement the military departments’ nearer-term science and technology programs. The committee has supported ever increasing funding for DARPA as the only agency not tied to a military service mission and the demands of a service budget to produce quick results. Recognizing that some of DARPA’s high-risk programs may not be successful, the committee encourages DARPA to continue its focus on the development, demonstration, and transition of high-risk, high-payoff technology to the military departments and to U.S. industry.
At the same time, the committee recognizes that the pursuit of the more futuristic technologies must be tempered by the hard fact that we are a nation at war and our armed forces have immediate needs for innovative technical solutions across a variety of disciplines. The committee commends DARPA on its quick reaction support and fielding of advanced innovative technologies to meet emerging critical operational needs of our forces in Operation Iraqi Freedom and elsewhere in support of the global war on terrorism.
The committee believes DARPA should continue to redirect some of its more futuristic efforts to the solution of today’s combat problems. Those immediate needs involving detection, sensing, protection, surveillance, and a host of other issues that may well be `DARPA hard’ problems that the Agency should be examining, rather than some of the more futuristic efforts in the DARPA program. Therefore, although the committee is pleased with the overall progress in the defense science and technology program, the committee believes that increased priority must continue to be given to the nearer-term requirements of the combatant commanders and U.S. armed forces in the field.
As we, andothers, have noted, DARPA’s long-range vision and willingness to place big bets in university-led, high-risk, high-reward areas of research have have been responsible for a large share of the innovations that drive the U.S. economy and have made our military the most lethal and effective fighting force in history. This vision survived the Vietnam War and the constant pressure of the Cold War. There’s no doubt that DARPA can do much to contribute to solving today’s combat problems, and it may indeed be appropriate for the agency’s focus to shift in that direction. But it is critically important that there remain a home for long-range research vision focused on defense problems somewhere in the federal research portfolio. Failing to invest in the future leaves the country at the risk of suffering the technological surprise DARPA was originally chartered to prevent.
The House Appropriations Subcommittee on Science, Commerce, Justice, State marked-up it’s FY 2006 appropriations bill earlier today and included increases for NSF and NASA. Details are a little sparse until we see the full committee print next week, but here are the early figures:
NSF would increase 3.1% — $171 million over FY 2005, $38 million more than the President’s request — to $5.64 billion. NSF’s research accounts would grow $157 million over FY 05 to $4.38 billion, and education and human resources would fall to $807 million, from $841 million in FY 05 — but $70 million over the President’s request.
NASA would receive $15 million more than the President’s request, and $40 million that had been cut from the angecy’s aeronautics program in the budget request will be restored.
NIST reportedly would receive $549 million, including $106 million for the controversial Manufacturers Extension Partnership program. (No word on ATP).
We’ll have more details after the bill moves to the full Appropriations committee next week and the committee report accompanying the bill (and explaining the cuts and increases) is published.
The Chronicle of Higher Ed today has coverage (free until 6/2 apparently) of the May 12th House Science Committee hearing on “The Future of Computer Science Research in the U.S.” that’s generally pretty good. But it makes an odd point at the end that doesn’t accurately represent what went on at the hearing. Here’s the paragraph:
[DARPA Director Tony] Tether challenged Mr. [Tom] Leighton [, co-founder and Chief Scientist at Akamai Industries] and Mr. [Bill] Wulf [, President of the National Academies of Engineering] to supply examples of important projects that the agency has refused to support, and they did not immediately offer any. That shows, Mr. Tether said, that the agency’s priorities are properly placed.
At the end of the 2 hour, 19 minute hearing, in response the committee’s very last question, Tether told the panel that in dealing with the university computer science community he saw “a lot of hand-wringing” but didn’t get many “actionable ideas” from the community. Science Committee Chairman Sherwood Boehlert then turned to Wulf and Leighton and asked if they could take that as a challenge and provide a list to the committee and to Tether. Both responded that they’d be happy to and Boehlert noted that he’d make that part of the post-hearing questions that will be put to the witnesses (and noted the challenge in his press release).
