As the FY 05 appropriations process demonstrated, the current organization of congressional appropriationssubcommittees (and thus, appropriations bills) is a mess that puts science agencies at a disadvantage in the competition for federal dollars. The current structure is a mish-mash of jurisdictions that forces agencies that have little or nothing to do with each other to compete for the limited funds within each bill — one bill pits the National Science Foundation and NASA against the Veteran’s Administration and federal housing programs, for example, and in another, it’s NIST and NOAA against the State Department. More often than not, in that competition the science agencies get the short end of the stick.
But there’s an interesting proposal floating around DC to recast the appropriations panels to make their jurisdictions more sensible. Normally, a proposal to realign something as significant as the 13 appropriations committees would be dead on arrival — especially a proposal like this one, which would reduce the number of subcommittees, and therefore subcommittee chairmen (called “cardinals” in deference to their power), from 13 to 10. But this one is being floated by the most powerful man in the House (and probably Congress), House Majority Leader Tom Delay (R-TX), and has the backing of the House GOP leadership.
Delay’s motive in proposing the reorganization is apparently to realign the committees to represent GOP and Democratic themes, according to CQ’s (sub. req’d) Andrew Taylor. So, there’d be a “Regulatory Agencies” subcommittee that would include agencies like OSHA, another that would combine all of the funding for Congress, the White House, and the Judicial branch, and another for traditionally Democratic priorities like public housing. In the few news reports I’ve seen on the proposal, there hasn’t been any mention of a subcommittee combining all the non-defense agencies for science. But a subcommittee comprised of the civilian science agencies seems like a logical part of any reorganization — and indeed, the rumors circulating around town suggest it is.
I haven’t seen the proposal, but I think it would be reasonable to assume that a “Science” subcommittee would have to include appropriations for NIH, NSF, DOE Science, NASA, NIST, and NOAA — basically all the major non-defense agencies involved in research. Obviously, a reorganization of that magnitude would change the dynamics of the appropriations process for science. I’ve been doing some thinking about whether it would be a positive or negative change. I’m coming to the conclusion that it would probably be positive overall…but I’m open to feedback from a different perspective. (Some of this may seem “inside baseball,” but I think it’s important.)
I think the first change is that the annual 302(b) budget allocation — the divvying up of the funds authorized by the annual Congressional Budget Resolution (CBR) into spending limits for each appropriations bill — would become much more meaningful for the scientific community. In the current system, we advocate for science in the CBR, but it’s a little disconnected from the 302(b) process. We advocate for the highest possible “Function 250” line — the “General Science, Space and Technology” line in the CBR — but that doesn’t obviously translate into increased funding for any of the appropriations bills we care about because that function is an aggregate that gets split among a whole bunch of different appropriations bills. We could advocate for the highest possible 302(b) allocation for specific approps bills, like the VA-HUD-Independent Agencies appropriation, which includes NSF and NASA funding, but there’s no guarantee that any of that increased funding will go towards the science agencies in that bill.
With an Appropriations Subcommittee for Science there would be a corresponding 302(b) allocation for “Science.” If we’re looking to draw a bright line for science in the budget process, that’s about as bright as it gets. There would be no doubt whether Congress was supportive of science in any particular year — a look at the 302(b) allocation would tell you.
Drafting the Science Appropriations Bill each year would also be an interesting exercise. With essentially all of the civilian research agencies represented under one subcommittee’s jurisdiction, there would be few hurdles to overcome to address issues of balance in the federal research portfolio, for example. Federal gov’t focused too heavily on the life sciences? The committee would have the authority to reprogram money from NIH to NSF or DOE Science. Too much applied research and not enough basic? Reprogram NIST ATP money to NSF. Can’t do that under the current arrangement. There may also be efficiencies that result from having everything in one place. Coordinating research activities across research agencies may be easier when agencies can’t hide behind the stovepipes of different appropriations committees.
Of course, the appropriators could just as easily reverse the situation under this scenario — reprogram NSF funds to NIST ATP to bolster applied research, NSF to NIH to bolster life sciences. But it seems to me that, in general, we’d be well-positioned in those debates. Under the current committee structure, those debates are essentially impossible.
So, I think it’d be a net positive for us and for science generally. But I’m open to arguments in opposition.
