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Information Technology: 21st Century Revolution
Coordination of IT R&D Programs
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Office of Science and
Technology Policy
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The White House Office of Science
and Technology Policy (OSTP) advises and supports the President in shaping
broad national goals for Federal investments in science, space, and technology
R&D and plays the senior role in coordinating the wide range of programs
and activities in the Government's science and technology research portfolio.
OSTP's responsibilities include policy formulation and budget development
in science and technology areas, articulating the President's policies and
programs, and fostering strong partnerships among Federal, state, and local
governments and the scientific communities in industry and academia. OSTP
oversees the activities of the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC).
The Assistant to the President for Science and Technology serves as Director
of OSTP.
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Senior Principals Group
for Information
Technology (IT) R&D
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This senior management team, chaired by and reporting to the Director of
OSTP, provides policy leadership, guidance, and oversight for the Government's
Information Technology (IT) R&D programs. The Senior Principals Group and
the NSTC help set programmatic priorities, ensure that the overall Federal
IT R&D portfolio is balanced across agency missions and capabilities, and
monitor progress. Members are senior officials from the IT funding agencies,
including the Director of the National Science Foundation, the Administrator
of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Under Secretary
of Energy, the Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere and
Administrator, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Director
of the National Institutes of Health, the Deputy Under Secretary of Defense
(Science and Technology), and senior officials from the Office of Management
and Budget (OMB) and the National Economic Council (NEC).
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Interagency Working
Group on IT R&D
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The Interagency Working Group on IT R&D (IWG/IT R&D, successor to the Subcommittee
on Computing, Information, and Communications [CIC]) serves as the internal
deliberative organization of the Senior Principals Group, providing policy,
program, and budget guidance for the Executive Branch. The IWG coordinates
the multiagency IT research efforts, including planning, budgeting, implementation,
and review of research activities and interaction with the Congress, OMB,
OSTP, academia, and industry. The IWG also provides technical assistance
to the President's Information Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC) and
works with Federal agencies that need advanced IT to identify their needs
and accelerate development and deployment of appropriate technologies. The
NSF Assistant Director, Directorate for Computer and Information Science
and Engineering (CISE), chairs the IWG. Agencies in the IWG are AHRQ, DARPA,
DOE (Offices of Science and Defense Programs), EPA, NASA, NIH, NIST, NOAA,
NSA, NSF (CISE and Mathematical and Physical Sciences Directorates), and
OSD. Other participants include NEC, NCO, OMB, and OSTP. The NCO provides
technical and administrative support to the IWG and select support to the
IWG's Coordinating Groups.
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Coordinating Groups
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Six Coordinating Groups (previously called Working Groups) and one Council
report to the IWG. These organizations confer regularly to coordinate the
objectives and activities of the multiagency projects in their specialized
domains. The Coordinating Groups are aligned with the major areas of IT
research, called Program Component Areas (PCAs), that make up the Government's
multiagency IT R&D portfolio, as follows:
- High End Computing and Computation
Coordinating Group (HECCCG), which coordinates both HEC I&A and HEC
R&D
- Human Computer Interface and
Information Management Coordinating Group (HCI & IMCG
- Large Scale Networking Coordinating
Group (LSNCG), which includes the Next Generation Internet (NGI) Initiative
and Scalable Information Infrastructure (SII) R&D and divides
- High Performance
Networking Applications Team (HPNAT)
- Information
Security Team (IST)
- Joint Engineering
Team (JET)
- Networking
Research Team (NRT)
- Software Design and Productivity
Coordinating Group (SDPCG)
- High Confidence Software and
Systems Coordinating Group (HCSSCG)
- Social, Economic, and Workforce
Implications of IT and IT Workforce Development Coordinating Group (SEWCG)
The Federal Information Services and
Applications Council (FISAC), an outreach rather than a research organization,
also reports to the IWG. FY 2000 accomplishments and FY 2001 plans for the
Coordinating Groups are highlighted in this book .
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National Coordination
Office for Computing,
Information, and
Communications
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The NCO supports the overall IT R&D program. Working collaboratively, the
NCO and the agencies participating in the IT R&D program craft the blueprints
and implementation strategies for the comprehensive Federal effort to pioneer
the next generation of advanced computing, network communications, and information
technologies. The NCO provides extensive technical and administrative support
to the IWG, assisting in the preparation of multiagency planning, budget,
and evaluation materials, and serves as a central source of information
and documentation about Federal IT research activities.
In addition, the NCO supports the PITAC, the Presidentially appointed group
of leaders in industry and academe that conducts independent evaluations
of the Federal government's IT research activities. NCO staff members provide
technical assistance for meetings of the PITAC and its subcommittees and
panels, as well as for the PITAC's ongoing reviews of the Federal IT R&D
program.
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Outreach and
Presentations
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As the central points of contact for Federal IT R&D initiatives, the NCO
and the IWG meet often with representatives from Congress, Federal, state,
and local organizations, academia, industry, professional societies, foreign
organizations, and others to discuss the Government's IT R&D program and
exchange technical and programmatic information.
At the SC99, the national high performance networking and computing conference, for example,
the NCO and the LSNCG demonstrated
ten advanced networking and computing applications developed by agencies
participating in the IT R&D Programs and its NGI initiative. (See page 99.)
The NCO each year also fulfills thousands of requests for information about
Federal IT R&D activities from Congressional offices, academia, industry,
and the public. Information resources provided by the NCO include print
and video materials and Web sites constituting a full-text archive of all
NCO publications since 1994, such as information on the IWG (and its predecessor
Subcommittee on CIC R&D), details of the NGI initiative, Congressional testimony,
reports and activities of the PITAC, links to other agencies in the IT R&D
program, and important notices and official correspondence. The online resources
are available at http://www.ccic.gov/
and http://www.ngi.gov/.
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High end computing
and mass storage
systems briefings
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Continuing a program of targeted briefings to update Federal agency scientists,
engineers, and contractors on trends in key advanced information technologies,
the NCO and the HECCCG held a two-day meeting on mass storage systems June
28-29, 2000, at the National Library of Medicine's Lister Hill Auditorium
in Bethesda, Maryland. The gathering featured presentations on a non-disclosure
basis by vendors of digital storage technologies and discussions of major
technical challenges posed by the fast-growing storage requirements of IT
systems. Questions about next generation storage technologies included,
for example: Are tape backup systems becoming obsolete? What are the prospects
for the linked storage units called storage area networks (SANs)? What implications
for storage needs do emerging high performance computational and telecommunications
applications present? And what impact does the great heterogeneity of contemporary
computing environments have on mass storage design?
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Buy American Report
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Congress requires information concerning non-U.S. high performance computing
and communications funding activities. In FY 2000, DARPA was the only IT
R&D agency that entered into grants, contracts, cooperative agreements,
or cooperative research and development agreements for IT R&D with either
1) a company other than a company that is either incorporated or located
in the U.S. and that has majority ownership by individuals who are citizens
of the U.S., or 2) an educational institution or nonprofit institution located
outside the U.S. DARPA funded IT R&D-related awards of $164,000 to University
College, London (UK) and $98,040 to Oxford University (UK). In FY 2000,
no IT R&D procurement exceeds $1 million for unmanufactured articles, materials,
or supplies mined or produced outside the U.S., or for manufactured articles,
materials, or supplies other than those manufactured in the U.S. substantially
all from articles, materials, or supplies mined, produced, or manufactured
in the U.S.
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