I understand both Wulf and Leighton are eager to respond to the challenge. Leighton told me after the hearing that he was getting ready to wave the PITAC report on Cyber Security R&D as a start (the focus of much of his testimony), which contains specific recommendations in 10 areas of cyber security research currently under-supported. Both Leighton and Wulf will be reaching out to the community to craft a list that will be most useful to DARPA and DOD and most responsive to the committee’s request (which hasn’t yet been received, as far as I know). There are plenty of resources from which to draw — PITAC’s Cyber Report, Defense Science Board, CRA’s Grand Challenges conferences, National Academies reports, etc.
The idea that either Wulf or Leighton were dumbstruck by the question is just wrong, and the idea that the community lacks an adequate response to the committee’s challenge is equally wrong.
Otherwise, the article does a decent job of summarizing the hearing. From my perspective, the hearing was incredibly useful. I could spend a lot of space here dissecting the testimony of Marburger and Tether — though frequent readers of the blog won’t need my dissection to spot the points of contention in both sets of testimony. Tether essentially argued in his oral testimony (and half of his written testimony) that DARPA has reduced its funding for university-led computer science research because maybe it’s focusing on multi-disciplinary research now; something Tether apparently deduced by looking at university web pages, he says. But in the appendix to his testimony, he provides the response to the same question he gave to the Senate Armed Services Committee, compiled by the DARPA comptroller, which includes these five reasons for the shift:
1. A change in emphasis in the high performance computing program from pure research to supercomputer construction;
2. Significant drop in unclassified information security research;
3. End of TIA-related programs in FY 2004 due to congressional decree, a move that cost universities “a consistent $11-12 million per year” in research funding;
4. Research into intelligent software had matured beyond the research stage into integration;
5. Classified funding for computer science-related programs increased markedly between FY 2001 and FY 2004, but Universities received none of this funding.
From my perspective, having the DARPA director stand before the committee (literally) and affirm that the agency has significantly reduced its support for university-led, long-range computing research was very useful. The community can raise concerns about DARPA’s priorities, but ultimately it’s up to the Director and the Administration to set them as they see fit. What’s more important to me is that the impact of DARPA’s (now undisputed) withdrawal on the overall IT R&D enterprise be adequately assessed and addressed. The gap that DARPA leaves is substantial — both in terms of monetary support and in losing a funding model that has contributed so much to the extraordinarily productive environment for innovation that is the computing research community. NSF is great at what it does — funding individual investigators and research infrastructure at universities — but there was substantial value from DARPA’s approach of focusing on particular problems and nourishing communities of researchers to address them. Without DARPA, that approach is largely absent in the federal IT R&D portfolio.
It was also useful for the Science Committee to get exposure to the concerns the community has had with DARPA over the last several years. Tether’s performance — literally standing before the committee (I staffed a lot of hearings for the House Science Committee under two different chairmen and never once saw a witness rise before the committee and wander around the hearing room while testifying…), delivering remarks 15 minutes over the 5 minute time limit imposed by the committee, and most importantly, being largely unresponsive to the three questions the committee posed to him prior to the hearing — confirmed to the committee Chair and staff that the concerns the community had shared with them had merit. The result is that the committee intends to remain engaged on this issue, which is to the community’s great benefit, I think.
The committee plans to proceed with the issue in the coming months in non-hearing venues. I’ll bring you developments as this moves forward during the summer and fall.
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Appropriations Update: NSF, NASA, NIST
/In: FY06 Appropriations /by Peter HarshaThe House today concluded its first day of debate on the FY 2006 Science, State, Justice, Commerce Appropriations Act (H.R. 2682), a bill that would grant an increase in funding for the National Science Foundation and restore some science and aeronautics funding to NASA. This is the first time the House has considered NSF and NASA funding since the two agencies were removed from the jurisdiction of the Veterans’ Affairs-Housing and Urban Development Appropriations subcommittee, so it’s interesting to see how science will fare under the new organization. From today’s debate, it appears that the competing agencies may have changed, but the competition for funding remains the same.
In previous years, NASA and NSF struggled for prominence in a bill that included funding for two relative behemoths in VA and HUD. We’ve detailed the disadvantage the two science agencies faced in that situation in a few posts during the debate on the appropriations reorganization last winter. In their new home, the agencies (as well as NOAA and NIST) find themselves competing with the Department of State and Department of Justice. While the science agencies did fairly well in the appropriations committee markup, given the current budget constraints — the committee approved a 3.1 percent increase over FY 2005 for NSF and $15 million more for NASA — on the House floor, both NSF and NASA find themselves at risk from amendments that would strip funding for them in favor of other priorities. This “robbing one agency to pay for an increase at another” is the result of the House rule under which appropriations bills are considered (Rule XXI, for those interested) that says that an amendment to an appropriations bill must only deal with agencies in that bill (can’t cut NIH to pay for NSF, for example — they’re in different bills) and can’t increase the level of budget authority or outlays in the bill. So it’s a zero-sum game.
In previous years, because of their location in the VA-HUD bill, NSF and NASA were often targeted for cuts to pay for increases in Section 8 housing assistance, increases in veterans benefits and AIDS hospice care. This year, the threat comes from grants to State and local law enforcement agencies, the Community Oriented Policing program (COPS), and, in the case of NOAA, the “State Criminal Alien Assistance Program.” (Rep. David Drier (R-CA) was successful in passing an amendment that would strip $50 million in funding for “operations, research and facilities at NOAA” to provide an additional $50 million for State Criminal Alien Assistance Program, which provides “federal payments to States and localities that incurred correctional officer salary costs for incarcerating undocumented criminal aliens with at least one felony or two misdemeanor convictions for violations of State or local law, and incarcerated for at least 4 consecutive days.”)
Most worrisome to the science community is a draft amendment (pdf) from Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY), circulated today but likely to be offered tomorrow, that would strip $147 million from NSF’s research account to increase the COPS program by an equal amount. The cut would leave just a $10 million “increase” to NSF research efforts for FY 2006, assuming no other amendments affect the funding level (and that increase is debatable, given a new obligation for NSF to reimburse the U.S. Coast Guard for icebreaking services at its polar facilities…see below for more detail). The science community has mobilized to urge Members of Congress to reject the amendment. The latest word is that Rep. Weiner is “redrafting” the amendment, but no indication whether that means he’s found another target for his offset or not. We’ll have more details as the debate continues tomorrow.
In the meantime, it’s worth looking at what’s in the bill as drafted that’s relevant to the computing research community. Here’s a summary:
Office of Science and Technology Policy: The bill would fund the White House’s science policy shop at the President’s requested level of $5.6 million for FY 2006. The appropriations committee, however, had some pointed words for the office in the committee report accompanying the bill, urging them to take seriously threats to American competitiveness that result from deprioritizing support for fundamental research:
NASA: The bill would provide $16.5 billion for the space and aeronautics agency for FY 2006, an increase of $14.7 million over the budget request and $275 million more than the agency received in FY 2005 (which includes $126 million from last year’s FY 05 emergency supplemental appropriation). The committee reversed cuts to the agency’s science, aeronautics and exploration account included in the President’s FY 06 request and instead would provide an increase of $265 million in FY 06, bringing total funding in the account to $9.7 billion.
