Cameron Wilson, USACM’s new Director of Public Policy puts his experience as a former Hill staffer to good use in analyzing how the National Institute of Standards and Technology fares in the President’s FY 2006 Budget Request. Read his excellent post on USACM’s Technology Policy Weblog.
Short story: NIST IT R&D funding at NIST Labs did see a slight bump in the request, but the President’s elimination of NIST’s Advanced Technology Program and a 50 percent cut to the Manufacturing Extension Partnership — both programs with considerable support in Congress — once again puts funding at NIST Labs at risk in the appropriations process.
The N.Y. Timeswas right…for FY 2006, the National Science Foundation is requesting a budget of $5.6 billion, an increase of 2.4 percent or $132 million over FY 2005. While an improvement over the 2 percent cut imposed in FY 05 by congressional appropriators, and certainly better than the rumored 5 percent cut initially approved by the White House for FY 06, the rate of growth proposed by the Administration would still fall below the rate of inflation.
Here’s the breakdown for the major NSF accounts:
NSF FY 2006 Budget by Account (in millions)
Appropriations Account
FY 2006 Request
$ Change FY 05 plan v. FY 06 request
% Change FY 05 plan v. FY 06 request
Research and Related Activities
$4,333
$113
2.7%
Education and Human Resources
$737
-$104
-12.4%
Major Research Equipment and Facilities Construction
$250
$76
43.9%
Salaries and Expenses
$269
$46
20.5%
National Science Board
$4
$0.03
0.8%
Inspector General
$11.5
$1.5
14.7%
Total
$5,605
$132
2.4%
Some details from Bement’s presentation today:
“The Education and Human Resources account decreases for a second year. In that area, we are leveraging our resources by focusing investments on successful programs and developing closer links with research programs. … Ideally, all of NSF’s budget areas would remain robust so that we can maximize the nation’s return on investment. In a difficult budget climate, however, we do our best to exercise fiscal responsibility by singling out priorities.”
Four priorities for NSF are: Strengthening core research, continuing to provide tools and infrastructure, broadening participation, and continuing to sharpen NSF’s management.
The “not-so-good” news: “The number of proposals received by NSF has been increasing every year. As a result, the proportion of proposals the agency is able to fund has dropped dramatically — from 30 percent in the late 1990s, to around 20 percent that we expect this year.” Goal is to maintain the recent gains made in increasing award size and duration, while halting the erosion in the funding rate.
Cyberinfrastructure investments across the foundation total $509 million (about $120 million in CISE).
No new starts in MREFC account. Increase in the account “covers our commitment to large ongoing projects.”
Here are the directorate-by-directorate breakdowns. If you focus only on the final columns — $ Change and % Change over FY 05 — it might appear that CISE has been de-emphasized among the directorates. This would run counter to Bement’s stated goal of ramping up CISE funding quickly to provide some immediate relief to the proposal pressure the directorate currently faces — its 16% success rate is the lowest among the directorates in the Foundation.
However, as CISE AD Peter Freeman pointed out after the briefing today, Bement was able to prioritize funding for CISE for FY 2005, [provided the appropriators approve of Bement’s FY 05 plan] even though the final FY 05 appropriations included a 2% cut overall for NSF. So, you’ll note that CISE does reasonably well, relatively speaking, when compared to the other directorates, lagging only Polar Programs (not included in the chart) — which was transferred 3 icebreakers and $45 million from the US Coast Guard — in total dollar increase since FY 2004.
Nevertheless, even with the increases in FY 05 and in the President’s request for FY 06, CISE’s rate of growth, along with that of the rest of the Foundation, still lags inflation.
Anyway, here’s the table:
National Science Foundation FY 2006 Congressional Request (in millions)
The budget is out and the numbers, as promised, don’t look very good. Here’s the breakdown for the Networking and Information Technology R&D program — the federal budget crosscut for all agencies involved in funding IT R&D:
Networking and Information Technology R&D (budget authority in millions)
Agency
2004 Actual
2005 Estimate
2006 Proposed
$ Change FY05 v FY06
% Change FY05 v FY06
Defense
$241
$277
$299
$21
7.6%
National Science Foundation
$773
$795
$803
$8
1%
HHS (primarily NIH)
$542
$573
$569
-$20
-3.4%
Energy
$343
$383
$341
-$29
-7.8%
Commerce
$47
$58
$62
$4
6.9%
NASA
$258
$192
$74
-$89
-54.6%
EPA
$2
$4
$6
$2
50%
Total
$2,206
$2,282
$2,155
-$101
-4.5%
There are some caveats to this table. The first is that the President’s budget submission indicates that DOD will “reassess which of its IT R&D programs are appropriate to count as part of the NITRD program, and any changes will be reported in subsequent NITRD publications.”
