Category Archives: Innovation

Nominations for the National Medal of Technology and Innovation are due Monday, April 1, 2013. The award is the nation’s highest honor for technological achievement for American scientists, engineers, and innovators. It is bestowed by the U.S President. Nominations may be submitted to honor an individual, a group of up to four individuals, a company, [...]

The major political debates last week focused on the so-called ‘fiscal cliff.’ The cliff included a series of tax increases and spending cuts (the cuts are sometimes referred to as ‘sequestration’) that were set to happen last Tuesday, January 2. A last-minute deal didn’t resolve the situation entirely. Tax revenues were the main focus of [...]

On Tuesday President Obama signed into law the reauthorization of the America COMPETES Act. The bill continues (among other things) the increasing funding trend for the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the National Science Foundation, and the Office of Science at the Department of Energy started with the American Competitiveness Initiative introduced by President [...]

The President’s Innovation and Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC) is seeking public input on infrastructures that are critical to innovation in information technology, biotechnology, and nanotechnology. PITAC, part of the President’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology (PCAST), is currently seeking input on that issue through OpenPCAST, an online portal. The official question: What are [...]

Last Wednesday at the end of a long markup session, the House Science and Technology Committee approved a bill that would reauthorize the American COMPETES Act, passed in 2007. That bill covered many things, most prominently budget authorizations that would – if followed – double the budgets of the National Science Foundation, the National Institute [...]

Yesterday a federal appeals court ruled in a case involving the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) efforts to sanction Comcast for violating the FCC’s net neutrality rules. The court decided in favor of Comcast. While the ruling did not speak to the FCC’s recently announced national broadband plan, it did rule that the Commission lacked the [...]

Earlier this month the Administration released its budget request for the 2011 Fiscal Year, which will start October 1 (whether or not Congress finishes the budget by then). While the President promised a freeze on non-defense discretionary spending, he did not promise it would be an across-the-board freeze. So initial concerns that science budgets would [...]

Peter Harsha at the Computing Research Association has the specifics at the CRA Government Affairs Blog. In the current conference agreement most of the science agencies are receiving increases over the previous fiscal year (not counting money from the economic stimulus package). Both the National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Standards and Technology [...]

Earlier this week Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski announced his intention to establish an expanded definition of net neutrality to “safeguard the free and open Internet.” Starting next month the Commission will start a rule-making process to codify the four net neutrality principles that currently guide its decisions on this issue, and add two [...]

On Monday, President Obama spoke before the National Academies during the National Academy of Sciences’ Annual meeting. Both audio and video of the address are available from the Academies, and from the White House. A transcript can be found on Whitehouse.gov. The address was noteworthy in part because he was only the fourth sitting President [...]

Yesterday President Obama announced the full membership of his President’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology (PCAST). This is an advisory body that works with the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) to provide advice to the President. More than a few of the new members have previous government experience. There will be [...]

One of the Administration’s campaign promises was to create the position of Chief Technology Officer. While the specific job description was vague during the campaign, the general idea was for this office to encourage more effective use of technology across government. After appointing a Chief Information Officer – Vivek Kundra – the President selected Aneesh [...]

On Wednesday the House passed a bill to cover spending for most federal agencies for the last six months of fiscal year 2009. The first six months were covered by a separate measure, a Continuing Resolution, set to expire on March 6. The Senate still needs to approve the bill, but if the House funding [...]

Late last night Congress released the first high-level details on the final agreement for the American Recovery and Reinvestment package. (For background, this legislation is essentially a massive funding plan intended to help jump start the American economy during the current fiscal year (FY 2009).) The final legislation reportedly contains a massive boost for several [...]

Funds for broadband deployment are part of the economic stimulus package currently under construction on Capitol Hill. Worth noting is that this funding has at least one string attached – network neutrality. Of course, that phrase means different things to different people, so some explanation is in order. The stimulus funding is focused on areas [...]

While the stimulus has not been finalized, the House Appropriations Committee has circulated a summary of the major components. From the committee summary: Scientific Research • National Science Foundation: $3 billion, including $2 billion for expanding employment opportunities in fundamental science and engineering to meet environmental challenges and to improve global economic competitiveness, $400 million [...]

In his most recent weekly address, President-elect Barack Obama outlined portions of his economic recovery plan. The address covered a few areas in which President-elect Obama intends to invest significant funds in order to stimulate the economy. Most of these investments are in infrastructure, which includes broadband. Deploring the typically poor standing the United States [...]

Yesterday President Bush signed into law a bipartisan agreement providing supplemental funding for 2008. Most of the funding went toward operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, but Congress and the President agreed to include over $330 million to fund basic research at several Federal agencies. While the final figures are well below what the President originally [...]

