new budget for research and education

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

From TR Daily, 2/1/2010

OSTP BUDGET PROPOSES NON-DEFENSE
RESEARCH, EDUCATION INCREASES

The Office of Science and Technology Policy said the 2011 budget proposal
offers a 5.9% year-over-year increase in nondefense research and
development spending, to $66 billion, an increase it said reflects the
Obama administration?s belief ?that investment in science, technology and
innovation is the key to building the American economy of the future.?

At the same time, the budget offers a 4.5% decrease in Department of
Defense research and development funding, to $77.5 billion. Taking into
account the entire proposed government budget proposal, total U.S. R&D
spending for 2011 amounts to $147.7 billion, down 0.2% from the 2010
level.

John Holdren, director of OSTP and assistant to the President for science
and technology, said today the R&D budgets had to be weighed against the
need to reduce federal government budget deficits going forward, and that
?there were tough decisions made, lots of them.?

Within the total R&D budget, the National Institute of Standards and
Technology?s (NIST) laboratories, which are involved with spectrum, energy
smart grid and cybersecurity issues, among others, are budgeted to get
$709 million of funding in 2011, up 6.9% from 2010. The NIST labs, along
with the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy?s Office
of Science, are budgeted to receive a 6.6% year-over-year funding increase
in 2011, to $13.3 billion. OSTP officials said today that increase is
part of a plan establishing a path to double the funding for those
entities by 2017.

Another big winner in the latest budget proposal are K-12 science,
technology, engineering and math (STEM) education programs, which are
budgeted at $1 billion for 2011, up 42% from the 2010 level. All STEM
education programs across the federal government are budgeted at $3.7
billion for 2011, up 0.9% from 2010.

The 2011 budget proposal also makes permanent the federal Research and
Experimentation Tax Credit, a move that OSTP said will give ?America?s
innovators and entrepreneurs the year-to-year economic stability they need
as they dedicate resources to building the economy of tomorrow.?

The latest budget proposes a slight decrease in funding - by $9 million -
to $4.3 billion for the multi-agency Networking and Information Technology
Research and Development Program, which plans and coordinates agency
research efforts in cybersecurity, advanced networking and other areas.

The 2011 budget, OSTP said, ?proposes over $1 billion in additional
investments to accelerate job creation through R&D commercialization,
deliver broadband for all Americans, instill a culture of open government,
and promote open data standards in national priorities.? On the broadband
front, beyond the $7.2 billion being awarded by the NTIA and the Rural
Utilities Service as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act,
the budget proposes $418 million of loans and grants from the Department
of Agriculture to support broadband for rural communities.

Regarding the government?s own use of information technology, the
administration said in an overview section of the budget titled ?Restoring
Responsibility,? that despite tens of billions of dollars in federal
government spending on IT, ?fragmentation, poor project execution, and the
drag of legacy technology has not delivered the productivity and
performance gains to government that are found when IT is deployed
effectively in the private sector.?

To close that gap, the administration ?will continue to roll out less
intensive and less expensive cloud-computing technologies; reduce the
number and cost of Federal data centers; and work with agencies to reduce
the time and effort required to acquire IT, improve the alignment of
technology acquisitions with agency needs, and hold providers of IT goods
and services accountable for their performance.?

The administration also called for centralizing provision of IT services
for nonmilitary agencies. ?Following examples set by the Department of
Defense (DOD), several State governments, and best practices in private
industry, the Administration will establish one or more efficient,
centralized IT service providers for non-military agencies. . . . It is
projected that this approach could prevent billions in increased costs
across the federal government over the next few years.? - John Curran,
john.curran () wolterskluwer com; Lynn Stanton,
lynn.stanton () wolterskluwer com






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