Assuming this reorganization is a good idea, the next question is what we in the science community can do to help it go forward. Politically, the odds are against reorganization, even with Delay and the House GOP Leadership strongly in favor. If it were up to the House alone, it would probably be a done deal. Delay has ensured himself significant political capital by delivering an increased majority to the GOP in the House via his almost single-handed redistricting push in Texas. In addition, there will be a new Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee in the 109th Congress, and the House leadership will play the primary role in deciding who that will be (it’s looking like Ralph Regula (R-OH)), so they’ll have considerable leverage in guaranteeing support for their proposal.
The real hurdle is the Senate. As a practical matter, any reorganization of the House Approps Committee will have to be mirrored in the Senate Approps Committee — otherwise, conferencing the various appropriations bills will be chaos. The Senate will also have a new Appropriations Chair, Thad Cochran (R-MS), who has expressed opposition to the proposal. (In particular, he doesn’t like the idea that it would eliminate the Agriculture Subcommittee, which he chaired). The opposition might not be unanimous across the Senate — CQ says the Senate leadership apparently isn’t “dismissive” of the idea — but it’s a long shot. I think if the science community does decide to weigh in in support of the proposal, focusing our efforts on the Senate — Cochran in particular — would be the best approach.
But even if the proposal doesn’t have a great chance of going forward, I think it’s beneficial for Congress to have the reorganization debate…especially if an element of that debate is the potential benefit to U.S. science a reorganization might bring.
According to this report at Space.com, NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe will step down this week and may take a position at Lousiana State University. Apparently the former head of DOD’s anti-ballistic missile shield program, Air Force Lt. Gen. Ronald Kadish, is the leading candidate to replace him, though the others mentioned as possibilities are interesting:
Former Rep. Bob Walker, former Chair of the House Science Committee and now big-time DC lobbyist
Ron Sega, current head of DDR&E at the Pentagon, and a former astronaut
Two other former astronauts, Charles Bolden and Robert Crippen.
Here’s a snippet from the space.com article:
CAPE CANAVERAL — NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe will resign this week, and the retired director of the Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency tops a list of five men that President Bush is considering to take over the space agency, FLORIDA TODAY has learned.
Louisiana State University is aggressively recruiting O’Keefe to become the Baton Rouge, La., school’s next chancellor. O’Keefe said he is interested in the job, and school officials told FLORIDA TODAY a deal could be made this week.
Meanwhile, a White House team is weighing five candidates and plans to announce O’Keefe’s departure and pick a new NASA administrator by Thursday, according to a source familiar with the selection process.
His name is Sam Bodman, formerly Deputy Secretary of Commerce and a former Associate Professor in chemical engineering at MIT. That’s about all I know about him at the moment. If confirmed, he’ll replace current Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham.
The President’s announcement is here.
Abraham’s press release is here.
And Sherry Boehlert, Chair of the House Science Committee, has a release, too.
The first “passbacks” from the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) have apparently begun to leak and rumors are circulating that NIST is once again in for lean times. (Passbacks are OMB’s response to each agency’s budget request for the coming fiscal year — they are OMB’s verdict on what will and won’t get included in the President’s budget request to the Congress in February.)
The Administration apparently supports an increase to NIST Labs, approving a passback budget request of $489 million for FY 06 for intramural research — which would be $38 million more than the FY 05 enacted level — but only about $7 million more than the President’s FY 05 request. More problematically, the current rumor suggests OMB zeroed funding for two controversial (yet somewhat popular) NIST programs: the Advanced Technology Program (ATP), funded for FY 05 at $137 million; and the Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP), funded for FY 05 at $108 million.
Additionally, it sounds as if the administration has decided to eliminate the Commerce Department’s Technology Administration and incorporate it’s functions under NIST. The FY 05 final budget for TA was $7 million.
If the numbers above are accurate, it would suggest that NIST Labs could once again be squeezed come appropriations time, as congressional appropriators scramble to find funding for ATP and MEP (and maybe TA) in the final bill. Though NIST Labs fared reasonably well in the FY 2005 appropriation given the cuts suffered by other agencies (they received a 12.8% increase), they still haven’t fully overcome the significant cuts they suffered as a result of the FY 2004 appropriation. Those cuts resulted in layoffs of some lab personnel and stopped research.
It will take some serious effort by the community to ensure that NIST doesn’t face the same situation once again. We’ll have more details as they emerge.
The Washington Post has an interesting article about House Majority Leader Tom Delay’s (R-TX) successful efforts to singlehandedly secure a large increase for the President’s Moon/Mars Space Initiative in the FY 2005 Omnibus Appropriations bill. In a bill that included some significant cuts to science, most notably a cut of $105 million to the National Science Foundation, Delay, who counts among his constituents a large number of NASA’s Johnson Space Center employees, was able to use his clout to ensure NASA got the extra $800 million the President requested.
As the increase arguably came at the expense of NSF, let’s hope the House and Senate hold at least one hearing in the 109th Congress on whether the benefit of this significant re-prioritization exceeds the coststo theNation incurred by cutting fundamental research support.
Thomas Friedman’s editorial in the New York Times today hits Congress hard for approving a cut to the National Science Foundation in the Omnibus Appropriations bill. A sample:
Of all the irresponsible aspects of the 2005 budget bill that the Republican-led Congress just passed, nothing could be more irresponsible than the fact that funding for the National Science Foundation was cut by nearly 2 percent, or $105 million.
Think about this. We are facing a mounting crisis in science and engineering education. The generation of scientists, engineers and mathematicians who were spurred to get advanced degrees by the 1957 Soviet launch of Sputnik and the challenge by President John Kennedy to put a man on the moon is slowly retiring.
But because of the steady erosion of science, math and engineering education in U.S. high schools, our cold war generation of American scientists is not being fully replenished. We traditionally filled the gap with Indian, Chinese and other immigrant brainpower. But post-9/11, many of these foreign engineers are not coming here anymore, and, because the world is now flat and wired, many others can stay home and innovate without having to emigrate.
If we don’t do something soon and dramatic to reverse this “erosion,” Shirley Ann Jackson, the president of Rensselaer Polytechnic and president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, told me, we are not going to have the scientific foundation to sustain our high standard of living in 15 or 20 years.
Instead of doubling the N.S.F. budget – to support more science education and research at every level – this Congress decided to cut it! Could anything be more idiotic?
Read the whole thing here. Update: The San Jose Mercury Newsagrees.
This article I spotted today in Government Computer News on former Director of DHS’ National Cybersecurity Division Amit Yoran’s thoughts about DHS’ niche in federal cybersecurity efforts reminded me that I hadn’t provided an update on what I thought was a very interesting meeting of PITAC’s Subcommittee on Cybersecurity R&D a week ago last Friday.
The Subcommittee is in the process of evaluating the federal government’s efforts in supporting cybersecurity research and development — trying to figure out how well the government is targeting the right research areas, whether there’s good balance between short-term and long-term research, whether we’re doing all we can to improve technology transfer, and whether we’re well prepared for the security challenges of the future. The goal is to produce a final report the full PITAC can approve at its March 2005 meeting. So far the subcommittee has produced a first draft, which is what was presented by Subcommittee Chair F. Thomson Leighton at the Nov 19th meeting.
And that first draft is very good. It’s clear the committee has taken to heart much of the testimony it has received, including testimony CRA submitted to the committee last July. Leighton’s slide presentation (pdf) does a good job of laying out the details, but I thought I’d summarize them a bit here.
The committee has identified four main issues: 1) Problems with civilian cyber security research; 2) Problems with the size of the cyber security basic research community; 3) Tech transfer issues; and 4) The coordination of cyber security R&D. They seem to have devoted quite a bit of attention to the first issue, and the points that they raise are all right on the money (and concerns CRA shares), namely:
The Federal R&D budget provides severely insufficient funding for basic research in cyber security. Even better, the subcommittee specifies an actual dollar amount increase (at least $90 million per year) necessary to make up for the current under-investment (while leaving the door open for future increases in funding beyond $90 million per year should “the Nation’s security posture in the future” warrant it).
The subcommittee finds that the current federal focus on near-term applications in cyber security must be reversed.
Federal research efforts need to avoid “incrementalism.” Research programs need to accommodate longer time periods and accept some “failures.”
We must buttress civilian cyber security R&D efforts. While there’s clearly a need for the Defense Department and the intelligence agencies to sponsor significant amounts of cyber security R&D related to their missions, increasingly, much of that research is being classified. There are costs to bear when research is classified. For example, research results for classified research are very slow to disseminate, if ever, and many/most university researchers are unable to participate — meaning some of the best minds in the country aren’t working on these important problems. As a result, NSF, the primary funder of unclassified, civilian cyber security R&D, is heavily oversubscribed. Its cyber security research program (CyberTrust) has an astonishingly bad award rate of 5-8 percent. The subcommittee estimates that a quadrupling (emph. added) of the CyberTrust budget could be productively used by the civilian cyber security community.
