The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) — a CRA-affiliated organization — has named Vint Cerf and CRA Board Member Bob Kahn the winners of the 2004 A.M. Turing Award for pioneering work on the design and implementation of the Internet’s basic communications protocols.
ACM President David Patterson said the collaboration of Cerf and Kahn in defining the Internet architecture and its associated protocols represents a cornerstone of the information technology field. “Their work has enabled the many rapid and accessible applications on the Internet that we rely on today, including email, the World Wide Web, Instant Messaging, Peer-to-Peer transfers, and a wide range of collaboration and conferencing tools. These developments have helped make IT a critical component across the industrial world,” he said.
“The Turing Award is widely acknowledged as our industry’s highest recognition of the scientists and engineers whose innovations have fueled the digital revolution,” said Intel’s David Tennenhouse, Vice President in the Corporate Technology Group and Director of Research. “This award also serves to encourage the next generation of technology pioneers to deliver the ideas and inventions that will continue to drive our industry forward. As part of its long-standing support for innovation and incubation, Intel is proud to sponsor this year’s Turing Award. As a fellow DARPA alumnus, I am especially pleased to congratulate this year’s winners, who are outstanding role models, mentors and research collaborators to myself and many others within the network research community.”
Lots going on today. The House Science Committee will hold the first of its hearings on the FY 2006 Science Budget today at 11 am. Scheduled to appear are:
It’s always a little depressing to listen to directors of the science agencies forced to defend the lean budgets they’ve been saddled with, but for those who want to watch, the hearing will be webcast starting at 11 am today. Here’s the hearing charter (pdf).
Also happening today is a press conference hosted by the Task Force on the Future of American Innovation — a coalition of industry and academic groups advocating for support of the physical sciences and engineering. The Task Force is releasing a series of benchmarks for measuring U.S. global competitiveness in research and innovation. Scheduled to appear at the press conference today at 1 pm are:
John Engler, President, National Association of Manufacturers
Craig Barrett, Chief Executive Officer, Intel
Nils Hasselmo, President, Association of American Universities
Deborah Wince-Smith, President, Council on Competitiveness
Burton Richter, Paul Pigott Professor in the Physical Sciences and former Director, Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, Stanford University
Diana Hicks, Chair, School of Public Policy, Georgia Institute of Technology.
All will make the case for strengthening federal investments in science and engineering research, emphasizing the impact of those investments on long-term economic growth and prosperity.
The strength of this particular coalition, as can be seen above, is the strong participation of the high-tech companies and industry associations — who have some influence in the current administration — along with the academic groups (CRA is a member of the task force).
I’ll have more coverage of the benchmarks, as well as some other comments after the event this afternoon. Update: (2/16 6:30pm EST) – The Task Force press conference was remarkably well-attended — the 70-person capacity room was filled, with people lining the walls. It appears a good number of attendees were actually press, too. I’ll be posting links to coverage of the event here as I come across them.
For now, here is the official Benchmarks report (pdf). And the accompanying press release (pdf). Reuters is already out with the story.
Just a quick note to point out an editorial in today’s New York Times commending the State Department for finally “bringing some sanity” to the student visa issue. CRA has been urging this sort of reform since it became clear shortly after 9/11 that it was having a real impact on our member institutions. Thanks should go to AAAS, AAU and the National Academies — some of the real heavyweight academic associations — for moving the issue forward.
Computerworld has a story today that, I think, helps contribute to the common misunderstanding in some policy circles that “IT funding” is the same as “IT R&D funding.” The story combines budget news about the president’s proposed increases in federal IT funding — in this case, funding for IT procurement — with news about some aspects of the president’s science and technology budget. Here’s the first few paragraphs:
FEBRUARY 14, 2005 (COMPUTERWORLD) – President George Bush’s proposed budget for the federal government’s 2006 fiscal year, which starts Oct. 1, includes an increase in IT spending, despite significant cuts elsewhere.
The plan also asks Congress to permanently extend a research and development tax credit while terminating a program to develop high-risk, high-payoff technology.
The 2006 Bush budget cuts back or eliminates 150 government programs while calling for a 7% increase in government IT spending, to $65.1 billion. About 55% of IT-related funding would go to defense and domestic security programs. At the same time, the plan raises IT funding for the National Science Foundation by nearly 26%.
Separately, Bush’s science and technology budget would drop from an estimated $61.7 billion in fiscal 2005 to $60.8 billion in 2006. The science and technology budget includes programs such as space exploration, renewable energy and agricultural research, as well as technology-related research and development at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
…
The Information Technology Association of America (ITAA), an industry trade group, praised the IT budget plan.
“America must pick up the pace in science, math and engineering,” ITAA President Harris Miller said in a statement. “Countries around the world have clearly signaled their intent to challenge U.S. leadership in technology. Our economic well-being depends on answering this challenge.”
