Wiredcovers remarks by DeForest B. Soaries Jr., chairman of the newly formed federal Election Assistance Commission, praising computer scientists for calling attention to security problems with e-voting machines and for helping develop new standards for building machines that might be more secure in the future.
CRA’s affiliate organization the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) has been very successful through it’s U.S. Public Policy Committee (USACM) in making its membership aware of the controversy surrounding e-voting. They’ve got a good page detailing the issue and their activities, with good links to other resources.
CNet has this story on new employment figures released by the Department of Labor that shows a drop in the rate of unemployment for “computer and mathematical occupations” and “electrical and electronic engineers.” But the change might not be because of the most favorable reasons:
The unemployment rate for computer and mathematical occupations–a category that includes computer programmers, computer software engineers and computer scientists and systems analysts–fell from 5.7 percent in the first half of 2003 to 5 percent in the first half of this year, according to the Labor Department. Unemployment dropped even more dramatically for electrical and electronic engineers–from 6.7 percent in the first half of 2003 to 3.1 percent in the first half of 2004.
But unemployment levels alone don’t tell the whole story for workers still recovering from the dot-com bust. For example, the average number of people employed in computer and math jobs dropped by 72,000 from the first half of 2003 to the first half of this year, to 3,038,000. A similar trend occurred among electrical and electronic engineers over the same period. Their average employment fell by 39,000, to 339,000.
In other words, if employment and the jobless rate are both dropping, it may not mean better times in these tech-related fields. It may just mean that unemployed tech workers are giving up fruitless job searches.
It’s again worth pointing out the Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statisticscontinues to project growth in IT fields through 2012 will outstrip all other science and engineering occupations.
An update to a story we mentioned way back in January, the Army’s inspector general found that an Army data-mining project using data offered by JetBlue and a private data broker didn’t violate federal privacy rules. This may say more about the need to update federal privacy rules than it does about the privacy implications of the project. Wired News has the story.
The White House Office of Management and Budget — the gatekeepers of agency budgets in the executive branch — and OSTP have issued guidance to federal science agencies (pdf, 360kb) directing them to make high end computing and cyberinfrastructure investments a priority in their FY 2006 budget requests, even at the expense of “lower-priority” research within the federal Networking and Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD) initiative.
While the Administration’s focus on high-end computing and cyberinfrastructure research is welcome news, the thought that they may ask agencies to cannibalize other research within the NITRD program is very worrisome.
Here’s the relevant language from the memo:
The Networking and Information Technology R&D (NITRD) program is a high Administration priority. While the importance of each of the NITRD program areas continues, high-end computing (supercomputing) and cyberinfrastructure R&D should be given higher relative priority due to the potential of each in furthering progress across a broad range of scientific and technological application areas. The recent report of the High-End Computing Revitalization Task Force (HECRTF) describes a coordinated R&D plan for core high-end computing technology, as well as multi-agency approaches for addressing high-end computing capability, capacity, and accessibility issues. Agency plans in high-end computing should be consistent with the HECRTF plan, emphasize coordination, leverage the efforts of all agencies and, where appropriate, provide explicit benefit to multiple agencies through coordinated multi-agency investments. Cyberinfrastructure R&D encompasses research on hardware and software tools that is aimed at strengthening the connections between new and existing computers (including supercomputers), databases, scientific instruments, researchers and facilities. By providing secure, reliable, distributed computing environments and tools that allow the science and engineering communities to produce, collect, store, communicate, analyze and quickly share huge amounts of information, improvements in cyberinfrastructure will accelerated discovery. Agency requests should reflect these two program priorities by reallocating funds from lower priority efforts.
Federal Computer Week has a story on the memo and what it means for NITRD. The story quotes NITRD’s David Nelson as saying other research areas under NITRD may “receive lessened funding” as a result of the guidance.
Funding cuts are not a certainty, Nelson said. Although his office’s components compete for money to some extent, “it isn’t necessarily a zero-sum game within the NITRD program,” he said. “There’s no hard and fast rule that it can’t exceed the 2005 budget.”
Offsets for new fiscal year 2006 priorities could be found from other areas of research, Nelson said. Still, with federal deficits mounting, “higher-priority things will probably come at the expense of lower-priority things,” he added.
Though Congress stillhasn’tsettled the FY 2005 budget, this is our first peek at how the FY 2006 budget will play out for R&D. This priority-setting will likely have a significant impact on the discipline in the years to come, so it’s crucially important that the computing community work with the agencies and the administration to ensure the right balances are struck.