There are no shortage of research areas in need of funding: Computer authentication methodologies; securing fundamental protocols, secure software engineering, end-to-end system security, monitoring and detection; mitigation and recovery methodologies’ cyberforensics and technology to enable prosecution of criminals; modeling and testbeds for new technologies; metrics, benchmarks and best practices; and societal and governance issues. In short, the subcommittee says
There is no silver bullet or small set of silver bullets. It is not a matter of “tweaking” in the Internet — there is no foundation of security to tweak. The existing Internet was built based on assumption of trust: it was assumed no one would harm the infrastructure, even by accident.
I think this is all excellent, and basically in agreement with the testimony CRA provided back in July. About the only thing of which I would have liked to have seen discussion is the issue of the potential (and real) chilling effect on research of laws aimed at protecting intellectual property and privacy — most notably the impediment to research posed by provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. As we noted in our testimony (by stealing excellent language from our affiliate ACM’s U.S. Public Policy Office):
[T]he anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA interfere with many legal, non-infringing uses of digital computing and prevent scientists and technologists from circumventing access technologies to recognize shortcomings in security systems, to defend patents and copyrights, to discover and fix dangerous bugs in code, to analyze and stop malicious code (e.g., viruses), and to conduct forms of desired educational activities. In some instances, the threat of legal action under the DMCA has deterred scientists from publishing scholarly work or even publicly discussing their research, both fundamental tenets of scientific discourse.
Other than that, I’m pretty happy with what I’ve seen from the report so far. (Please read through the slides to get the details on the other three issues the subcommittee identified.) If the final report contains the important discussion of the character of research supported by each of the federal agencies funding cyber security efforts and the subcommittee’s funding recommendations, it will be a strong document that should prove very useful in the computing research community’s efforts to reshape cyber security R&D policy at federal agencies (see in particular the subcommittee’s discussions about the nature and amount of research sponsored by DHS — too short-term and too little, in sum).
We’ll continue to keep an eye on the committee’s progress….
Oh, and just to get back to the article that triggered this post in the first place, I think it’s important to note that though this:
Yoran also called for more government support for basic security research. He said the initial $18 million budgeted for cybersecurity R&D in the first year of DHS was adequate as the department identified needs. But going forward, personally, I would like to see greater government support for fundamental security research, he said.
implies that DHS is spending $18 million on basic research in cyber security, this isn’t actually the case (as the subcommittee points out on slide 25). The agency currently spends just $1.5 million on research that can truly be considered basic, long-term research. The remaining $16.5 million is spent on short-term activities.
Still, it’s encouraging that Yoran at least acknowledges that the agency is lacking in its support for fundamental research. Hopefully his replacement will as well — and do something about it.
Kudos to the New York Times for noting the disconnect between Congress earmarking funds for questionable projects and, at the same time, cutting funding for the agency responsible for fueling much of the innovation that has driven our economy and improved our health and welfare.
From the article:
While cutting the budget of the [National] [S]cience [F]oundation, Congress found money for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame in Birmingham, the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville, bathhouses in Hot Springs, Ark., and hundreds of similar projects.
The science foundation helped finance research that led to Web browsers, like Internet Explorer and Netscape, and to search engines like Google. Its research has produced advances in fields from astronomy to zoology, including weather forecasting, nanotechnology, highway safety and climate change.
And the Times is right to contrast the increases with the cuts. With budget caps as tight as they are — discretionary spending increasing just 4 percent, with that increase in a select few agencies (DOD and NASA, most notably in R&D) — appropriations are truly a zero-sum game. Funding for new earmarks must come out of existing funding. In FY 2004, earmarks accounted for nearly $2 billion of the federal R&D budget. In FY 2005, it’s likely to be even higher (though I don’t yet have the numbers).
In any case, I’m pleased to see that the mainstream press is beginning to bang the drum about the dangers of underfunding fundamental research. Maybe it’ll have some positive effect on the FY 2006 budget process…(which has already begun!).
Here’s the full article.
Also here’s recentcoverageoftheNSFcuts.
Thanks to Moshe Vardi for the head’s up about this Op-Ed from Joseph S. Nye in today’s New York Times concerning the decline in foreign student enrollment in American universities, due in large part to the nightmare that is the current U.S. visa process. It jives well with the Fareed Zakaria piece I linked to yesterday. Here’s a key bit:
In an effort to exclude a dangerous few, we are keeping out the helpful many. Consular officials know that they face career-threatening punishment if they are too lax, but face little sanction if they are too strict. Add to those perverse incentives, the need to coordinate with the extensive bureaucracy of the Department of Homeland Security, and you have a perfect recipe for inertia. More resources can help speed the process, but little will happen until Congress and the Bush administration make the problem a higher priority.
Stumbled upon this interesting article from the UK’s Guardian detailing the recognition growing in the EU about the need for an agency similar to the US’ National Science Foundation as a way to help the union “radically improve its knowledge economy.” The article describes a European commission report earlier this month that noted U.S. R&D funding, currently at about $395 billion (£210 billion) total (that’s industry and federal), has been a key reason for continued US dominance in innovation and hi-tech industries.
As things stand, the 25 member states of the EU spend about £120bn a year investing in research and development. While that sounds like a lot, it pales beside the more than £210bn spent by the United States. This imbalance is one of the factors that have created a “brain drain” of scientific talent from Europe to the US, identified recently by the Royal Society as “particularly noticeable” in the standing of top-quality research teams. Generous research grants, better salaries and conditions in both the private sector and universities have sucked the best and brightest – and not just in science – across the Atlantic and put them to work in the service of the US economy. This reinforces the US’s lead in innovation and hi-tech industries, giving it a strategic and commercial edge.
…
The Kok report noted glumly that nearly three-quarters of the world’s leading IT companies were from the US, and concluded that “Europe has no option but to radically improve its knowledge economy”. To tackle this gap it recommended establishing a European research council, modelled on the National Science Foundation of the US, as an independent funding body run by scientists and academics, making grants in pure science as well as applied areas such as engineering and social sciences. Yesterday, the issue was debated by EU research ministers, as a first step towards setting up an ERC.
To many interested parties it goes without saying that Europe needs such a body, if only to rid itself of the current cumbersome EU-wide arrangements for research funding. Yet the funding gap between the US and the EU is caused by lower research spending by Europe’s business sector. There is a chicken and egg connection at work: better-targeted and more generous research funding should cause a virtuous spillover into more industrial investment.
It’s discouraging to juxtapose this European perspective of the value of the National Science Foundation and the role of fundamental research in enabling the knowledge economy with recent actions in this country that demonstrate our support for science is waning. One need not look far to see the evidence that federally-supported research has played a key role in the remarkable success of U.S. innovation. My favorite example comes from IT R&D (no surprise). It’s the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board“tire tracks” chart (here’s a larger version (pdf)), which shows 19 areas of research in IT that, with an interplay of federal and industrial support for R&D, became billion dollar markets. The recent cuts by Congress to NSF and other science agencies as part of the FY 2005 Omnibus Appropriations Bill show a disturbing lack of understanding and support of that crucial federal role.
And, if that weren’t bad enough, we’re doing our best to stem the “brain drain” the Europeans show such great concern about by enacting visa policies that do a fair job of keeping the world’s best and brightest away from our shores. Newsweek’s Fareed Zakaria has an interesting piece this week on just that subject: “Rejecting the Next Bill Gates”.
In order to stay competitive we need to remember what made us competitive, and I fear we’re losing sight of that. Clearly, our competitors aren’t.
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Could An Appropriations Reorganization Help U.S. Science?
/In: Funding, Policy /by Peter HarshaAs the FY 05 appropriations process demonstrated, the current organization of congressional appropriations subcommittees (and thus, appropriations bills) is a mess that puts science agencies at a disadvantage in the competition for federal dollars. The current structure is a mish-mash of jurisdictions that forces agencies that have little or nothing to do with each other to compete for the limited funds within each bill — one bill pits the National Science Foundation and NASA against the Veteran’s Administration and federal housing programs, for example, and in another, it’s NIST and NOAA against the State Department. More often than not, in that competition the science agencies get the short end of the stick.
But there’s an interesting proposal floating around DC to recast the appropriations panels to make their jurisdictions more sensible. Normally, a proposal to realign something as significant as the 13 appropriations committees would be dead on arrival — especially a proposal like this one, which would reduce the number of subcommittees, and therefore subcommittee chairmen (called “cardinals” in deference to their power), from 13 to 10. But this one is being floated by the most powerful man in the House (and probably Congress), House Majority Leader Tom Delay (R-TX), and has the backing of the House GOP leadership.
Delay’s motive in proposing the reorganization is apparently to realign the committees to represent GOP and Democratic themes, according to CQ’s (sub. req’d) Andrew Taylor. So, there’d be a “Regulatory Agencies” subcommittee that would include agencies like OSHA, another that would combine all of the funding for Congress, the White House, and the Judicial branch, and another for traditionally Democratic priorities like public housing. In the few news reports I’ve seen on the proposal, there hasn’t been any mention of a subcommittee combining all the non-defense agencies for science. But a subcommittee comprised of the civilian science agencies seems like a logical part of any reorganization — and indeed, the rumors circulating around town suggest it is.