Some events highlight the political silliness often infecting Washington better than others. The current fight over the supplemental war funding bill for this fiscal year is one of those occasions. The Washington Times aptly summed up the silliness when it ran the line: “House Passes War Supplemental Without War Funding.” The issue at hand is [...]

Peter Harsha at the Computing Research Association has a good analysis of the impact that Congress’ flat funding of the physical science agencies will have this year. His analysis (excerpted below) includes the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy’s Office of Science. We thought that we add the impacts to the National Institute [...]

Three bills linked to the American Competitiveness Initiative took an important step closer to becoming law this week – they passed one of the houses of Congress. On Tuesday, the House passed HR 362, the 10,000 Teachers, 10 Million Minds Math and Scholarship Act, as well as HR 363, the Sowing the Seeds Through Science [...]

That is the name of an advisory committee to the Secretary of Commerce. Its objective is to make recommendations for new and revised metrics to better capture innovative activity. We posted about this group in December, shortly after it was formed. They held their first meeting February 22 in Washington, D.C. The agenda, members, and [...]

The Brookings Institution (a well-respected Washington D.C. think tank) just released a report exploring how offshoring impacts local economies in the U.S. and how public policy should respond. Unfortunately, The San Jose Mercury News wrote a story about how the study predicts that Silicon Valley will lose one out of every five computing jobs over [...]

This morning House and Senate leaders of the respective Appropriations Committees announced a deal on funding for the current fiscal year. As we’ve reported this year’s funding for most of the federal government has been limbo for months because of the national elections last year. The current Congress faced two choices — extending 2006 funding [...]

While we’ve known about some of the changes in the House Science and Technology Committee (including the new name) for a while, Rep. Bart Gordon (D-TN), the new chair, finalized the changes in a hearing this morning. Rep. Ralph Hall (R-TX) is the new Ranking Member. Per a press release available on the committee’s website [...]

One last item before the end of the year. On December 6th, the Secretary of Commerce named the 15 members of the Measuring Innovation in the 21st Century Economy Advisory Committee. A mix of business and academic leaders, the Committee will “study metrics on effectiveness of innovation in various businesses and sectors, and work to [...]

Today the House Science Committee held a hearing exploring Congress’ need for scientific and technical advice. (Witness lists and hearing webcast can be found here.) Eleven years ago, Congress closed the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA). This office was created in 1972 to aid Congress “in the identification and consideration of existing and probable impacts [...]

Earlier this week the House of Representatives passed legislation to fully fund the President’s American Competitiveness Initiative. CRA’s blog has all the details. With passage of the bill the House is on record supporting an 8 percent increase for the National Science Foundation, and a 14 percent increase to the National Institute of Standards and [...]

The name refers to a program at the Ohio Supercomputer Center that seeks to connect industries that lack the time or resources with high-performance computing (HPC) software, technology and expertise. They seek to lower barriers to entry for firms and industries that can benefit from HPC. This program has inspired Senator Mike DeWine (R-Ohio) to [...]

Update: USACM and the Computing Research Association released a joint statement regarding Congress’ support of increased research funding. The release can be found here. This morning the Science, State, Justice and Commerce Appropriations Subcommittee passed its proposal for funding several key science agencies during the next fiscal year. The numbers for the National Science Foundation [...]

Last week the Senate Commerce Committee passed its approach to bolstering U.S. competitiveness by authorizing more funding for research programs at the National Science Foundation, among other things. This is one of the many bills floating around to address this issue. Peter Harsha at the Computing Research Association has good coverage of the markup including [...]

Update:: The Department of Commerce has released the formal Federal Register notice of its proposal to form an advisory committee. Original Post 5/22/06: Last year, the Department of Commerce (followed by the Department of Defense) proposed broad new restrictions on foreign students access to potentially sensitive technology. USACM filed comments on both the proposals (Commerce, [...]

The President has released his proposed budget, and taking a look at the research and development portion shows some winners (notably information technology research and development funding) and some losers (agriculture, environment, and transportation). Also, yesterday the President signed last year’s massive budget “reconciliation” bill, which ushers in the era of digital television and creates [...]

Members of the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee met this week for a hearing into so-called “Net Neutrality,” the range of issues surrounding whether or not telecommunications companies should be prevented from providing (for a price) faster speeds or better access for some (perhaps at the expense of others) or whether Congress should step [...]

“The American economy is pre-eminent – but we cannot afford to be complacent. In a dynamic world economy, we are seeing new competitors like China and India. We must continue to lead the world in human talent and creativity. Our greatest advantage in the world has always been our educated, hard-working, ambitious people – and [...]