News.com has the story on a new report by NSF’sScience Resources Statistics group that shows more than one-fifth of U.S. science and engineering workers do not have a bachelor’s degree.
The percentage without degrees is even higher in computer and math science fields, with approximately 40 percent of workers without a four-year degree.
I haven’t thought too deeply about what it means, but here’s an idea to chew on. There’s an interesting juxtaposition between the relatively high percent of non-degreed comp sci and mathematics workers (40 percent) vs. a much lower percentage in the life sciences (10 percent). To me, this suggests two things. One, that there are plenty of opportunities in computer science and mathematics fields for workers without four-year degrees, and two, that the life sciences may be dealing with a surplus of degreed workers. If the percentage of degreed workers is so much higher in the life sciences, it implies that a higher percentage of lower-tier jobs (entry level and slightly above) are going to degreed workers as well.
What would be interesting to see is the salary data for those positions and how they compare to the lower-tier jobs on the IT side. Does an associate-degreed worker with a certification in an IT field earn about the same as a degreed med-tech? My guess would be that the IT worker makes at least as much, but I don’t have that data handy. Let me see if I can dig them up.
At the same time, it’s also worth noting that no other S&E field is projected to grow as much or as fast as IT-related fields over the next 8 years (2002-12). And most of those new jobs, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics will require a Bachelor’s degree or better.
Apologies for the slow pace of updates recently. Things are a bit slow around DC this time of year. Congress is in recess for the month of August so that the Members can head home to their respective districts for primaries and lots of campaigning. They’ll be back September 7th, hoping to “wrap up” work in October so they can get back to their districts for those last hectic weeks of campaigning before the November 2nd elections. Chances are, however, that they won’t accomplish their primary legislative goal — passing the 12 (of 13 total) appropriations bills still outstanding before the start of the new fiscal year October 1st. In fact, it’s likely that they’ll be back in town after the election in “lame duck” session to wrap things up. And, if I was a betting man, I’d wager that they still won’t get the appropriations bills done and will punt to the next Congress in January.
The delay was preordained once Congress failed to pass a joint Budget Resolution earlier this year. Not having a Congressionally approved budget resolution to set the spending caps for the appropriators means that any appropriations bill coming to the floor of either chamber could get “larded up” with amendments for favorite causes and the congressional leadership will be unable to oppose them using a “budget process” argument. Each amendment would force lawmakers to take a stand and vote up or down on some program — not the sort of thing the leadership wants to have happen in a tough election year. So, the easiest solution for the leadership (on both sides of the aisle) is just avoid the issue altogether — bundle the bills together into one giant “omnibus bill” and save it for a time when the costs are lower.
That noted, the House Appropriations Committee has already moved far enough along on one bill especially important to our community to generate concern. As we’ve coveredpreviously, the VA-HUD-Independent Agencies appropriations bill approved by the committee just prior to the recess includes some significant cuts to NSF and NASA. Under the bill, NSF would lose $111 million in current funding in FY 2005, a decrease of 2.0 percent. This is a far cry from the 15 percent increase for FY 2005 authorized by Congress and approved by the President as part of the NSF Authorization Act of 2002.
In response, members of CRA’s Computing Research Advocacy Network (CRAN) have been contacting their Representatives and Senators urging them to reject the cuts and instead fund NSF at the level approved in the NSF Authorization Act. If you’re already a CRAN member, you should have already received the “CRAN Alert” with all the information, background, sample letters and contact information to help make the case for NSF. Even if you’re not a CRAN member, I’d urge you to use the information to contact your own Senators and Representative, and join the network!
I’ll be providing further details on our efforts and the bill’s progress as it moves forward. But please take the time to contact your representatives in Congress. A strong show of support from the community is crucial in our efforts to reverse these cuts….
That sense of isolation and inadequacy is one reason the number of women earning computer science degrees in this country has plummeted over the past two decades–with women dropping from 37 percent to 28 percent of graduates–at the very moment their presence in other scientific and engineering disciplines has soared. “You look at the national statistics,” says Rick Rashid, senior vice president of research at Microsoft, “and you just have to be appalled.”
Until recently, many in the high-tech industry shrugged off that female brain drain. They could fill top information-technology slots from abroad or American doctoral programs, where foreign nationals still snag half the Ph.D.’s. But suddenly homeland security issues and visa hurdles have clogged that foreign pipeline. And countries like India are luring their U.S.-educated citizens back home to their own burgeoning Silicon Valleys.
