Science Committee Preparing Comprehensive NSF Legislation

["Dave Farber" <farber () gmail com>]

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> From: FYI <fyi () aip-info org>
> Date: March 17, 2017 at 5:45:15 PM EDT
> To: farber () central cis upenn edu
> Subject: Science Committee Preparing Comprehensive NSF Legislation
> Reply-To: FYI <re-1ZJN-4TVRU-E29DH7-C0BLO () aip-info org>
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> Number 33: March 17, 2017
> Science Committee Preparing Comprehensive NSF Legislation
> The House Science Committee is currently preparing broad, new authorization legislation for NSF. At a hearing last 
> week, committee members indicated that implementing a strong “national interest” requirement into NSF grant-making, 
> STEM education, and ongoing management and oversight issues will be part of its agenda. The committee is also 
> planning to push the agency to favor engineering and the physical, biological, and computer sciences.
>
> This summer, the National Science Foundation will be moving to a new headquarters building in Alexandria, Va. (Image 
> credit – NSF)
>
>
> The House Science Committee is renewing its longstanding effort to overhaul the policies governing the National 
> Science Foundation.
>   
> In 2015, the House passed a committee bill to update the 2010 America COMPETES law. That legislation included 
> provisions requiring NSF grants to serve a specific definition of the “national interest” and recommending 
> reallocating agency funding to favor research in physical and biological sciences, computer science, and engineering. 
> However, the effort found little support among Democrats or in the Senate. Ultimately, some of the bill’s provisions 
> were adapted into the bipartisan American Innovation and Competitiveness Act (AICA), which President Obama signed on 
> Jan. 6.
>   
> At the beginning of the current Congress, the Science Committee declared its intent to pursue a fresh NSF 
> authorization bill, and its goals and strategy for this effort are now coming into focus. On March 9, the committee’s 
> Research and Technology Subcommittee held a hearing on NSF, billed as an overview of the agency’s work and oversight 
> issues it is currently facing. NSF Director France Córdova and Inspector General Allison Lerner were on hand to 
> answer questions on a range of subjects of interest to committee members. Then, on March 10, the committee submitted 
> its annual “views and estimates” statement to the House Budget Committee, outlining the committee’s plans for NSF and 
> other science agencies.
>   
> A second NSF hearing, dedicated to “future opportunities and challenges for science,” is scheduled for March 21.
> Committee seeking stricter control over NSF grant-making
>
> At last week’s hearing, Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-TX) made clear that he regards AICA as a victory for his 
> agenda. In his opening statement, he said that the law “affirms that research funded through the merit-review 
> selection process must be in the national interest by meeting one of seven broader impact goals.”
>   
> The 2015 House bill required the determination of a grant’s benefit to the national interest as a prerequisite for 
> funding it. In AICA, this language was changed to state that NSF’s existing evaluation criteria “should be used to 
> assure that the Foundation’s activities are in the national interest” and that NSF should commit to “clear, 
> consistent public communication regarding the national interest for each Foundation-awarded grant and cooperative 
> agreement.”
>   
> Later, pressing his point that AICA establishes that every grant must benefit the national interest, Smith asked 
> Córdova how NSF is “going to enforce that national interest goal on a grant by grant basis,” and roughly how many 
> proposals had already been rejected for not meeting that “standard.” Córdova replied that NSF works with grant 
> applicants to ensure they address the selection criteria, and that generally grants that find their way to division 
> leaders for a final decision “wouldn’t go up without that kind of recommendation.” Smith thanked Córdova for her 
> answer, but it was also evident that he expects AICA’s national interest provision to have material consequences.
>
> While making the most of AICA, Smith also cast it as a partial measure anticipating a “full reauthorization” for NSF. 
> Although the broad contents of such a reauthorization remain undetermined, the new views and estimates document does 
> say it will require that Congress appropriate NSF funds directorates individually, and that “70 percent of [NSF] 
> research funding [be] allocated to the Mathematical and Physical Sciences Directorate, the Computer and Information 
> Science and Engineering Directorate, the Biological Sciences Directorate, and the Engineering Directorate.”