The conflation in the article of IT procurement issues –buying IT for uses within the agency — with science and technology funding issues aimed at supporting researchers working on the next generations of technology might lead the reader to conclude that IT R&D funding did well under the budget request. Indeed, the line about the 26 percent increase in funding at NSF, as well as Harris Miller’s (ITAA) quote about the need for America to “pick up the pace in science, math and engineering,” and the bit about the extension of the research and development tax cut seem to reinforce that.
Of course, that’s not quite the case. IT R&D funding overall would decline 7 percent under the President’s plan. NSF funding for IT R&D would increase agency-wide, but only slightly — $8 million or 1 percent over FY 05.
The irony is that the very important message conveyed in Miller’s quote argues for much more robust IT R&D funding, which despite NSF’s increase in IT procurement, isn’t happening.
Michael Mandel notes in today’sBusinessWeek Online op-ed that President Bush’s proposed cuts to federal support of R&D in his FY 06 budget request are shortsighted because of the impact they’ll have on the U.S. economy. He focuses on multifactor productivity (MFP). a measure of productivity that, when it goes up, means “output per hour of the average worker goes up without any additional skills or a change in equipment.”
“An increase in MFP equals free money, extra production that you don’t have to pay for,” he writes.
The key, according to Mandel:
Multifactor productivity is borne of the essence of technological innovation — the creation of new products and new opportunities out of ideas and thin air. For example, the spread of the Internet has not only made doing business easier and cheaper but also allowed people to do things that weren’t even possible in the past. Think about Amazon, Google, and eBay. Wireless phones aren’t just a substitute for landlines; they enable people to organize their activities in very different ways.
The rate of multifactor productivity growth represents the single best indicator of the economy’s true strength. When MFP is increasing rapidly, the size of the economic pie expands, real wages rise, profits go up, and everyone feels good. When that figure stagnates, things are tough all around.
For example, multifactor productivity didn’t rise at all in 1973-83, a period that included the era of runaway inflation, President Jimmy Carter’s famous “malaise” speech, and the deepest recession since the Great Depression. During that stretch, the stock market, adjusted for inflation, fell by 34%, while real hourly wages for production and nonsupervisory workers descended by 11%.
By contrast, the birth of the New Economy can be clearly seen in the sharp acceleration of multifactor productivity growth starting in 1996. From that point to 2002 (the latest year for which figures are available), MFP gained a bit more than 1% a year. From 1995 to today, real wages have risen by 9%, while the inflation-adjusted stock market is up by 68%.
An economy with rapid multifactor productivity growth is potentially quite profitable for investors, which helps explain why the U.S. can attract so much foreign capital to fund its trade deficit. High MFP also generates lots of extra output, useful for paying for, say, military actions or better health-care benefits. It’s like having a cushion or a security blanket.
Mandel notes that the President’s cut to nondefense R&D spending “can only hurt the nation’s ability to maintain a rapid pace of multifactor productivity growth.”
Putting more resources into technology and education is the best way to ensure that the bounty of higher MFP continues in the future.
Read the whole piece.
Thanks to Anthony Pitagno of ACS for the tip.
USACM’s David Padgham has a good post on House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner’s “Real ID Act,” a bill inteded to disrupt terrorist travel and bolster U.S. border security.
Among privacy and civil liberties advocates, the bill has renewed worries about the development of a national identification system. Indeed, critics of the bill assert that implementing the standards and information sharing compacts would amount to a de facto national ID card. Supporters of the bill contend that the bill is needed to address a number of vulnerabilities in border and homeland security efforts.
ACM has more info on national ID’s here.
Read the whole post.
Proving once again that House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) is the most powerful man in Congress, Appropriations Committee Chairman Jerry Lewis (R-CA) announced yesterday a “bold reorganization” (to quote his press release) of his panel, a plan that mirrors much of a proposal DeLay originally proposed late last year. The reorganization will dissolve three appropriations subcommittees, including VA-HUD-Independent Agencies subcommittee — home to NASA and NSF — and is designed to “streamline and expedite” an appropriations process that has failed to finish up on time every year in recent memory.
Lewis plans to eliminate VA-HUD and spread its jurisdiction across several committees. Maybe most importantly to computing researchers, the reorganization would result in NASA and NSF moving to what was the Commerce, State, Justice subcommittee, but will now be called the Science, State, Justice and Commerce subcommittee.
While this isn’t quite as far-ranging as the DeLay proposal originally floated in December (which we analyzed a bit here), it still accomplishes one of DeLay’s primary goals: namely, to get NASA out from under the shadow of the Veterans’ Administration and Housing and Urban Development. And in that sense, I think it’s a net positive for NSF and NASA. They get moved to a subcommittee in which they’ll enjoy a bit more prominence, and no longer have to compete with two relative behemoths (VA and HUD) for funding.
This is also a gain, I think, over the original Lewis proposal, which we told you about a few weeks ago. That plan would’ve seen NSF and NASA join DOE Science in the Energy and Water subcommittee, which raised concerns about the effect of NSF sharing a subcommittee likely to be staffed by members of Congress with DOE Labs in their districts. Would NSF, which has not been terribly affected by earmarks historically, then be in direct competition for funding with DOE in a subcommittee amenable to earmarking projects at DOE labs?
In any case, it looks as if the new organization plan avoids that potential pitfall by separating NSF and DOE. Of course, NSF will still have to contend with NASA — focus of much special attention by the House Majority Leader — and now adds NOAA, home to quite a few earmarks of its own. But, well, no plan is perfect….
The Senate appears to be close to adopting the House plan, according to Congressional Quarterly (sub. req’d). Failing to do so would mean absolute chaos come appropriations time — as opposed to the moderate chaos already experienced during conference season. Adopting the change in the Senate would mean that long-time NSF champion Sen. Kit Bond (R-MO) would lose his VA-HUD chairmanship and instead likely take over the new Transportation, Treasury, Judiciary and Housing subcommittee. That move would bump Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) to the Science, State, Justice and Commerce subcommittee.
On the House side, the new Science, State, Justice, and Commerce subcommittee will be chaired by Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA). Former VA-HUD Chair Rep. James Walsh would take over the new Military Quality of Life and Veterans’ Affairs subcommittee.
For the full shakeout, see Lewis’ press release. We’ll continue to monitor the reorganization and post the details as we get them. Update:Roll Callreports (sub. req’d) that the Senate Republicans have rejected adoption of the House plan and want Appropriations Chair Thad Cochran (R-MS) to “negotiate further changes with his House counterpart.”
Cochran said no decisions have been made, according to Roll Call.
I have learned not to bet against DeLay, however….
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.
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2004 Turing Award to Cerf, Kahn
/In: People /by Peter HarshaThe Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) — a CRA-affiliated organization — has named Vint Cerf and CRA Board Member Bob Kahn the winners of the 2004 A.M. Turing Award for pioneering work on the design and implementation of the Internet’s basic communications protocols.
Here’s ACM’s press release.
More news coverage at the New York Times.
Busy Day: Hearing and Press Conference
/In: Policy /by Peter HarshaLots going on today. The House Science Committee will hold the first of its hearings on the FY 2006 Science Budget today at 11 am. Scheduled to appear are:
It’s always a little depressing to listen to directors of the science agencies forced to defend the lean budgets they’ve been saddled with, but for those who want to watch, the hearing will be webcast starting at 11 am today. Here’s the hearing charter (pdf).
Also happening today is a press conference hosted by the Task Force on the Future of American Innovation — a coalition of industry and academic groups advocating for support of the physical sciences and engineering. The Task Force is releasing a series of benchmarks for measuring U.S. global competitiveness in research and innovation. Scheduled to appear at the press conference today at 1 pm are:
All will make the case for strengthening federal investments in science and engineering research, emphasizing the impact of those investments on long-term economic growth and prosperity.
The strength of this particular coalition, as can be seen above, is the strong participation of the high-tech companies and industry associations — who have some influence in the current administration — along with the academic groups (CRA is a member of the task force).
I’ll have more coverage of the benchmarks, as well as some other comments after the event this afternoon.
Update: (2/16 6:30pm EST) – The Task Force press conference was remarkably well-attended — the 70-person capacity room was filled, with people lining the walls. It appears a good number of attendees were actually press, too. I’ll be posting links to coverage of the event here as I come across them.
For now, here is the official Benchmarks report (pdf). And the accompanying press release (pdf).
Reuters is already out with the story.
NY Times Applauds Improvements to Student Visa Process
/In: Policy /by Peter HarshaJust a quick note to point out an editorial in today’s New York Times commending the State Department for finally “bringing some sanity” to the student visa issue. CRA has been urging this sort of reform since it became clear shortly after 9/11 that it was having a real impact on our member institutions. Thanks should go to AAAS, AAU and the National Academies — some of the real heavyweight academic associations — for moving the issue forward.
IT Spending Does Not Equal IT R&D Funding
/In: Policy /by Peter HarshaComputerworld has a story today that, I think, helps contribute to the common misunderstanding in some policy circles that “IT funding” is the same as “IT R&D funding.” The story combines budget news about the president’s proposed increases in federal IT funding — in this case, funding for IT procurement — with news about some aspects of the president’s science and technology budget. Here’s the first few paragraphs:
The conflation in the article of IT procurement issues –buying IT for uses within the agency — with science and technology funding issues aimed at supporting researchers working on the next generations of technology might lead the reader to conclude that IT R&D funding did well under the budget request. Indeed, the line about the 26 percent increase in funding at NSF, as well as Harris Miller’s (ITAA) quote about the need for America to “pick up the pace in science, math and engineering,” and the bit about the extension of the research and development tax cut seem to reinforce that.
Of course, that’s not quite the case. IT R&D funding overall would decline 7 percent under the President’s plan. NSF funding for IT R&D would increase agency-wide, but only slightly — $8 million or 1 percent over FY 05.
The irony is that the very important message conveyed in Miller’s quote argues for much more robust IT R&D funding, which despite NSF’s increase in IT procurement, isn’t happening.
Business Week Makes the Economic Case for Federal R&D Spending
/In: Policy /by Peter HarshaMichael Mandel notes in today’s BusinessWeek Online op-ed that President Bush’s proposed cuts to federal support of R&D in his FY 06 budget request are shortsighted because of the impact they’ll have on the U.S. economy. He focuses on multifactor productivity (MFP). a measure of productivity that, when it goes up, means “output per hour of the average worker goes up without any additional skills or a change in equipment.”
“An increase in MFP equals free money, extra production that you don’t have to pay for,” he writes.
The key, according to Mandel:
Mandel notes that the President’s cut to nondefense R&D spending “can only hurt the nation’s ability to maintain a rapid pace of multifactor productivity growth.”
Read the whole piece.
Thanks to Anthony Pitagno of ACS for the tip.
Real ID Act Passes House
/In: Policy /by Peter HarshaUSACM’s David Padgham has a good post on House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner’s “Real ID Act,” a bill inteded to disrupt terrorist travel and bolster U.S. border security.
ACM has more info on national ID’s here.
Read the whole post.
DeLay Gets His Appropriations Reorganization — Much of it, anyway
/In: Funding /by Peter HarshaProving once again that House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) is the most powerful man in Congress, Appropriations Committee Chairman Jerry Lewis (R-CA) announced yesterday a “bold reorganization” (to quote his press release) of his panel, a plan that mirrors much of a proposal DeLay originally proposed late last year. The reorganization will dissolve three appropriations subcommittees, including VA-HUD-Independent Agencies subcommittee — home to NASA and NSF — and is designed to “streamline and expedite” an appropriations process that has failed to finish up on time every year in recent memory.
Lewis plans to eliminate VA-HUD and spread its jurisdiction across several committees. Maybe most importantly to computing researchers, the reorganization would result in NASA and NSF moving to what was the Commerce, State, Justice subcommittee, but will now be called the Science, State, Justice and Commerce subcommittee.
While this isn’t quite as far-ranging as the DeLay proposal originally floated in December (which we analyzed a bit here), it still accomplishes one of DeLay’s primary goals: namely, to get NASA out from under the shadow of the Veterans’ Administration and Housing and Urban Development. And in that sense, I think it’s a net positive for NSF and NASA. They get moved to a subcommittee in which they’ll enjoy a bit more prominence, and no longer have to compete with two relative behemoths (VA and HUD) for funding.
This is also a gain, I think, over the original Lewis proposal, which we told you about a few weeks ago. That plan would’ve seen NSF and NASA join DOE Science in the Energy and Water subcommittee, which raised concerns about the effect of NSF sharing a subcommittee likely to be staffed by members of Congress with DOE Labs in their districts. Would NSF, which has not been terribly affected by earmarks historically, then be in direct competition for funding with DOE in a subcommittee amenable to earmarking projects at DOE labs?
In any case, it looks as if the new organization plan avoids that potential pitfall by separating NSF and DOE. Of course, NSF will still have to contend with NASA — focus of much special attention by the House Majority Leader — and now adds NOAA, home to quite a few earmarks of its own. But, well, no plan is perfect….
The Senate appears to be close to adopting the House plan, according to Congressional Quarterly (sub. req’d). Failing to do so would mean absolute chaos come appropriations time — as opposed to the moderate chaos already experienced during conference season. Adopting the change in the Senate would mean that long-time NSF champion Sen. Kit Bond (R-MO) would lose his VA-HUD chairmanship and instead likely take over the new Transportation, Treasury, Judiciary and Housing subcommittee. That move would bump Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) to the Science, State, Justice and Commerce subcommittee.
On the House side, the new Science, State, Justice, and Commerce subcommittee will be chaired by Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA). Former VA-HUD Chair Rep. James Walsh would take over the new Military Quality of Life and Veterans’ Affairs subcommittee.
For the full shakeout, see Lewis’ press release. We’ll continue to monitor the reorganization and post the details as we get them.
Update: Roll Call reports (sub. req’d) that the Senate Republicans have rejected adoption of the House plan and want Appropriations Chair Thad Cochran (R-MS) to “negotiate further changes with his House counterpart.”
Cochran said no decisions have been made, according to Roll Call.
I have learned not to bet against DeLay, however….
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.