Faced with forecasts of a looming brainpower shortage–and the retirement of those baby boomers who are the industry’s pioneers–many leading U.S. players fear the country could lose its competitive edge. “Over the next seven years, our hiring needs are going to be huge,” says Wayne Johnson, executive director of HP’s university relations worldwide. “If you don’t have half the U.S. population participating, you have a tremendous gap in filling these needs. What we’re doing here is creating a disadvantage for ourselves as a nation.”
ZDNet covers the drop in tech-related doctoral degrees in an article today that quotes CRA Board Chair Jim Foley. The article cites some reasons for the current downturn in doctoral degrees, including declining interest in the sciences among Americans, a temporary shift in the labor markets, and financial disincentives to pursue science and engineering doctorates. It also quotes folks like Foley, Intel’s Craig Barrett, and Wayne Johnson of HP Labs, noting the importance of the doctoral degree to American innovation.
The article also quotes Ron Hira, now a professor of public policy at the Rochester Institute of Technology, as casting some doubt on the seriousness of the problem:
[Hira] suspects anxiety over science and engineering doctorates is a diversion from the offshoring trend of shifting work overseas. “There’s a perception we’re in a competitive crisis,” he said. “The competitive and innovation (argument) has been introduced by companies that want to take offshore outsourcing off the table.”
I’m not sure that’s the case. While it may be true that the general concern about S&E degrees might be overstated, that is not the case with IT-related degrees. Projections from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that over the next 10 years, no science occupation, and indeed, no other “professional and related” occupation will grow as fast (and few occupations will add as many new workers) as IT-related occupations. Here’s a chart produced by John Sargent, a senior policy advisor at the Department of Commerce, that illustrates the point:
Even factoring the trend towards outsourcing into their models, BLS still projects the U.S. will add 1.6 million new jobs in IT-related fields — the vast majority of these requiring a bachelor’s degree or higher. Degree production is well short of that pace….
[A full set of Sargent’s slides on the US S&E Workforce and Offshoring is available here.]
Gates touts computer science
By Todd Bishop
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
Does the U.S. computer-science industry need a Sputnik moment?
It wouldn’t hurt, Bill Gates said yesterday, answering a question from a university researcher about declining computer-science enrollment and concerns over funding for science and math programs. The Microsoft Corp. chairman said it might take a big technological advance somewhere else in the world to direct the attention of the nation’s leaders to the issue in the same way that the Soviet Union’s 1957 Sputnik launch accelerated development of the U.S. space program.
“It’s not like when you see presidential debates you hear them talk about the number of engineering degrees being received in the United States,” Gates said. He cited the possible need for a “crisis moment” that brings attention to the issue.
“You shouldn’t discount the value of a good alien invasion,” quipped Rick Rashid, the senior vice president in charge of Microsoft Research. Often that’s the way it works in science-fiction novels, Rashid explained.
The Washington Post’s Rob Pegoraro has an interesting article on the sorry state of affairs we’ve now reached as a result of the Federal government’s “broadcast flag” requirement. Tivo would like to add a new feature to their digital video recorders, but faces a strenuous objection from the National Football League, which fears for its, uh, stadium business. Here’s a few choice bits…but go read the whole thing:
TiVo vs. the Broadcast Flag Wavers
By Rob Pegoraro
The Washington Post
Sunday, August 1, 2004; Page F06
TiVo, the company that makes the digital-video-recorder boxes that inspire such strange idolatry among their users, is in a weird spot. It’s asking the Federal Communications Commission for permission to add a new feature — the option for a TiVo user to send recorded digital TV programs via the Internet to nine other people.
Huh? Permission? Doesn’t the government’s involvement in consumer electronics stop with making sure that a gadget doesn’t jam your neighbor’s reception or electrocute you? Since when do the feds get to vote on product designs?
The answer is, since last November, when the FCC voted to require manufacturers to support the “broadcast flag” system by July 1 of next year. This convoluted mechanism aims to stop full-quality copies of digital broadcasts from circulating on the Internet.
And the real crux of the issue:
The MPAA and the NFL phrase their objections as reasonable attempts to err on the side of caution. “We’re asking them to just wait awhile, let’s think it out more thoroughly,” Attaway said.
But if a programmer or an engineer with a bright idea has to go to Washington, hat in hand and lawyers in tow, to request permission to sell a better product — and is then told “just wait awhile” — we are on our way to suffocating innovation in this country.