NSF: NSF would increase 3.1 percent in FY 06 under the bill, to $5.6 billion — an increase of $171 million over FY 05. The Research and Related Activities account would grow 3.7 percent to $4.4 billion in FY 06 — an increase of $157 million over FY 05. However, included in that increase is funding to cover the reimbursement of icebreaking activities performed for NSF by the U.S. Coast Guard, so gauging the actual amount of increase to NSF research activities is a little tricky (it appears to me that the increase for the icebreaking expenses amount to about $75 million, but I’d appreciate some clarification from someone with better numbers…). The committee also didn’t specify funding levels for individual directorates — other than noting Polar Programs were to be provided up to $425 million, the same as the President’s request. Rather, the committee would order NSF to submit to the committee its plan for disbursing the money within 60 days of the passsage of the act. The committee report also includes language that would authorize NSF to offer “innovation inducement prizes,” an idea subcommittee chairman Frank Wolf (R-VA) is especially enamored with. Here’s the relevant language from the report:
NSF’s Major Research Equipment and Facilities Construction account would see a slight increase of $19.7 million for FY 06, but no new starts, as requested in the President’s budget.
The bill would also reverse some of the cuts to the Education and Human Resources division included in the President’s budget, but would still cut the account by more than $34 million. The bill includes “the full request” for the President’s Math and Science Partnerships: 60 million — a cut of $20 million from FY 05. Overall, the EHR account would decline to $807 million for FY 06.
NIST: NIST core research account would see an increase of 6.5 percent in the bill to $398 million in FY 06 — an increase of $24 million over FY 2005. The bill would provide zero funding for the agency’s controversial Advanced Technology Program (ATP), as requested in the President’s budget, but would provide a slight increase in funding for the Manufacturing Extension Partnership program (MEP). The President had requested a cut to the program of more than 55 percent. The bill would provide $106 million for MEP, an increase of 1.4 percent; $59 million more than the President’s request.
Though the NIST labs appear to do well under the bill, uncertainty over the disposition of ATP, as usual, clouds the picture for them. By providing no funding for ATP in FY 06, NIST may be forced to pay the “closing costs” for the grant program out of other funding in the agency. Typically, those costs have come out of the NIST core research programs. It’s not hard to see that $24 million increase to NIST’s core research account disappear in part or completely in the scramble to come up with funding to shut ATP down.
Tomorrow the House will likely complete debate on the bill and pass it. We’ll have all the details. The Senate has yet to mark up its version of the bill, but is expected to shortly. Senate floor consideration likely won’t happen until at least July.
Update: (6/15/05 – 11:54 am) — Weiner offered his amendment this morning, slightly modified — it strips $126 million from NSF rather than $147 million. Opposing the amendment on the floor were Appropriations Subcommittee Chair Frank Wolf (R-VA), Science Committee Chair Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY), and Appropriations Committee Ranking Member David Obey (D-WI). The amendment didn’t prevail on a voice vote, but Weiner asked for a recorded vote that should occur around 1 pm.
Update: (6/15/05 – 2:22 pm) — The amendment was defeated. More detail in this new post.
Mercury News on Cerf and Turing Award
/In: People /by Peter HarshaThe Mercury News has another nice piece today relating to the history of computing (see yesterday’s post on the Merc’s coverage of the history of SRI). This time the focus is on Vint Cerf and his thoughts about the Internet he helped enable, in advance of ACM’s awarding of Cerf and his former research partner Bob Kahn the prestigious Turing Award tomorrow night. Here’s a quick snippet:
Here’s the whole thing.
New History of SRI; Interesting DARPA Quote
/In: Misc. /by Peter HarshaThe Mercury News has an interesting piece today on a new book by Don Nielson detailing the important history of SRI (formerly Stanford Research Insitute). The institute, founded in 1946 at Stanford University, has played a role in an number of significant innovations in IT including serving as one of the first four nodes on the ARPAnet, the invention of the mouse, packet-switched radio, and wireless communications. Neilson’s history apparently focuses on about 50 of the projects the institute was responsible for, though he had nearly 50,000 projects over the institute’s 59 years to choose from.
One quote in the article struck me and I thought I’d note it here. It’s a perspective that’s very useful to remember in these times of uncertain funding for research that’s increasingly short-term.
