Honorable Members of the Senate and House VA-HUD and
Independent Agencies Appropriations Subcommittees

RE: Federal Funding for information technology research

Dear Member of Congress:

The undersigned organizations urge continued bipartisan support and funding for programs embodied in the Networking and Information Technology Research and Development Act (NITRD)(H.R. 2086), recently introduced by House Science Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner.

As both the Congressional Budget Office report on Current Investments in Innovation in the Information Technology Sector (April, 1999) and the President’s Information Technology Advisory Committee report emphasize, federal investment will play a crucial role in maintaining American leadership in the information technology sector.    The current efforts to increase federal spending on information technology research will build on existing programs and activities, and will guarantee necessary advances in computing and telecommunication.

As this Committee determines appropriations, we ask that you specifically consider three priorities of crucial importance to the higher education community and the nation:

1. Ensure the long-term research necessary to guarantee the stability and robustness of the network.

Continued funding for existing programs such as the Next Generation Internet (NGI) and the National Science Foundation’s Partnership for Advanced Computational Infrastructure (PACI) is necessary to support the long term growth and development of network science.  We support the NITRD proposal to fund NGI through completion and to authorize significant IT research funding for agencies under the House Science Committee’s jurisdiction.  In particular, we support the creation of a new research grant pool at NSF with priority given to projects addressing network stability, fragility, security, and scalability.

2. Support long-term research into software development and fundamental computer science.

As the President’s Information Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC) noted, the basic computer science research underlying today’s applications is more than a decade old and is fast becoming out-moded. High-risk research—the type of research likely to lead to fundamental computer science breakthroughs with long-term effects—is unlikely to be sustained to an adequate degree by the private sector. Federal support is necessary to preserve American leadership in computer science, software development, and the information technology industry.  Specifically we support provisions addressing high-end computing and software research, and enabling a new terascale computing acquisition program.

3. Prepare American workers to compete in the global marketplace by supporting IT research at American universities.

The shortage of trained IT workers is an increasingly critical obstacle to ongoing American competitiveness.  Fulfilling a time-honored role, universities and community colleges will be relied upon to meet the workforce education and training needs of the next century.   To help alleviate the trained IT workforce shortage, legislation should support our efforts to educate and train American workers for the information technology jobs of the twenty-first century.  Increased support for IT research at American universities and the creation of IT internship programs with industry are productive and important steps.

We appreciate congressional attention to this topic, and we thank you for your continued support of scientific and technological progress.

Cordially,

American Association of Community Colleges
ACUTA – The Association for Telecommunications Professionals in Higher Education
Association of Research Libraries
Coalition for Networked Information
EDUCAUSE
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers-USA
Southeastern Universities Research Association
University Corporation for Advanced Internet Development

Last Update: July 27, 1999
Staff Contact: Deborah Rudolph, d.rudolph@ieee.org