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.
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.
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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.
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.