I haven’t seen the proposal, but I think it would be reasonable to assume that a “Science” subcommittee would have to include appropriations for NIH, NSF, DOE Science, NASA, NIST, and NOAA — basically all the major non-defense agencies involved in research. Obviously, a reorganization of that magnitude would change the dynamics of the appropriations process for science. I’ve been doing some thinking about whether it would be a positive or negative change. I’m coming to the conclusion that it would probably be positive overall…but I’m open to feedback from a different perspective. (Some of this may seem “inside baseball,” but I think it’s important.)
I think the first change is that the annual 302(b) budget allocation — the divvying up of the funds authorized by the annual Congressional Budget Resolution (CBR) into spending limits for each appropriations bill — would become much more meaningful for the scientific community. In the current system, we advocate for science in the CBR, but it’s a little disconnected from the 302(b) process. We advocate for the highest possible “Function 250” line — the “General Science, Space and Technology” line in the CBR — but that doesn’t obviously translate into increased funding for any of the appropriations bills we care about because that function is an aggregate that gets split among a whole bunch of different appropriations bills. We could advocate for the highest possible 302(b) allocation for specific approps bills, like the VA-HUD-Independent Agencies appropriation, which includes NSF and NASA funding, but there’s no guarantee that any of that increased funding will go towards the science agencies in that bill.
With an Appropriations Subcommittee for Science there would be a corresponding 302(b) allocation for “Science.” If we’re looking to draw a bright line for science in the budget process, that’s about as bright as it gets. There would be no doubt whether Congress was supportive of science in any particular year — a look at the 302(b) allocation would tell you.
Drafting the Science Appropriations Bill each year would also be an interesting exercise. With essentially all of the civilian research agencies represented under one subcommittee’s jurisdiction, there would be few hurdles to overcome to address issues of balance in the federal research portfolio, for example. Federal gov’t focused too heavily on the life sciences? The committee would have the authority to reprogram money from NIH to NSF or DOE Science. Too much applied research and not enough basic? Reprogram NIST ATP money to NSF. Can’t do that under the current arrangement. There may also be efficiencies that result from having everything in one place. Coordinating research activities across research agencies may be easier when agencies can’t hide behind the stovepipes of different appropriations committees.
Of course, the appropriators could just as easily reverse the situation under this scenario — reprogram NSF funds to NIST ATP to bolster applied research, NSF to NIH to bolster life sciences. But it seems to me that, in general, we’d be well-positioned in those debates. Under the current committee structure, those debates are essentially impossible.
So, I think it’d be a net positive for us and for science generally. But I’m open to arguments in opposition.
Assuming this reorganization is a good idea, the next question is what we in the science community can do to help it go forward. Politically, the odds are against reorganization, even with Delay and the House GOP Leadership strongly in favor. If it were up to the House alone, it would probably be a done deal. Delay has ensured himself significant political capital by delivering an increased majority to the GOP in the House via his almost single-handed redistricting push in Texas. In addition, there will be a new Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee in the 109th Congress, and the House leadership will play the primary role in deciding who that will be (it’s looking like Ralph Regula (R-OH)), so they’ll have considerable leverage in guaranteeing support for their proposal.
The real hurdle is the Senate. As a practical matter, any reorganization of the House Approps Committee will have to be mirrored in the Senate Approps Committee — otherwise, conferencing the various appropriations bills will be chaos. The Senate will also have a new Appropriations Chair, Thad Cochran (R-MS), who has expressed opposition to the proposal. (In particular, he doesn’t like the idea that it would eliminate the Agriculture Subcommittee, which he chaired). The opposition might not be unanimous across the Senate — CQ says the Senate leadership apparently isn’t “dismissive” of the idea — but it’s a long shot. I think if the science community does decide to weigh in in support of the proposal, focusing our efforts on the Senate — Cochran in particular — would be the best approach.
But even if the proposal doesn’t have a great chance of going forward, I think it’s beneficial for Congress to have the reorganization debate…especially if an element of that debate is the potential benefit to U.S. science a reorganization might bring.
More Science Agency Shakeups
/In: People /by Peter HarshaAccording to this report at Space.com, NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe will step down this week and may take a position at Lousiana State University. Apparently the former head of DOD’s anti-ballistic missile shield program, Air Force Lt. Gen. Ronald Kadish, is the leading candidate to replace him, though the others mentioned as possibilities are interesting:
Here’s a snippet from the space.com article:
President Nominates New Energy Secretary
/In: People /by Peter HarshaHis name is Sam Bodman, formerly Deputy Secretary of Commerce and a former Associate Professor in chemical engineering at MIT. That’s about all I know about him at the moment. If confirmed, he’ll replace current Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham.