Anyway, the book looks very interesting. Maybe I’ll take it up after I finish my current “metro reading” book: What the Dormouse Said: How the ’60s Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer by John Markoff. Jim Horning, who “was there” during the relevant period, has a good review of the Markoff book….
PITAC Allowed to Expire
/In: Policy /by Peter HarshaAfter two productive years in which they produced three important reports on various aspects of the federal IT R&D portfolio, the President’s Information Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC) ceased to be on June 1st after the President’s executive order establishing the most recent committee expired and the committee member’s terms were not renewed. The committee had completed three reports requested by the Administration — on IT in the health care sector (pdf), cyber security R&D (pdf), and the state of computational science (pdf) — and appeared ready to take what they had learned in that process and apply it to a review of the overall federal IT R&D portfolio when their charter lapsed. Despite prodding from a number of different sources, including questions at a recent hearing by House Science Committee Chairman Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY) to the Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, John Marburger, the President opted to allow the review to stop and the committee memberships to expire.
This is very disappointing for the computing research community, which endured two years after President Bush was elected in which the statutorily-madated committee was chartered but was without members (the President didn’t name the most recent PITAC members until May 28, 2003). PITAC performs an important cross-check on the federal Networking and Information Technology R&D program — the overall federal IT R&D program — serving as a largely independent review of the interagency planning process. The most recent PITAC was directed to review slivers of that process and in doing so, learned that the federal IT R&D landscape had changed considerably since the last “full” review of the program by the last PITAC in 1999.
At the last full meeting of the most recent committee, there appeared to be consensus among the members that because work on the three reports requested by the President was then complete, it was time to turn the committee’s attention to the full portfolio, executing their statutory obligation to assess the overall federal investment in IT R&D and applying the lessons they’d learned in the process of completing the three requested reports. The last report on the overall portfolio, the ’99 PITAC report Investing in Our Future, found that the nation was considerably underinvested in IT R&D given the “spectacular” return on the federal investment in long-term IT R&D. That committee’s recommendations included specific funding levels for the program through FY 2004 — funding levels that the federal government has never met (the FY 2006 budget request is still $527 million short of the PITAC recommendation for FY 04).
There is undoubtedly concern within the Administration whether a new review of the overall IT R&D portfolio would find similar problems with the current federal effort, perhaps recommending funding increases that would prove politically challenging in the current budget environment. But as we’ve noted here frequently, the federal landscape for computing research has changed dramatically since that last review — agencies that have typically been strong supporters of university computing research have significantly curtailed that research, other agencies have stepped up their investments considerably, policy changes at agencies across the board have affected the character of the research that’s funded. The most recent PITAC reports show the evidence of all of those changes. It not only makes sense for PITAC to undertake a review of the overall portfolio, it is, in fact, what PITAC was chartered by Congress (in the original 1991 High Performance Computing Act) to do. This point is emphasized in the High Performance Computing Authorization Act of 2005, already approved by the House, which would require that PITAC undertake such a review every two years.
So, I hope that the President acts quickly to either re-charter the committee and reinstate the current members (who have climbed a steep learning curve in learning about the intricacies of federal IT R&D portfolio) or to move swiftly to name new members of equal stature to the committee to undertake the review of the overall effort that’s sorely needed. As Congress continues to demonstrate its concern with the current state of computer science research in the U.S., the one advisory body most well-suited to the task of assessing that state shouldn’t be allowed to lapse.
NY Times OpEd on Cyber Security: “Virtually Unprotected”
/In: Funding, R&D in the Press, Security /by Peter HarshaThe New York Times editorializes today that, despite the very real threat, the nation continues to be woefully unprepared to defend against a “cyberattack” on our critical infrastructure.
As we’ve noted previously, the President’s IT Advisory Committee came to a similar conclusion in its report (pdf) on Cyber Security R&D, released last March. That report concluded that the federal government is largely failing in its responsibility to protect the nation from cyberthreats and recommended an immediate increase in the amount of support for cyber security research at NSF, DHS, and DARPA, and greater emphasis on civilian networks in addition to military-oriented networks.
