Long-term Internet Technology research in the United States will get a significant boost if the U.S. Senate approves a bill that authorizes $4.8 billion for such research over the next five years, experts say. The House of Representatives Feb. 14 passed the Networking and Information Research and Development Act. The bill authorizes Congress to appropriate $4.8 billion for basic, long-term Internet Technology research to the following agencies: The National Science Foundation, NASA, the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Energy, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the Environmental Protection Agency.
In addition, the bill bolsters math and science education by authorizing $95 million for universities to establish for-credit internships for research at IT companies.
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NSF takes lead
The National Science Foundation, which awards research grants on a competitive basis to researchers, is the designated lead agency. While the bill authorizes Congress to spend $4.8 billion on IT research from 2000 to 2004, it is up to members of Congress to appropriate the money to the individual agencies in their budgets.
The bill, introduced by U.S. Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., R-Wis., came in response to the findings released by President’s Internet Technology Advisory Committee, in February of 1999. Members of the committee included Sun Microsystems co-chairman Bill Joy, 3Com Chief Executive Officer Eric Benhamou, and David C. Nagel of AT&T Labs.
The report found that federal IT research and development investment is inadequate and overly focused on near-term problems, and recommended that the federal government create a strategic initiative in long-term information technology research and development.
The committee also concluded that the government plays a key role in fostering this research, saying it is impossible for the private sector to assume responsibility for long-term, high-risk research, in spite of the IT industry’s success.
The demand for short-term results is the reason for this, said Tim Clancy, a spokesman for the National Science Foundation. While private industry is spending more money on research than ever, most of that money is geared toward producing immediate results. Relatively little is spent on long-term research that leads to breakthroughs, he said.
”The window of opportunity is so short today,” Clancy said. Adding that when these companies conduct R&D, “they’re way on the ‘D’ side.”
Because of the pressure they face, private industry is looking to academia for long term research. Many of the products we enjoy today were developed by researchers in universities conducting basic, long-term research, he said. For example, Hyper Text Markup Language, HTML, the computer programming language on which Web pages are written, is the result of a basic research project that was done in a Switzerland high energy physics lab during the 1980s.
The kind of research that this congressional action authorizes attempts to look out at what the IT needs of the future will be, Clancy said. The foundation receives some 30,000 applications for competitive awards. Of those, only a third are funded, he added. He also indicated that it is still unclear whether the authorization the House approved will allow the foundation to approve more grant requests.
The foundation’s proposed fiscal year 2001 budget calls for a 17 percent increase, from the 2000 appropriation of $3.9 billion, to $4.57 billion. This will allow it to increase both the size and the duration of the awards it grants, he said. Right now, the average award is just over $98,000, up from about $92,000 in 1999 and about $90,000 in 1998. The average award duration is 2.8 years.
With this budget request, the foundation hopes to boost the average award to $108,000 and to push the average award duration to just over three years, Clancy said. Often, researchers will have to apply for more than one grant for the same research project. Increasing the amount of money and the duration gives them more time to work, instead of writing grants, he said.
”Our goal is to make sure they’re in the lab creating ideas,” he said.
What’s impressive about the recent House approval, which came with bipartisan support, is that it acted directly on the advice of Presidential IT advisory committee, noted Lisa Thompson, director of governmental affairs for the Computer Research Association, a Washington, D.C. research group. The bill was originally proposed in June of 1999, meaning that it has moved along relatively quickly. She added that the bill enjoyed great support in the House, and should appeal to the members of the Senate.
”This bill sold itself, almost,” Thompson said. “I think it’s pretty remarkable that the House acted so quickly.”
Thompson credited members of the House Committee on Science and its chairman, Sensenbrenner, for making the bill a priority.
One of the bill’s supporters is William W. Drestler, vice president for research at the University of Maryland at College Park, who testified before the House’s Committee on Science. In his testimony, he said U.S. corporations have been cutting their long-term research expenditures in order to keep pace with foreign companies. The cutback, he said, is especially noticeable in the areas of computer networking, encryption, and information technology. The nation’s shortage of IT workers only adds to the pressure companies face, he said.
”The maintenance of our current position as the most innovative economy in the world will be essential if we are to maintain the current robust U.S. economy and our current high standard of living,” he said.
Others waking up
Other countries are beginning to realize this, Clancy said. “Most countries have been, ‘seeing the light,’ so to speak, and have significant investments in fundamental research over the past three or four years now,” he said.
”I think it’s clear that other countries are accelerating research in IT and other areas,” Thompson added. “The U.S. currently holds the lead, but it’s by no means assured that that will continue – it could change if we’re not careful.”
When it was introduced in 1999, the bill would also have permanently extended the federal Research and Development Tax Credit, which expired on June 30 of last year. This provision was taken out of the bill, said Meredith Wisor, a spokeswoman for the House Committee on Science. But Wisor noted that House Nov. 18, 1999 approved a five-year extension of the tax credit, keeping it intact until 2004.