The President’s announcement is here.
Abraham’s press release is here.
And Sherry Boehlert, Chair of the House Science Committee, has a release, too.
Rumors About First NIST FY 06 Numbers
/In: Funding /by Peter HarshaThe first “passbacks” from the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) have apparently begun to leak and rumors are circulating that NIST is once again in for lean times. (Passbacks are OMB’s response to each agency’s budget request for the coming fiscal year — they are OMB’s verdict on what will and won’t get included in the President’s budget request to the Congress in February.)
The Administration apparently supports an increase to NIST Labs, approving a passback budget request of $489 million for FY 06 for intramural research — which would be $38 million more than the FY 05 enacted level — but only about $7 million more than the President’s FY 05 request. More problematically, the current rumor suggests OMB zeroed funding for two controversial (yet somewhat popular) NIST programs: the Advanced Technology Program (ATP), funded for FY 05 at $137 million; and the Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP), funded for FY 05 at $108 million.
Additionally, it sounds as if the administration has decided to eliminate the Commerce Department’s Technology Administration and incorporate it’s functions under NIST. The FY 05 final budget for TA was $7 million.
If the numbers above are accurate, it would suggest that NIST Labs could once again be squeezed come appropriations time, as congressional appropriators scramble to find funding for ATP and MEP (and maybe TA) in the final bill. Though NIST Labs fared reasonably well in the FY 2005 appropriation given the cuts suffered by other agencies (they received a 12.8% increase), they still haven’t fully overcome the significant cuts they suffered as a result of the FY 2004 appropriation. Those cuts resulted in layoffs of some lab personnel and stopped research.
It will take some serious effort by the community to ensure that NIST doesn’t face the same situation once again. We’ll have more details as they emerge.
The Most Powerful Man in Congress?
/In: Funding /by Peter HarshaThe Washington Post has an interesting article about House Majority Leader Tom Delay’s (R-TX) successful efforts to singlehandedly secure a large increase for the President’s Moon/Mars Space Initiative in the FY 2005 Omnibus Appropriations bill. In a bill that included some significant cuts to science, most notably a cut of $105 million to the National Science Foundation, Delay, who counts among his constituents a large number of NASA’s Johnson Space Center employees, was able to use his clout to ensure NASA got the extra $800 million the President requested.
As the increase arguably came at the expense of NSF, let’s hope the House and Senate hold at least one hearing in the 109th Congress on whether the benefit of this significant re-prioritization exceeds the costs to the Nation incurred by cutting fundamental research support.
Tom Friedman on NSF Funding
/In: Funding /by AndyBernatThomas Friedman’s editorial in the New York Times today hits Congress hard for approving a cut to the National Science Foundation in the Omnibus Appropriations bill. A sample:
Read the whole thing here.
Update: The San Jose Mercury News agrees.
Catching Up: Update on PITAC Cyber Security Efforts
/In: Policy, Research, Security /by Peter HarshaThis article I spotted today in Government Computer News on former Director of DHS’ National Cybersecurity Division Amit Yoran’s thoughts about DHS’ niche in federal cybersecurity efforts reminded me that I hadn’t provided an update on what I thought was a very interesting meeting of PITAC’s Subcommittee on Cybersecurity R&D a week ago last Friday.
The Subcommittee is in the process of evaluating the federal government’s efforts in supporting cybersecurity research and development — trying to figure out how well the government is targeting the right research areas, whether there’s good balance between short-term and long-term research, whether we’re doing all we can to improve technology transfer, and whether we’re well prepared for the security challenges of the future. The goal is to produce a final report the full PITAC can approve at its March 2005 meeting. So far the subcommittee has produced a first draft, which is what was presented by Subcommittee Chair F. Thomson Leighton at the Nov 19th meeting.
And that first draft is very good. It’s clear the committee has taken to heart much of the testimony it has received, including testimony CRA submitted to the committee last July. Leighton’s slide presentation (pdf) does a good job of laying out the details, but I thought I’d summarize them a bit here.