The second is that the baseline budgets (FY 2004 actual and FY 05 estimated) of just about every agency have increased significantly since last year’s budget submission. You can see that by comparing this year’s “Trends in IT R&D” chart with last year’s chart. The change in baseline makes it a little trickier to put the cuts in context. It also makes NIH look like a much more significant supporter of IT R&D than previously reported…
I’ll have much more parsing of the numbers a little later today. For now, I’m off to NSF for their budget briefing. I’m not terribly optimistic. Update: (3/28/05) — Table now reflects the latest revised numbers (pdf) from the NITRD National Coordinating Office. The NITRD cut is now “only” 4.5 versus FY 2005.
The New York Timesreports today that the President will include a request for a slight increase to the National Science Foundation when he delivers his budget plan to Congress on Monday. The Times, which had reported that NSF’s budget would be flat — an improvement over an initial OMB passback that called for a 5 percent cut for the agency — reports that the President will request $5.6 billion for NSF in FY 06, an increase of 2.4 percent over FY 05.
The increase, though small, would appear to make up the ground lost by the agency after Congress elected to cut funding by 2 percent in FY 05. However, coupled with the rate of inflation, the small increase is actually closer to flat-funding the agency, or even a slight real-dollar decrease.
Still, any increase in a budget which is otherwise rumored to be quite austere is symbolic, indicating areas where the Administration places priority. The Times also reports that the National Institutes of Health, which saw its budget double over the last six years, will receive only a 0.7 percent increase in the President’s request.
The President’s budget is only the first step in the annual budget cycle. Once the President reveals his plan on Monday, the ball shifts to Congress’ court. Congressional and Presidential priorities don’t always line up — as NSF experienced last year. The President requested a 3 percent increase for the agency in his FY 05 request, only to see Congress instead cut the agency by 2 percent in the final omnibus appropriation.
No details yet on directorate by directorate numbers, but we’ll only have to wait until Monday afternoon. Keep it here for all the details as they emerge.
Just a quick note on an otherwise busy Friday to point to a piece from the editors of MIT’s Technology Review about concerns in the high-tech VC community about the federal government’s commitment to funding fundamental research. Here’s the opening:
The appetite of venture capitalists for investing in new technologies is rebounding: in 2004, venture capital financing in the United States was up 8 percent from the year before, following three years of decline. With the success of Googles initial public offering (IPO) in August 2004, technology again excited the public imagination. Indeed, the window on IPOs opened wide in 2004, with 233 companies going public on U.S. stock exchanges and raising $43 billion, up from 79 companies and $16 billion in 2003. Biotechnology IPOs were particularly successful, raising $2.5 billion, the most since the $8.7 billion raised in 2000. So why are many of those involved in the funding of emerging technologies so worried?
According to some experts, the kind of basic research necessary to create tomorrows technologies is under siegeor at the very least, suffering from neglect. Venture capitalists never entirely stopped investing in companies with technologies just emerging from the lab. But after several years in which high-risk investments were unpopular, many startups developing innovative technologies (especially in such areas as nanotechnology and new genomic approaches to medicine) are starving for capital. Even more worrisome, the federal governments preoccupation with funding homeland security and national defense, and its resulting cutbacks in support for basic research in other areas, has left many wondering where the funding for research on new core technologies will come from.
And a little more from later in the piece:
“Defense and homeland security are very important. I cant criticize funding increases per se in those areas,” says Shirley Ann Jackson, president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York and the 2004 AAAS president. “But the bigger issue is sustaining focus and support for funding of basic research across broad fronts. We have to have a robust base of basic research. Were talking about potentially eroding that base.” Jackson adds, “Other places will innovate. The question is, are we going to be a leader? If we dont pay attention to the warning signs, 15, 20 years from now, we could find ourselves in a relatively disadvantageous position in terms of global leadership.”
