Congress to Probe the State of IT R&D Funding

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Cameron Wilson <cameron.wilson () ACM ORG>
Date: May 10, 2005 3:24:19 PM EDT
To: USACM-INFO () LISTSERV ACM ORG
Subject: Congress to Probe the State of IT R&D Funding
Reply-To: Cameron Wilson <cameron.wilson () ACM ORG>


Hello All,

I just posted this to the blog
(http://www.acm.org/usacm/weblog/index.php?p=267), and I thought I'd  
e-mail
you to let you know about the hearing.

Cameron

----
Congress to Probe the State of IT R&D Funding

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, Office of Science and  
Technology
Policy, Executive Office of the President;
    * Dr. Anthony J. Tether, Director, Defense Advanced Research  
Projects
Agency;
    * Dr. Wm. A. Wulf, President, National Academy of Engineering; and
    * Dr. Tom Leighton, Chief Scientist and co-founder, Akamai  
Technologies,
and member of the President’s Information Technology Advisory Committee

The committee webcasts all of its hearings (www.house.gov/science),  
and I
recommend watching as this is the first hearing to delve into many of  
the
issues the community and the media have discussed over the past few  
years.

Over the past couple of months there has been an amazing deluge of  
articles
about how the federal government’s commitment to IT R&D funding has  
changed
and what that means for the future of the industry and American
competitiveness. (Peter at the Computing Research Association (CRA)  
has done
a wonderful job of cataloging them and discussing their impact.) The
catalyst for all this recent attention seems to have been an article  
in the
New York Times by John Markoff about the Defense Advanced Research  
Projects
Agency’s (DARPA) shift from away from funding unclassified university- 
based
projects. Then Tom Friedman weighed in with a new book and an  
editorial in
the New York Times about the broader issue that the U.S. is  
undermining its
long-term competitiveness by not investing enough in basic research  
(among
other things). This coupled with general concern by the community  
about the
state of IT R&D funding across the entire federal government, led to  
much
more media attention and this hearing.

For more information, I strongly recommend that readers review CRA’s  
blog
for detailed coverage of the issue. I’m sure that Peter will give us a
report once the hearing wraps up.

--
Cameron Wilson
Director of Public Policy
Association for Computing Machinery
1100 Seventeenth Street, NW
Suite 507
Washington DC 20036
202 659-9712
www.acm.org/usacm


-------------------------------------
You are subscribed as lists-ip () insecure org
To manage your subscription, go to
 http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip

Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/