>
> Currently, about 65 percent of NSF’s Research and Related Activities account (which excludes major equipment and 
> facilities construction) goes to those directorates. Thus, the legislation would at least implicitly call for reduced 
> funding for the geosciences and the social, behavioral, and economic sciences, which the Science Committee directly 
> targeted for cuts in its 2015 bill.
>   
> Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX), the committee’s ranking member, rejected Smith’s view that every grant should meet 
> a national interest requirement, noting it is agency policy for grants to benefit society “in the aggregate.” She 
> argued that, following that philosophy, NSF-funded research has long been a boon to the nation, and added that this 
> is “as true for the social and behavioral sciences as it is for physics and engineering.” The committee Democrats’ 
> competing views and estimates statement criticizes congressional attempts to “arbitrarily choose winners and losers 
> in basic research” by favoring some fields over others.
>   
> Johnson urged that Congress respect the integrity of NSF’s “gold standard” merit review process, and expressed her 
> view that the original authorizing legislation for NSF has proven “remarkably durable and worth preserving.”
>   
> To date, there has been no indication of appetite in the Senate for advancing new legislation for NSF so soon after 
> passing AICA.
> STEM education remains a bipartisan interest
>
> Aside from the partisan goals of imposing a national interest criterion and apportionment requirements on NSF grants, 
> the new views and estimates statement also says the committee will address STEM education at the agency. These 
> efforts would build on the bipartisan STEM Education Act, which President Obama signed in 2015.
>   
> During last week’s hearing, committee members from both parties asked a number of questions about NSF’s activities in 
> STEM education and on STEM workforce issues. Rep. Barbara Comstock (R-VA), who chairs the Research and Technology 
> Subcommittee, asked about cybersecurity research and education and about transitioning veterans into STEM careers. 
> Rep. Ralph Abraham (R-LA) asked about NSF’s evaluation of the effectiveness of its STEM education programs. Rep. 
> Daniel Webster (R-FL) asked for examples of “proven” methods of recruiting people into STEM fields. Smith asked about 
> NSF’s research on dyslexia, which is a cause he has backed.
>   
> Rep. Susan Bonamici (D-OR) asked, as a co-chair of the STEAM Caucus, about the integration of arts and design into 
> STEM learning. Rep. Elizabeth Esty (D-CT), who with Comstock recently sponsored a pair of now-enacted bills advancing 
> women in STEM fields, asked about NSF’s efforts to engage girls in STEM at the primary school level, and about how it 
> scales up successful programs.
>   
> Replying to these questions, Córdova discussed existing NSF efforts, such as its INCLUDES program, and welcomed ideas 
> for new initiatives.
> Interest persists in NSF oversight issues
>
> The hearing also addressed the agency’s handling of management and oversight issues, some of which were addressed in 
> AICA and some not. In her testimony, Lerner focused on three current challenges: establishing accountability in large 
> cooperative agreements, managing NSF’s rotating personnel, and policing researcher ethics.
>
> By and large, questions from the committee focused on the ethics issue. Smith asked about the sanctions the agency 
> imposes on researchers found to be in violation of policy, while Abraham asked about NSF’s implementation of Lerner’s 
> earlier recommendations on the issue. Researcher ethics is an ongoing concern, and ScienceInsider has published a 
> fuller discussion of recent debates about NSF’s ethics policy, focusing especially on whether NSF should make 
> sanctioned researchers’ names public.
>
> Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA), the ranking member of the committee’s Oversight Subcommittee, likewise asked about ethics 
> violations discovered by the agency. But he also asked Lerner about how NSF determines how many of its positions it 
> should fill with rotating personnel from universities, and Córdova about NSF’s moves toward demanding that recipients 
> of management fees from NSF be required to report other sources of revenue.
>
> Lerner demurred on the former question, saying that how NSF strikes that balance is not within her purview. On the 
> latter, Córdova replied that NSF does conduct spot checks on fee recipients’ revenue sources but that it does not 
> have the personnel to do continuous monitoring.
> Contact the Author
>
> William Thomas
> American Institute of Physics
> wthomas () aip org
> (301) 209-3097
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