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Elections Chairman Thanks Computer Scientists for Work Raising E-voting Concerns
/In: Policy /by Peter HarshaWired covers remarks by DeForest B. Soaries Jr., chairman of the newly formed federal Election Assistance Commission, praising computer scientists for calling attention to security problems with e-voting machines and for helping develop new standards for building machines that might be more secure in the future.
CRA’s affiliate organization the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) has been very successful through it’s U.S. Public Policy Committee (USACM) in making its membership aware of the controversy surrounding e-voting. They’ve got a good page detailing the issue and their activities, with good links to other resources.
Tech Employment Numbers Improve?
/In: People /by Peter HarshaCNet has this story on new employment figures released by the Department of Labor that shows a drop in the rate of unemployment for “computer and mathematical occupations” and “electrical and electronic engineers.” But the change might not be because of the most favorable reasons:
It’s again worth pointing out the Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics continues to project growth in IT fields through 2012 will outstrip all other science and engineering occupations.
JetBlue Disclosure Didn’t Violate Federal Law
/In: Policy /by Peter HarshaAn update to a story we mentioned way back in January, the Army’s inspector general found that an Army data-mining project using data offered by JetBlue and a private data broker didn’t violate federal privacy rules. This may say more about the need to update federal privacy rules than it does about the privacy implications of the project.
Wired News has the story.
OMB Guidance to Agencies: High End Computing, Cyberinfrastructure are Priorities
/In: Funding /by Peter HarshaThe White House Office of Management and Budget — the gatekeepers of agency budgets in the executive branch — and OSTP have issued guidance to federal science agencies (pdf, 360kb) directing them to make high end computing and cyberinfrastructure investments a priority in their FY 2006 budget requests, even at the expense of “lower-priority” research within the federal Networking and Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD) initiative.
While the Administration’s focus on high-end computing and cyberinfrastructure research is welcome news, the thought that they may ask agencies to cannibalize other research within the NITRD program is very worrisome.
Here’s the relevant language from the memo:
Federal Computer Week has a story on the memo and what it means for NITRD. The story quotes NITRD’s David Nelson as saying other research areas under NITRD may “receive lessened funding” as a result of the guidance.
Though Congress still hasn’t settled the FY 2005 budget, this is our first peek at how the FY 2006 budget will play out for R&D. This priority-setting will likely have a significant impact on the discipline in the years to come, so it’s crucially important that the computing community work with the agencies and the administration to ensure the right balances are struck.
Forty Percent of Comp Sci and Math Workers Lack 4-year Degrees, Reports NSF
/In: People /by Peter HarshaNews.com has the story on a new report by NSF’s Science Resources Statistics group that shows more than one-fifth of U.S. science and engineering workers do not have a bachelor’s degree.
The percentage without degrees is even higher in computer and math science fields, with approximately 40 percent of workers without a four-year degree.
I haven’t thought too deeply about what it means, but here’s an idea to chew on. There’s an interesting juxtaposition between the relatively high percent of non-degreed comp sci and mathematics workers (40 percent) vs. a much lower percentage in the life sciences (10 percent). To me, this suggests two things. One, that there are plenty of opportunities in computer science and mathematics fields for workers without four-year degrees, and two, that the life sciences may be dealing with a surplus of degreed workers. If the percentage of degreed workers is so much higher in the life sciences, it implies that a higher percentage of lower-tier jobs (entry level and slightly above) are going to degreed workers as well.
What would be interesting to see is the salary data for those positions and how they compare to the lower-tier jobs on the IT side. Does an associate-degreed worker with a certification in an IT field earn about the same as a degreed med-tech? My guess would be that the IT worker makes at least as much, but I don’t have that data handy. Let me see if I can dig them up.
At the same time, it’s also worth noting that no other S&E field is projected to grow as much or as fast as IT-related fields over the next 8 years (2002-12). And most of those new jobs, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics will require a Bachelor’s degree or better.
NSF Funding: Get Involved!
/In: Funding /by Peter HarshaApologies for the slow pace of updates recently. Things are a bit slow around DC this time of year. Congress is in recess for the month of August so that the Members can head home to their respective districts for primaries and lots of campaigning. They’ll be back September 7th, hoping to “wrap up” work in October so they can get back to their districts for those last hectic weeks of campaigning before the November 2nd elections. Chances are, however, that they won’t accomplish their primary legislative goal — passing the 12 (of 13 total) appropriations bills still outstanding before the start of the new fiscal year October 1st. In fact, it’s likely that they’ll be back in town after the election in “lame duck” session to wrap things up. And, if I was a betting man, I’d wager that they still won’t get the appropriations bills done and will punt to the next Congress in January.