Unfortunately, the early results of this appropriations season show that the recommendations for DHS continue to go largely unheeded….
Update: Ed Felten has a thoughtful post at Freedom to Tinker on the difficulty of addressing the cyberthreat problem with government action.
CRA-W Wins NSB Public Service Award
/In: CRA /by Peter HarshaCRA’s Committee on the Status of Women in Computing Research received one of two 2005 Public Service Awards presented by the National Science Board in recognition of CRA-W’s dedication “to increasing the number and success of women participating in Computer Science and Engineering research and education.” The board noted three CRA-W projects in particular:
Of course, this isn’t the first award for CRA-W. Last year, the committee was recognized by President George W. Bush as a winner of the Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics, and Engineering Mentoring. CRA-W is among the most energized, hardest-working committees of CRA, so it’s great to see them continue to earn plaudits for their efforts. Given the current situation, the effort is surely needed….
ACM Washington Update: May 2005
/In: Misc. /by Peter HarshaACM’s U.S. Public Policy Committee puts together a great monthly newsletter with all the DC happenings of interest to the tech community. The May edition is out now and chock full of good stuff, including updates on ACM’s Voter Registration Database study, the Real ID Act, spyware legislation, and a look ahead to June.
Check it out here.
HASC Believes DARPA Should Focus on Short-term Development
/In: Policy /by Peter HarshaSo, while the Senate Armed Services Committee generally has been very supportive of the idea that there’s much value to the nation and the Department of Defense in a DARPA that funds long-term, risky research, the House Armed Services Committee hasn’t been quite so enamored with that position. In the committee report accompanying the House version of the FY 2006 Defense Authorization Act (HR 1815) that passed the House yesterday, the committee lays out its short-term vision for the agency:
As we, and others, have noted, DARPA’s long-range vision and willingness to place big bets in university-led, high-risk, high-reward areas of research have have been responsible for a large share of the innovations that drive the U.S. economy and have made our military the most lethal and effective fighting force in history. This vision survived the Vietnam War and the constant pressure of the Cold War. There’s no doubt that DARPA can do much to contribute to solving today’s combat problems, and it may indeed be appropriate for the agency’s focus to shift in that direction. But it is critically important that there remain a home for long-range research vision focused on defense problems somewhere in the federal research portfolio. Failing to invest in the future leaves the country at the risk of suffering the technological surprise DARPA was originally chartered to prevent.
Appropriations Update: FY 2006 Science, Commerce, Justice, State
/In: Funding, FY06 Appropriations /by Peter HarshaThe House Appropriations Subcommittee on Science, Commerce, Justice, State marked-up it’s FY 2006 appropriations bill earlier today and included increases for NSF and NASA. Details are a little sparse until we see the full committee print next week, but here are the early figures:
NSF would increase 3.1% — $171 million over FY 2005, $38 million more than the President’s request — to $5.64 billion. NSF’s research accounts would grow $157 million over FY 05 to $4.38 billion, and education and human resources would fall to $807 million, from $841 million in FY 05 — but $70 million over the President’s request.
NASA would receive $15 million more than the President’s request, and $40 million that had been cut from the angecy’s aeronautics program in the budget request will be restored.
NIST reportedly would receive $549 million, including $106 million for the controversial Manufacturers Extension Partnership program. (No word on ATP).
We’ll have more details after the bill moves to the full Appropriations committee next week and the committee report accompanying the bill (and explaining the cuts and increases) is published.