“Katrina changed everything” is almost a trite saying in DC now, but even unoriginal sayings can be true. Before Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, and Wilma slammed into the U.S., the federal budget environment was bad but improving. Now intraparty politics have pushed the GOP to negotiate among themselves on deep budget cuts over the next five [...]

The aftermath of hurricanes Katrina and Rita has revived an old idea that the federal government maintain lists of rapid response teams comprised of private sector technical experts to help rebuild after a disaster or terrorist attack. Called the “NET Guard,” Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) originally proposed this idea as part of the legislation that [...]

The NY Times yesterday ran a troubling article about the visa problems of a Chinese cryptographer who was unable to present an important paper detailing her research on SHA-1 at this week’s Crypto 2005 conference: On Monday, [Xiaoyun Wang] was scheduled to explain her discovery in a keynote address to an international group of researchers [...]

Internet pioneer Vinton Cerf (who, along with Robert Kahn, won ACM’s 2004 Turing Award) and Information Technology Association of America President Harris Miller join the chorus of leaders expressing concern about the federal R&D enterprise in today’s Wall Street Journal (subscription required). They frame the argument very similar to those laid out by the joint [...]

In an excellent op-ed for News.com, ACM’s President Dave Patterson argues that the federal government is abandoning its previous vision of investing in long-term IT research that has driven many amazing innovations and multibillion industries (i.e. the Internet). Over the last 10 years, however, there’s been a major shift in funding priorities and policy at [...]

This Thursday (May 12) at 10:00 a.m. EDT the House Science Committee will review the current landscape of the federal government’s commitment to IT R&D funding and its implications for the future. The hearing is titled “The Future of Computer Science Research in the U.S.,” and the witnesses are: Dr. John H. Marburger III, Director, [...]

Peter Harsha at the Computing Research Association (CRA) has a good report on a recent op-ed in Science by former CRA Board members and current PITAC members Ed Lazowska and David Patterson (who also happens to be President of ACM and a member of USACM’s Executive Committee). Quoting Peter, the article discusses “the impact of [...]

The Computing Research Association (CRA) has a good post about Representative Frank Wolf’s (R-VA) call on President Bush to triple the federal government’s investment in basic research. He sent the President a letter (which is also on CRA’s website) outlining his concern about the levels of federal investment in basic research and its impact on [...]

Congressmen Vernon Ehlers (R-MI) and Rush Holt (D-NJ) are circulating their annual letter regarding National Science Foundation (NSF) funding and are asking that their colleagues join the fight. The letter requests $6.1 billion for the agency — an increase of $627 million from last year. Remember that last year NSF’s funding was cut. Given the [...]

By mid-February in any normal year a new Congress is completely organized. This is not a normal year as numerous changes in the Senate and organizational fights between the House of Representatives and Senate have delayed the process. Congress has finally (although not completely) organized itself enough to provide a picture of how it will [...]

“The Internet rated only a footnote in the landmark 1996 Telecommunications Reform Act. Now, the Net is such serious competition for the telecom industry that many legislators favor at least “tinkering with” the 1996 act, said Sen. Conrad Burns (R-Mont.), speaking at today’s Washington conference sponsored by the Congressional Internet Caucus Advisory Committee. Burns said [...]

The President’s budget hit the Hill yesterday with the predictable media attention. With the focus on deficits and Social Security, some of the subtler details have gone overlooked. Particularly those related to funding for IT research and development. Peter at the Computing Research Association has given us a great analysis of the overall funding picture. [...]

“[...] Mr. Bush plans to submit his budget to Congress early next month. Officials at the affected agencies said he would propose a virtual freeze for the National Science Foundation and a very small increase for the National Institutes of Health. [...] For the current fiscal year, Congress cut the budget of the National Science [...]

“The pork-stuffed omnibus spending bill that Congress rushed to passage without reading largely remains a $388 billion national secret. [...] Nowhere is this more graphic than in the shocking cut that Congress levied on the National Science Foundation, the research dynamo that does so much to feed the nation’s economic growth through breakthrough advances in [...]

“Congress has cut the budget for the National Science Foundation, an engine for research in science and technology, just two years after endorsing a plan to double the amount given to the agency. [...] Representative Vernon J. Ehlers, Republican of Michigan, said the cut was “extremely short-sighted” and showed “dangerous disregard for our nation’s future.” [...]

Peter Harsha has written an excellent “roundup” of FY 2005 Federal appropriations following Congress’ recent work on the omnibus bill, including the following update on funding for the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST’s) labs: [...] NIST Labs: The Labs faced a dire funding situation as a result of last year’s omnibus appropriation, but [...]