The Federal government coordinates multiagency research in advanced computing and communications through the IT R&D programs (formerly known as the High Performance Computing and Communications [HPCC] R&D programs). IT R&D-coordinated activities are organized into distinct but interrelated Program Component Areas (PCAs). In FY 2000, a number of changes were made in the PCA framework, reflecting recommendations of the President's Information Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC) and key research themes emerging from the activities of the original five PCAs since FY 1997:

• High End Computing and Computation (HECC) To better characterize the breadth of the HECC investment, its budget is now reported as two new PCAs:
  
  
  • High End Computing Infrastructure and Applications (HEC I&A)
  • High End Computing Research and Development (HEC R&D)
    
    
• Human Computer Interface and Information Management (HCI & IM) succeeds the Human Centered Systems (HuCS) PCA, reflecting the increasing challenges of making large amounts of information easily available and useful to the widest variety of users.
  
  
• Large Scale Networking (LSN) activities include the Next Generation Internet (NGI) Initiative and scalable information infrastructure (SII) R&D.
  
  
• Software Design and Productivity (SDP) is a new PCA in FY 2001, established in response to the PITAC's finding that not only is the demand for software exceeding our ability to develop it, but the software produced today is difficult to design, test, maintain, and upgrade. Research topics will include security, survivability, availability, reliability, and safety of IT systems and assurance in software- and information-centric systems through research in theoretical foundations, development of techniques and tools (with linkages to domain-specific languages), engineering and experimentation, and demonstrations and pilots.
  
  
• High Confidence Software and Systems (HCSS) was formerly the High Confidence Systems (HCS) PCA. Its new name and scope reflect the increasing need for adaptability, reliability, safety, and security in both the software and the systems that U.S. citizens count on each and every day.
  
  
• Social, Economic, and Workforce Implications of IT and IT Workforce Development (SEW) is the successor to the Education, Training, and Human Resources (ETHR) PCA. SEW's expanded R&D portfolio now includes assessment of the social and economic consequences of IT's transforming influence on the workplace as well as expanded research in education and worker training issues resulting from the rapid U.S. move to an information-based economy.

The PCAs are guided by Coordinating Groups (CGs) consisting of representatives from participating agencies. The CGs meet on a regular basis throughout the year to review the progress of their PCA's research agenda and plan coordinated and collaborative activities.

The Federal Information Services and Applications Council (FISAC) works closely with the IT R&D program. The FISAC assists in the transfer of advanced computing and communication technologies developed by the IT R&D community to agency missions and systems across the Federal government.

• HEC I&A research includes Federal agency mission applications development as well as the computing infrastructure needed to support this work. Focus areas include biomedical sciences, computational aerosciences, Earth and space sciences, weather forecasting and climate modeling, and tools to facilitate high end computation and analysis and display of the large data sets such computation generates.
• HEC R&D focuses on teraflops-scale (a trillion or more floating point operations per second) systems and computation. Research activities in this area support fundamental, long-term research to maintain and extend the U.S. lead in computing for generations to come. Current research focuses on advanced architectures such as hybrid technology multithreaded(HTMT), Beowulf for networked workstations, mass storage technologies, national- scale computational grids, and molecular, nano-, optical, quantum, and superconducting technologies.

HCI & IM R&D develops advanced technologies that expand modes of human-computer interface and improve our ability to manage and make use of computing devices and information resources. The wide-ranging HCI & IM research agenda is generating new IT capabilities in many fields, including biomedicine, commerce, crisis management, education, law enforcement, library sciences, manufacturing, national defense, scholarship, and weather analysis. FY 2001 R&D areas include :

• Battlefield robotics, such as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's (DARPA's) mobile autonomous robot software program, and remote/autonomous agents such as NASA's Remote Exploration and Experimentation (REE) project to develop autonomous supercomputing capabilities on spacecraft
• Collaboratories, visualization, and virtual reality, including DOE's DeepView scalable system for distributed collaborative research using online advanced microscopes; the National Institute of Standards and Technology's (NIST's) collaboratory, simulation, and 3-D visualization capabilities for manufacturing; and NSF's National Computational Science Alliance (Alliance) Access Grid for multisite teleconferencing, training, and research collaboration in 3-D immersive environments
• Web-based knowledge repositories and information agents for collecting and analyzing data, including the multiagency Digital Libraries Initiative Phase Two; NIST's Digital Library of Mathematical Functions (DLMF); and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality's (AHRQ's) COmputerized Needs-oriented QUality measurement Evaluation SysTem (CONQUEST), a tool enabling users to evaluate clinical practice performance
• Multimodal interactions between humans and computer systems, including DARPA's Communicator program to incorporate speech recognition in mobile computing devices; haptic devices, such as NASA's human factors program to add touch-feedback capabilities to simulation models; and intelligent systems, such as NSF's knowledge and cognitive systems (KCS) program to apply cognitive science to development of artificial intelligence in computing systems
• Multilingual translation, such as DARPA's Translingual Information Detection, Extraction, and Summarization (TIDES) program to generate English translations of materials in other languages

• The Joint Engineering Team (JET) coordinates the network architecture, connectivity, exchange points, and cooperation among Federal agency networks (FedNets)-DOE's Energy Sciences network (ESnet), NASA's Research and Education Network (NREN), NSF's very high performance Backbone Network Services (vBNS), and the Department of Defense's (DoD's) Defense Research and Engineering Network (DREN)-and with other high performance research networks such as Abilene (a university/industry partnership), as well as with NSF's Chicago-based Science, Technology, And Research Transit Access Point (STAR TAP) for international connectivity, and connectivity to the geographically remote states of Alaska and Hawaii.
  