Experts also worry that the federal R&D budget has become too skewed toward relatively mature technologies. “A lot of the federal funding has gotten a little more conservative and risk averse. The government needs to put a bigger percentage in radical innovation and more-exploratory researchtechnology thats going to be transformational,” says Deborah Wince-Smith, president of the Council on Competitiveness, a group of industry, university, and labor leaders based in Washington, DC. Amar Bose, professor emeritus at MIT and founder of the Bose audio company in Framingham, MA, puts it more bluntly: “Research funding is going downhill, and I dont see it turning around. Were going to have trouble.”
Something to keep in mind as we brace for the release Monday of the President’s Budget Request for FY 06.
Read the whole article here.
Thanks to fellow CRA’er Jay Vegso for the tip!
The Berkeleyan, a publication of UC Berkeley, has a great, in-depth piece on a trend we’ve noted and complained about in thisspacequiteoften: the increasing use of restrictions on federally supported fundamental research and its impact on university-based research. I’ll just cite a little bit, but I urge you to read the article.
DARPA, explains Lee’s colleague David Culler, “is a very strange place these days.” Just months after Lee’s brush with export controls, Culler, also an EECS professor, had a similar experience. In 2000 he was awarded an agency contract to develop hardware and software for miniaturized wireless computer networks, utilizing open-source software that would be shared with the wider research community. “This whole notion of openness was fundamental,” Culler says. “That’s what we wanted to do.”
In February 2004, however, DARPA’s program manager sent an e-mail to Culler and more than a dozen other researchers working on various aspects of the program, asking that source codes and possibly other material the message, says Culler, was “ambiguous” be removed from websites. Unsure of what to do, Culler consulted with Freedman’s office, which advised him to take no such action.
DARPA, meanwhile, pondered its next steps, eventually opting to split the program into two major segments, with basic research remaining at universities and classified work going to military contractors like Northrup Grumman. The decision, Culler says, wound up costing Berkeley “very little,” though other universities lost “quite a lot.”
“The money basically moved from the universities to the military contractors,” he says. “It’s a tremendous shift in where the resources have gone.”
More is at stake than just money, however. Ironically, DARPA’s efforts to “short-circuit” the research process to short-shrift basic research in favor of specific military applications could have the effect of hampering, not improving, America’s security.
“If you’re not able to keep the basic-research engine alive,” Culler explains, the result is likely to be less innovation and competitiveness, as other countries pick up the slack. “There is absolutely a need for basic research,” he insists. “Ultimately, in the long term, that contributes to an advantage in national security.”
House Appropriations Chair Jerry Lewis (R-CA) is apparently proposing the most radical restructuring of the Appropriations Committee in decades, according to an article appearing in today’s Congress Daily (sub. req’d). Peter Cohn, writes (sorry, I can’t find it online), that the proposal would pare the 13 appropriations committees down to 10 and would move NASA and the National Science Foundation out from beneath the veterans’ programs and housing programs in the VA-HUD appropriations and into the Energy and Water Appropriations, where they would join the Corps of Engineers and the Department of Energy.
The proposal is very similar to the appropriations reorganization originally floated by House Majority Leader Tom Delay (R-TX) (which we covered here). The proposal doesn’t quite create the “Science Subcommittee” that was rumored to have been part of Delay’s original proposal — the National Institutes of Health, along with the National Institute of Standards and Technology and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration won’t be affected by the move. But it’s more ambitious than most predicted.
I think this could potentially raise the prominence of NASA and NSF within the approps process, as they’ll be sharing a subcommittee with agencies with more modest budgets (Corps of Engineers = ~$4.8 billion; DOE = ~$23 billion) than the two behemoths in VA-HUD (VA = ~$65 billion and HUD = ~$38 billion). One potential negative, however, is that the Energy and Water bill tends to be a magnet for congressional earmarks — typically for water projects within home districts.
The plan faces some resistance from Senate Appropriations Chair Thad Cochran (R-MS), who told Congress Daily that he’s “in no rush to make major changes.” One Senator who will surely object to any move to eliminate the VA-HUD subcommittee is Kit Bond (R-MO), who is slated to return as its chairman.
The House leadership apparently plans to go ahead with the change regardless of what the Senate decides. Should the Senate not go along with the move, reconciliation of the bills in conference could be chaotic.
In any case, expect that whatever reorganization will happen will happen soon. As always, keep it tuned here for the latest details…. Update: It appears Rep. David Hobson (R-OH) would be in line to take over the newly constituted Energy and Water subcommittee (with NSF and NASA)….
The British Computer Society, inspired by a similar effort undertaken by CRA, has released a report identifying seven “Grand Challenges” in computing research. The report, the result of a series of workshops and discussions featuring the UK’s top computer academics, calls for the continued development of a long-term research area in each of the following areas:
In Vivo–in Silico (iViS): the virtual worm, weed and bug
Science for global ubiquitous computing
Memories for life: managing information information over a human lifetime
Scalable ubiquitous computing systems
The architecture of brain and mind
Dependable systems evolution
Journeys in non-classical computation
These challenges seem to map nicely with the five challenges identified at CRA’s first Grand Challenge workshop, held in June 2002. That conference focused on Grand Research Challenges in Information Systems (pdf) and identified the following challenges:
Systems you can count on
A teacher for every learner
911.net (ubiquitous information systems)
Augmented cognition
Conquering complexity
For more on the BCS Grand Challenges, here’s the press release marking the release of the report, as well as the BCS Grand Challenges website.
CRA’s Grand Challenges activities (in Information Systems, and in Information Security and Assurance) are linked here.
The Senate Majority and Minority leaders announced yesterday their respective parties’ “legislative priorities” for the new session of Congress, highlighting different perspectives on the relative importance of federal support for R&D.
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) announced that “expanding high-speed Internet access, targeting terrorists, ending tax incentives for U.S. companies located overseas and increasing the minimum wage, among other items, top their agenda,” according to Tech Daily (sub req’d). The Senate Democratic agenda includes a fairly prominent mention of support for federal R&D as part of their efforts to promote “Expanding Economic Opportunity” in Senate bill S. 14:
Strengthen and Restore American Innovative Strength through Commitment to Research, Science and Technology. Research and development results in higher quality jobs, better and safer products and higher productivity among American businesses. U.S. economic strength is dependent on its leadership in science and technology, and the U.S. is losing ground to foreign competitors. The U.S. needs to re-commit itself to the value of public investment in research and development, which is being outpaced by investment in the private sector. This bill makes permanent a tax credit for entities that increase their research activities and makes a credit available to consortia of entities that research collaboratively. The bill also expresses support for legislation that will increase federally funded research at the National Science Foundation, the Office of Science at the Department of Energy, the National Institutes of Health and the National Institute of Science and Technology so we can better compete in the international economy, as well investment in math, science and technology programs at our secondary education institutions.
Also included in the Senate Democratic Agenda (under the same bill) is language aimed at encouraging broadband deployment:
America continues to fall behind our competitors in access to broadband internet service. Most of the communities lacking service are in rural and economically-distressed areas of the country. S. 14 expands broadband availability to these areas by allowing broadband service providers to immediately deduct one-half of the cost of their investment in equipment to provide current generation broadband access to rural and underserved areas.
Of course, these sorts of proposals are a bit easier to make when you’re not in the majority, but it’s encouraging to see them featured so prominently nonetheless.
On the Senate Republican side, overt mentions of support for federal R&D are a little harder to find. Senate bill S.4 in the Senate Republican’s Top Ten (pdf), the “Healthy America Act” recognizes that health information technology can make health care more affordable and supports the adoption of standards that might make Electronic Health Records feasible — but other than noting that the recommendation is similar to a PITAC recommendation along the same lines in the committee’s Health and Information Technology report (pdf), and that the PITAC also recommended significant R&D in the area to address considerable challenges, it’s probably a stretch to call that a ringing endorsement of federal R&D. Tech Daily reports that Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) also mentioned
technology initiatives to better prepare for, respond to and prevent terrorist attacks. Frist said Republicans would put forward a bill approved last year that would help transfer advanced technologies from federal departments and agencies to state and local “first responders” to emergencies.
But again, certainly not a ringing endorsement of fundamental research.
Lest I make it seem like this perception of the importance of federal R&D support is strictly a partisan difference, I’ll quote an interesting passage in Newt Gingrich’s new book, Winning the Future: A 21st Century Contract with America. Gingrich still wields some influence in the party, though obviously not nearly the clout he once had as Speaker and the leader of the Republican Revolution that took back the House in ’94. He clearly “gets” R&D:
INVESTING IN SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH
The research budget of the United States should be considered part of the national security budget. Investing in science (including math and science education) is the most important strategic investment we make in continued American leadership economically and militarily. Investing in science has also been the most consistent, powerful, single mechanism for extending life and for improving the quality of life. When developing the federal budget, the investment in science should be considered immediately after operational military requirements and before any of the traditional domestic spending programs.
Congress should consider establishing a separate budget line item for federal research and protecting it from encroachment by all the interest groups who want immediate gratification for their projects. Special interests can find funding for highways, subsidies to farmers, and public housing. For a variety of reasons scientists and those who believe in science have a harder time making a ‘pork barrel’ or special interest appeal for more money.
In the next few years the requirements are pretty straight forward.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) should increase at a rate that allows it to sustain its current research program. Having recently doubled the NIH budget, Congress does not need to double it again immediately. Congress should be aware, however, of the crippling impact of a flat budget when research opportunities and needs are growing.
The National Science Foundation’s (NSF) budget should be tripled over the next five years. The Foundation is the engine of basic research for the United States, and most of our modern medical advances have come as the result of basic research initially funded by the NSF.
The specialized agencies, the laboratories at the Department of Energy, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and the national Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration should all be asked to develop a master plan for the science they could do if properly funded. Funding should follow proportionate to the research they can explain and defend.
The Department of Energy has an opportunity to transform the entire energy economy (and the American balance of trade) through its work on hydrogen. If the Department of Energy succeeds in developing a commercially sustainable hydrogen market, its impact on the environment, the economy, and national security will be extraordinary. This project deserves as big an investment as it can reasonably use.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology has been leading the way in researching quantum mechanics and its work needs to be continued.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has enormous opportunities in ocean science and in understanding global climate change. A society that may end up spending trillions to avoid global climate change should be willing to spend 1 percent as much understanding this topic.
The yardstick should be very simple: What are our children’s future and our grandchildren’s future worth to us? What are the breakthroughs that might accelerate our economy, save our lives, and protect our national worth to us? From that baseline we should develop our research budget each year.
The 2005 Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing Conference has issued a call for participation seeking submissions for papers, panels, posters, birds-of-a-feather and workshop sessions for the three-day conference.
Tapia 2005, the third in the series, will be held Oct. 19-22, 2005, in Albuquerque under the theme “A Diversity of Scholars a Tapestry of Discovery.”
President’s Budget: NIST
/In: Funding /by Peter HarshaCameron Wilson, USACM’s new Director of Public Policy puts his experience as a former Hill staffer to good use in analyzing how the National Institute of Standards and Technology fares in the President’s FY 2006 Budget Request. Read his excellent post on USACM’s Technology Policy Weblog.
Short story: NIST IT R&D funding at NIST Labs did see a slight bump in the request, but the President’s elimination of NIST’s Advanced Technology Program and a 50 percent cut to the Manufacturing Extension Partnership — both programs with considerable support in Congress — once again puts funding at NIST Labs at risk in the appropriations process.
President’s Budget: National Science Foundation
/In: Funding /by Peter HarshaThe N.Y. Times was right…for FY 2006, the National Science Foundation is requesting a budget of $5.6 billion, an increase of 2.4 percent or $132 million over FY 2005. While an improvement over the 2 percent cut imposed in FY 05 by congressional appropriators, and certainly better than the rumored 5 percent cut initially approved by the White House for FY 06, the rate of growth proposed by the Administration would still fall below the rate of inflation.
Here’s the breakdown for the major NSF accounts:
(in millions)
FY 05 plan v. FY 06 request
FY 05 plan v. FY 06 request
Some details from Bement’s presentation today:
Here are the directorate-by-directorate breakdowns. If you focus only on the final columns — $ Change and % Change over FY 05 — it might appear that CISE has been de-emphasized among the directorates. This would run counter to Bement’s stated goal of ramping up CISE funding quickly to provide some immediate relief to the proposal pressure the directorate currently faces — its 16% success rate is the lowest among the directorates in the Foundation.
However, as CISE AD Peter Freeman pointed out after the briefing today, Bement was able to prioritize funding for CISE for FY 2005, [provided the appropriators approve of Bement’s FY 05 plan] even though the final FY 05 appropriations included a 2% cut overall for NSF. So, you’ll note that CISE does reasonably well, relatively speaking, when compared to the other directorates, lagging only Polar Programs (not included in the chart) — which was transferred 3 icebreakers and $45 million from the US Coast Guard — in total dollar increase since FY 2004.
Nevertheless, even with the increases in FY 05 and in the President’s request for FY 06, CISE’s rate of growth, along with that of the rest of the Foundation, still lags inflation.
Anyway, here’s the table:
FY 2006 Congressional Request
(in millions)
FY 04 Actual v. FY 06 Request
FY 04 Actual v. FY 06 Request
FY 05 Plan v. FY 06
FY 05 Plan v. FY 06
The full set of NSF budget charts are on the web.
President’s Budget is Out: Here are the First Numbers
/In: Funding /by Peter HarshaThe budget is out and the numbers, as promised, don’t look very good. Here’s the breakdown for the Networking and Information Technology R&D program — the federal budget crosscut for all agencies involved in funding IT R&D:
(budget authority in millions)
Actual
Estimate
Proposed
FY05 v FY06
FY05 v FY06
There are some caveats to this table. The first is that the President’s budget submission indicates that DOD will “reassess which of its IT R&D programs are appropriate to count as part of the NITRD program, and any changes will be reported in subsequent NITRD publications.”
The second is that the baseline budgets (FY 2004 actual and FY 05 estimated) of just about every agency have increased significantly since last year’s budget submission. You can see that by comparing this year’s “Trends in IT R&D” chart with last year’s chart. The change in baseline makes it a little trickier to put the cuts in context. It also makes NIH look like a much more significant supporter of IT R&D than previously reported…
I’ll have much more parsing of the numbers a little later today. For now, I’m off to NSF for their budget briefing. I’m not terribly optimistic.
Update: (3/28/05) — Table now reflects the latest revised numbers (pdf) from the NITRD National Coordinating Office. The NITRD cut is now “only” 4.5 versus FY 2005.
President to Request Slight Increase for NSF, says NY Times
/In: Funding /by Peter HarshaThe New York Times reports today that the President will include a request for a slight increase to the National Science Foundation when he delivers his budget plan to Congress on Monday. The Times, which had reported that NSF’s budget would be flat — an improvement over an initial OMB passback that called for a 5 percent cut for the agency — reports that the President will request $5.6 billion for NSF in FY 06, an increase of 2.4 percent over FY 05.
The increase, though small, would appear to make up the ground lost by the agency after Congress elected to cut funding by 2 percent in FY 05. However, coupled with the rate of inflation, the small increase is actually closer to flat-funding the agency, or even a slight real-dollar decrease.
Still, any increase in a budget which is otherwise rumored to be quite austere is symbolic, indicating areas where the Administration places priority. The Times also reports that the National Institutes of Health, which saw its budget double over the last six years, will receive only a 0.7 percent increase in the President’s request.
The President’s budget is only the first step in the annual budget cycle. Once the President reveals his plan on Monday, the ball shifts to Congress’ court. Congressional and Presidential priorities don’t always line up — as NSF experienced last year. The President requested a 3 percent increase for the agency in his FY 05 request, only to see Congress instead cut the agency by 2 percent in the final omnibus appropriation.
No details yet on directorate by directorate numbers, but we’ll only have to wait until Monday afternoon. Keep it here for all the details as they emerge.
Venture Capitalists Worried About Federal Neglect of Basic Research
/In: Policy /by Peter HarshaJust a quick note on an otherwise busy Friday to point to a piece from the editors of MIT’s Technology Review about concerns in the high-tech VC community about the federal government’s commitment to funding fundamental research. Here’s the opening:
And a little more from later in the piece:
Something to keep in mind as we brace for the release Monday of the President’s Budget Request for FY 06.
Read the whole article here.
Thanks to fellow CRA’er Jay Vegso for the tip!
Research Under Fire
/In: Policy /by Peter HarshaThe Berkeleyan, a publication of UC Berkeley, has a great, in-depth piece on a trend we’ve noted and complained about in this space quite often: the increasing use of restrictions on federally supported fundamental research and its impact on university-based research. I’ll just cite a little bit, but I urge you to read the article.
Thanks to Spaf for the tip.
Appropriations Reorganization Update: NSF and NASA to Energy and Water?
/In: Policy /by Peter HarshaHouse Appropriations Chair Jerry Lewis (R-CA) is apparently proposing the most radical restructuring of the Appropriations Committee in decades, according to an article appearing in today’s Congress Daily (sub. req’d). Peter Cohn, writes (sorry, I can’t find it online), that the proposal would pare the 13 appropriations committees down to 10 and would move NASA and the National Science Foundation out from beneath the veterans’ programs and housing programs in the VA-HUD appropriations and into the Energy and Water Appropriations, where they would join the Corps of Engineers and the Department of Energy.
The proposal is very similar to the appropriations reorganization originally floated by House Majority Leader Tom Delay (R-TX) (which we covered here). The proposal doesn’t quite create the “Science Subcommittee” that was rumored to have been part of Delay’s original proposal — the National Institutes of Health, along with the National Institute of Standards and Technology and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration won’t be affected by the move. But it’s more ambitious than most predicted.
I think this could potentially raise the prominence of NASA and NSF within the approps process, as they’ll be sharing a subcommittee with agencies with more modest budgets (Corps of Engineers = ~$4.8 billion; DOE = ~$23 billion) than the two behemoths in VA-HUD (VA = ~$65 billion and HUD = ~$38 billion). One potential negative, however, is that the Energy and Water bill tends to be a magnet for congressional earmarks — typically for water projects within home districts.
The plan faces some resistance from Senate Appropriations Chair Thad Cochran (R-MS), who told Congress Daily that he’s “in no rush to make major changes.” One Senator who will surely object to any move to eliminate the VA-HUD subcommittee is Kit Bond (R-MO), who is slated to return as its chairman.
The House leadership apparently plans to go ahead with the change regardless of what the Senate decides. Should the Senate not go along with the move, reconciliation of the bills in conference could be chaotic.
In any case, expect that whatever reorganization will happen will happen soon. As always, keep it tuned here for the latest details….
Update: It appears Rep. David Hobson (R-OH) would be in line to take over the newly constituted Energy and Water subcommittee (with NSF and NASA)….
British Computer Society Releases Grand Challenges
/In: Research /by Peter HarshaThe British Computer Society, inspired by a similar effort undertaken by CRA, has released a report identifying seven “Grand Challenges” in computing research. The report, the result of a series of workshops and discussions featuring the UK’s top computer academics, calls for the continued development of a long-term research area in each of the following areas:
These challenges seem to map nicely with the five challenges identified at CRA’s first Grand Challenge workshop, held in June 2002. That conference focused on Grand Research Challenges in Information Systems (pdf) and identified the following challenges:
For more on the BCS Grand Challenges, here’s the press release marking the release of the report, as well as the BCS Grand Challenges website.
CRA’s Grand Challenges activities (in Information Systems, and in Information Security and Assurance) are linked here.
R&D and Legislative Priorities: Senate Edition
/In: Policy /by Peter HarshaThe Senate Majority and Minority leaders announced yesterday their respective parties’ “legislative priorities” for the new session of Congress, highlighting different perspectives on the relative importance of federal support for R&D.
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) announced that “expanding high-speed Internet access, targeting terrorists, ending tax incentives for U.S. companies located overseas and increasing the minimum wage, among other items, top their agenda,” according to Tech Daily (sub req’d). The Senate Democratic agenda includes a fairly prominent mention of support for federal R&D as part of their efforts to promote “Expanding Economic Opportunity” in Senate bill S. 14:
Also included in the Senate Democratic Agenda (under the same bill) is language aimed at encouraging broadband deployment:
Of course, these sorts of proposals are a bit easier to make when you’re not in the majority, but it’s encouraging to see them featured so prominently nonetheless.
On the Senate Republican side, overt mentions of support for federal R&D are a little harder to find. Senate bill S.4 in the Senate Republican’s Top Ten (pdf), the “Healthy America Act” recognizes that health information technology can make health care more affordable and supports the adoption of standards that might make Electronic Health Records feasible — but other than noting that the recommendation is similar to a PITAC recommendation along the same lines in the committee’s Health and Information Technology report (pdf), and that the PITAC also recommended significant R&D in the area to address considerable challenges, it’s probably a stretch to call that a ringing endorsement of federal R&D.
Tech Daily reports that Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) also mentioned
But again, certainly not a ringing endorsement of fundamental research.
Lest I make it seem like this perception of the importance of federal R&D support is strictly a partisan difference, I’ll quote an interesting passage in Newt Gingrich’s new book, Winning the Future: A 21st Century Contract with America. Gingrich still wields some influence in the party, though obviously not nearly the clout he once had as Speaker and the leader of the Republican Revolution that took back the House in ’94. He clearly “gets” R&D:
Thanks to Barry Toiv of AAU for the quote.
Tapia Conference on Diversity in Computing CFP
/In: Research /by Peter HarshaHere’s the scoop:
All the details here.