The committee has identified four main issues: 1) Problems with civilian cyber security research; 2) Problems with the size of the cyber security basic research community; 3) Tech transfer issues; and 4) The coordination of cyber security R&D. They seem to have devoted quite a bit of attention to the first issue, and the points that they raise are all right on the money (and concerns CRA shares), namely:
I think this is all excellent, and basically in agreement with the testimony CRA provided back in July. About the only thing of which I would have liked to have seen discussion is the issue of the potential (and real) chilling effect on research of laws aimed at protecting intellectual property and privacy — most notably the impediment to research posed by provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. As we noted in our testimony (by stealing excellent language from our affiliate ACM’s U.S. Public Policy Office):
Other than that, I’m pretty happy with what I’ve seen from the report so far. (Please read through the slides to get the details on the other three issues the subcommittee identified.) If the final report contains the important discussion of the character of research supported by each of the federal agencies funding cyber security efforts and the subcommittee’s funding recommendations, it will be a strong document that should prove very useful in the computing research community’s efforts to reshape cyber security R&D policy at federal agencies (see in particular the subcommittee’s discussions about the nature and amount of research sponsored by DHS — too short-term and too little, in sum).
We’ll continue to keep an eye on the committee’s progress….
Oh, and just to get back to the article that triggered this post in the first place, I think it’s important to note that though this:
implies that DHS is spending $18 million on basic research in cyber security, this isn’t actually the case (as the subcommittee points out on slide 25). The agency currently spends just $1.5 million on research that can truly be considered basic, long-term research. The remaining $16.5 million is spent on short-term activities.
Still, it’s encouraging that Yoran at least acknowledges that the agency is lacking in its support for fundamental research. Hopefully his replacement will as well — and do something about it.
More NY Times: NSF Appropriations Cut
/In: Funding /by Peter HarshaKudos to the New York Times for noting the disconnect between Congress earmarking funds for questionable projects and, at the same time, cutting funding for the agency responsible for fueling much of the innovation that has driven our economy and improved our health and welfare.
From the article:
And the Times is right to contrast the increases with the cuts. With budget caps as tight as they are — discretionary spending increasing just 4 percent, with that increase in a select few agencies (DOD and NASA, most notably in R&D) — appropriations are truly a zero-sum game. Funding for new earmarks must come out of existing funding. In FY 2004, earmarks accounted for nearly $2 billion of the federal R&D budget. In FY 2005, it’s likely to be even higher (though I don’t yet have the numbers).
In any case, I’m pleased to see that the mainstream press is beginning to bang the drum about the dangers of underfunding fundamental research. Maybe it’ll have some positive effect on the FY 2006 budget process…(which has already begun!).
Here’s the full article.
Also here’s recent coverage of the NSF cuts.
NY Times OpEd on Foreign Students
/In: Policy /by Peter HarshaThanks to Moshe Vardi for the head’s up about this Op-Ed from Joseph S. Nye in today’s New York Times concerning the decline in foreign student enrollment in American universities, due in large part to the nightmare that is the current U.S. visa process. It jives well with the Fareed Zakaria piece I linked to yesterday. Here’s a key bit:
Read the whole thing here.
Are We Taking NSF for Granted? (no pun…)
/In: Policy /by Peter HarshaStumbled upon this interesting article from the UK’s Guardian detailing the recognition growing in the EU about the need for an agency similar to the US’ National Science Foundation as a way to help the union “radically improve its knowledge economy.” The article describes a European commission report earlier this month that noted U.S. R&D funding, currently at about $395 billion (£210 billion) total (that’s industry and federal), has been a key reason for continued US dominance in innovation and hi-tech industries.
It’s discouraging to juxtapose this European perspective of the value of the National Science Foundation and the role of fundamental research in enabling the knowledge economy with recent actions in this country that demonstrate our support for science is waning. One need not look far to see the evidence that federally-supported research has played a key role in the remarkable success of U.S. innovation. My favorite example comes from IT R&D (no surprise). It’s the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board “tire tracks” chart (here’s a larger version (pdf)), which shows 19 areas of research in IT that, with an interplay of federal and industrial support for R&D, became billion dollar markets. The recent cuts by Congress to NSF and other science agencies as part of the FY 2005 Omnibus Appropriations Bill show a disturbing lack of understanding and support of that crucial federal role.
And, if that weren’t bad enough, we’re doing our best to stem the “brain drain” the Europeans show such great concern about by enacting visa policies that do a fair job of keeping the world’s best and brightest away from our shores. Newsweek’s Fareed Zakaria has an interesting piece this week on just that subject: “Rejecting the Next Bill Gates”.
In order to stay competitive we need to remember what made us competitive, and I fear we’re losing sight of that. Clearly, our competitors aren’t.