The delay was preordained once Congress failed to pass a joint Budget Resolution earlier this year. Not having a Congressionally approved budget resolution to set the spending caps for the appropriators means that any appropriations bill coming to the floor of either chamber could get “larded up” with amendments for favorite causes and the congressional leadership will be unable to oppose them using a “budget process” argument. Each amendment would force lawmakers to take a stand and vote up or down on some program — not the sort of thing the leadership wants to have happen in a tough election year. So, the easiest solution for the leadership (on both sides of the aisle) is just avoid the issue altogether — bundle the bills together into one giant “omnibus bill” and save it for a time when the costs are lower.
That noted, the House Appropriations Committee has already moved far enough along on one bill especially important to our community to generate concern. As we’ve covered previously, the VA-HUD-Independent Agencies appropriations bill approved by the committee just prior to the recess includes some significant cuts to NSF and NASA. Under the bill, NSF would lose $111 million in current funding in FY 2005, a decrease of 2.0 percent. This is a far cry from the 15 percent increase for FY 2005 authorized by Congress and approved by the President as part of the NSF Authorization Act of 2002.
In response, members of CRA’s Computing Research Advocacy Network (CRAN) have been contacting their Representatives and Senators urging them to reject the cuts and instead fund NSF at the level approved in the NSF Authorization Act. If you’re already a CRAN member, you should have already received the “CRAN Alert” with all the information, background, sample letters and contact information to help make the case for NSF. Even if you’re not a CRAN member, I’d urge you to use the information to contact your own Senators and Representative, and join the network!
I’ll be providing further details on our efforts and the bill’s progress as it moves forward. But please take the time to contact your representatives in Congress. A strong show of support from the community is crucial in our efforts to reverse these cuts….
Tech Firms Want More Female Computer Whizzes
/In: Policy /by Peter HarshaGreat article in US News and World Report on the “corporate wake up call” regarding the participation of women in computer science. CRA’s Jan Cuny (and CRA’s Committee on the Status of Women in Computing Research (CRA-W)) gets a nice mention. Here’s a sample:
Read the whole article here.
Brain Drain in Tech’s Future?
/In: CRA, People /by Peter HarshaZDNet covers the drop in tech-related doctoral degrees in an article today that quotes CRA Board Chair Jim Foley. The article cites some reasons for the current downturn in doctoral degrees, including declining interest in the sciences among Americans, a temporary shift in the labor markets, and financial disincentives to pursue science and engineering doctorates. It also quotes folks like Foley, Intel’s Craig Barrett, and Wayne Johnson of HP Labs, noting the importance of the doctoral degree to American innovation.
The article also quotes Ron Hira, now a professor of public policy at the Rochester Institute of Technology, as casting some doubt on the seriousness of the problem:
I’m not sure that’s the case. While it may be true that the general concern about S&E degrees might be overstated, that is not the case with IT-related degrees. Projections from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that over the next 10 years, no science occupation, and indeed, no other “professional and related” occupation will grow as fast (and few occupations will add as many new workers) as IT-related occupations. Here’s a chart produced by John Sargent, a senior policy advisor at the Department of Commerce, that illustrates the point:
Even factoring the trend towards outsourcing into their models, BLS still projects the U.S. will add 1.6 million new jobs in IT-related fields — the vast majority of these requiring a bachelor’s degree or higher. Degree production is well short of that pace….
[A full set of Sargent’s slides on the US S&E Workforce and Offshoring is available here.]
Does Computer Science Need a Sputnik Moment?
/In: People /by Peter HarshaInteresting article from the Seattle Post Intelligencer today on discussions at CRA member Microsoft Research’s Faculty Summit about declining computer science enrollments.
Here’s a bit:
Read it all.
Update: C|Net has more.
Permission to Innovate
/In: Policy /by Peter HarshaThe Washington Post’s Rob Pegoraro has an interesting article on the sorry state of affairs we’ve now reached as a result of the Federal government’s “broadcast flag” requirement. Tivo would like to add a new feature to their digital video recorders, but faces a strenuous objection from the National Football League, which fears for its, uh, stadium business. Here’s a few choice bits…but go read the whole thing:
And the real crux of the issue: