The President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) this afternoon released a report – Designing a Digital Future: Federally Funded Research and Development in Networking and Information Technology — assessing the status and direction of the government’s 14-agency, $4.3 billion Networking and Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD) program.
The report was presented by UW CSE’s Ed Lazowska and his PCAST Working Group co-chair David E. Shaw. Also participating in the program – held at AAAS in Washington DC – were Federal CTO Aneesh Chopra, Federal CIO Vivek Kundra, Senior Advisor for Technology and Innovation to the National Economic Council Philip Weiser, Deputy Director for Policy of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Tom Kalil, President of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation Rob Atkinson, and Co-Founder and Chief Scientist of Akamai Technologies and MIT Professor Tom Leighton. Working Group members Susan Graham (UC Berkeley) and Ed Felten (UW CSE Ph.D. alumnus, Princeton faculty member, in incoming Chief Technologist of the Federal Trade Commission) also were in attendance.
The Computing Community Consortium blog contains an excellent summary of the event and the report, as does the Computing Research Association computing research policy blog. The report, and a webcast of the event, are available on the PCAST web page. The Executive Summary of the report is available here.
Press coverage:
- New York Times: “Smarter, Not Faster, Is the Future of Computing Research”
- Federal Computer Week: “President’s Council seeks to accelerate government network advances”
- ExecutiveGov: “President’s Technology Advisers Want $1B Ramp-up in IT Spending”