Chronicle of Higher Ed Article on Computer Science Hearing, and Some Thoughts
/In: Policy, R&D in the Press /by Peter HarshaThe Chronicle of Higher Ed today has coverage (free until 6/2 apparently) of the May 12th House Science Committee hearing on “The Future of Computer Science Research in the U.S.” that’s generally pretty good. But it makes an odd point at the end that doesn’t accurately represent what went on at the hearing. Here’s the paragraph:
At the end of the 2 hour, 19 minute hearing, in response the committee’s very last question, Tether told the panel that in dealing with the university computer science community he saw “a lot of hand-wringing” but didn’t get many “actionable ideas” from the community. Science Committee Chairman Sherwood Boehlert then turned to Wulf and Leighton and asked if they could take that as a challenge and provide a list to the committee and to Tether. Both responded that they’d be happy to and Boehlert noted that he’d make that part of the post-hearing questions that will be put to the witnesses (and noted the challenge in his press release).
I understand both Wulf and Leighton are eager to respond to the challenge. Leighton told me after the hearing that he was getting ready to wave the PITAC report on Cyber Security R&D as a start (the focus of much of his testimony), which contains specific recommendations in 10 areas of cyber security research currently under-supported. Both Leighton and Wulf will be reaching out to the community to craft a list that will be most useful to DARPA and DOD and most responsive to the committee’s request (which hasn’t yet been received, as far as I know). There are plenty of resources from which to draw — PITAC’s Cyber Report, Defense Science Board, CRA’s Grand Challenges conferences, National Academies reports, etc.
The idea that either Wulf or Leighton were dumbstruck by the question is just wrong, and the idea that the community lacks an adequate response to the committee’s challenge is equally wrong.
Otherwise, the article does a decent job of summarizing the hearing. From my perspective, the hearing was incredibly useful. I could spend a lot of space here dissecting the testimony of Marburger and Tether — though frequent readers of the blog won’t need my dissection to spot the points of contention in both sets of testimony. Tether essentially argued in his oral testimony (and half of his written testimony) that DARPA has reduced its funding for university-led computer science research because maybe it’s focusing on multi-disciplinary research now; something Tether apparently deduced by looking at university web pages, he says. But in the appendix to his testimony, he provides the response to the same question he gave to the Senate Armed Services Committee, compiled by the DARPA comptroller, which includes these five reasons for the shift:
1. A change in emphasis in the high performance computing program from pure research to supercomputer construction;
2. Significant drop in unclassified information security research;
3. End of TIA-related programs in FY 2004 due to congressional decree, a move that cost universities “a consistent $11-12 million per year” in research funding;
4. Research into intelligent software had matured beyond the research stage into integration;
5. Classified funding for computer science-related programs increased markedly between FY 2001 and FY 2004, but Universities received none of this funding.
From my perspective, having the DARPA director stand before the committee (literally) and affirm that the agency has significantly reduced its support for university-led, long-range computing research was very useful. The community can raise concerns about DARPA’s priorities, but ultimately it’s up to the Director and the Administration to set them as they see fit. What’s more important to me is that the impact of DARPA’s (now undisputed) withdrawal on the overall IT R&D enterprise be adequately assessed and addressed. The gap that DARPA leaves is substantial — both in terms of monetary support and in losing a funding model that has contributed so much to the extraordinarily productive environment for innovation that is the computing research community. NSF is great at what it does — funding individual investigators and research infrastructure at universities — but there was substantial value from DARPA’s approach of focusing on particular problems and nourishing communities of researchers to address them. Without DARPA, that approach is largely absent in the federal IT R&D portfolio.
It was also useful for the Science Committee to get exposure to the concerns the community has had with DARPA over the last several years. Tether’s performance — literally standing before the committee (I staffed a lot of hearings for the House Science Committee under two different chairmen and never once saw a witness rise before the committee and wander around the hearing room while testifying…), delivering remarks 15 minutes over the 5 minute time limit imposed by the committee, and most importantly, being largely unresponsive to the three questions the committee posed to him prior to the hearing — confirmed to the committee Chair and staff that the concerns the community had shared with them had merit. The result is that the committee intends to remain engaged on this issue, which is to the community’s great benefit, I think.
The committee plans to proceed with the issue in the coming months in non-hearing venues. I’ll bring you developments as this moves forward during the summer and fall.