• The Networking Research Team (NRT)coordinates agency networking research programs, shares networking research information among Federal agencies, and supports NGI R&D activities. The NRT provides outreach to end users by disseminating networking research information and coordinating activities among users and applications developers.
  

• The High Performance Networking Applications Team (HPNAT) The High Performance Networking Applications Team (HPNAT) coordinates Federal R&D to maintain and extend U.S. technological leadership in high performance networking applications in such fields as science and engineering, weather and the environment, biomedicine, and health care.
  

• The Internet Security Team (IST) facilitates testing of and experimentation with advanced network security technologies and serves as a forum for the exchange of security requirements and current and emerging security approaches.
  
  

The Federal NGI Initiative, tightly coupled with base LSN R&D and coordinated by the LSNCG, is creating the technical and infrastructure foundation for a more powerful, flexible, secure, and intelligent Internet in the 21st century. Authorized by Congress in the Next Generation Internet Research Act of 1998, the NGI Initiative:

• Develops, deploys, and demonstrates next generation technologies that add functionality and improve quality of service (QoS) and performance in network reliability, robustness, and security; differentiated services such as multicast and audio/video; and network management, including allocation of bandwidth. These activities are supported by DARPA's SuperNet, an NGI testbed providing a 1,000-fold increase in end-to-end performance over 1997 Internet speeds, or approximately one gigabyte per second (GBps) for research end users.
• Develops and demonstrates revolutionary applications in enabling technologies-such as collaboration technologies, digital libraries, distributed computing, privacy and security, and remote operation and simulation-and in disciplinary applications-such as basic science, crisis management, education, the environment, Federal information services, health care, and manufacturing. NGI applications research is supported by an NGI testbed providing a 100-fold increase in end-to-end performance over 1997's Internet, or approximately 100 megabytes per second (MBps) for research end users. This book highlights many of these NGI applications .
  
  

The PITAC recommended a significant new effort and increased funding for networking R&D that includes interoperability and usability. Federal agencies responded to this challenge with a proposed new program in IT R&D. A major component of this program is SII, whose research goal is to develop sophisticated tools and techniques enabling the Internet to grow (scale) while transparently supporting user demands that include the expanding areas of heterogeneous platforms and mobile and wireless computing. SII research will focus on deeply networked systems, anytime-anywhere connectivity, and network modeling and simulation. Anticipated FY 2001 research "new starts" include activities in agile networking infrastructures, network group collaboration, network security, and prototype access testbeds.

Recognizing that software is a key component of IT research, many Government agencies have worked on software design and productivity issues. But the sense of urgency underlined by the PITAC report has led to the creation of the new Software Design and Productivity (SDP) PCA for FY 2001 and the SDP Coordinating Group (SDPCG), which is developing its R&D agenda. SDP R&D is expected to focus on significantly improving the concepts, techniques, and tools that underpin our software infrastructure, including:

• Software engineering of complex systems
• Active software
• Software for autonomous systems
• Large-scale networks of sensors
• Component-based software design and development
• End-user programming
• Empirical software engineering research
• Software for embedded systems
• Model-based integration of embedded software
• Networked embedded systems

As mission-critical IT applications expand in national defense, medicine, crises management, aviation, and many other areas where lives and/or sensitive information are at risk, the need for stronger, more secure, and more stress-proof computing systems than exist today grows imperative. HCSS R&D concentrates on technologies that must perform without fail if computing systems are to achieve absolute reliability, safety, security, and survivability. HCSS activities include network and data security, cryptography, information survival, and system stress tolerance.

HCSS research includes the National Security Agency's (NSA's) high assurance computing platform (HACP), security management infrastructure, cryptography, active network defense, secure communications, secure network management, network security engineering, and wireless and optical technologies; NSF programs to develop "no surprise" software that behaves predictably under both normal and stressed conditions and component-based software; DARPA's formal methods (FM) program to develop concepts and tools for a formal science of software development; NIST Internet security architectures and Internet Protocol security (IPsec), intrusion detection, authorization management, and software fault analysis and specifications-based testing; and the Office of the Secretary of Defense's (OSD's) University Research Initiative (URI) five-year program to develop fault-tolerant protocols enabling continued network operation despite faults or attacks.

The HCSS Coordinating Group (HCSSCG) works closely with the other PCAs, including LSN and SDP, to coordinate the multiagency research focus on security in networks, software, and systems .

The NCO is charged by OSTP with ensuring coordination of multiagency Federal IT research by providing technical and administrative support to the IWG, assisting in the preparation of multiagency planning, budget, and evaluation materials, and supporting other activities related to the IT R&D program. The NCO serves as the central source of information and documentation about Federal IT research activities. 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.

As the central points of contact for Federal IT initiatives, the IWG and the NCO 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 programs and exchange technical and programmatic information. The NCO also supports the activities of the PITAC.

Each year, the NCO responds to thousands of inquiries with Web, print, and video information including IT R&D and PITAC publications, Congressional testimony, and meeting materials. This report, prepared by the NCO in cooperation with participating Federal agencies, documents current and planned Federal IT R&D activities, highlighting representative FY 2000 accomplishments, major FY 2001 proposals, and the budget crosscut.

This report documents current and planned Federal IT R&D activities, highlighting representative FY 2000 accomplishments, major FY 2001 proposals, and the budget crosscut.