IT Research Gains Advocate For Government Funding

U.S.-sponsored research is said to strongly benefit industry and the economy

The Computer Science and Telecommunications Board (CSTB) of the U.S. National Research Council is recommending that the federal government boost funding for fundamental information-technology research.

The recommendation comes from a report, "Innovation in Information Technology," released Sept. 22, in which the board synthesizes the results of eight studies. "America's international leadership in IT springs from a deep tradition of research," the report states. The success of that research, it continues, "reflects a complex partnership among government, industry, and universities." The report notes that corporate research chiefly addresses product and process development. By contrast, government support of fundamental research has empowered "visionary" research directors to take risks that have led to economically beneficial outcomes as well as to equally important unanticipated results. Those unexpected yields include electronic mail and instant messaging, which were by-products of 1960s research into time-sharing computing systems. The report cites government-research origins of a broad-spectrum of mainstream computing technologies including the Internet, LANs, graphical interfaces, database systems, and data mining.

The CSTB IT report also details the economic payoffs of government-sponsored research, stating: "When companies create products using the ideas and workforce that result from federally sponsored research, they repay the nation in jobs, tax revenues, productivity increases, and world leadership."

The Board recommends aggressive IT funding through government organizations including the National Science Foundation and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), as well as a continued focus on fundamental research that complements industrial research and development in emphasis, duration, and scale.

The report's recommendations are implicitly endorsed by TechNet, an organization of CEOs from IT and related U.S. companies that seeks to promote "effective politics for the innovation economy." TechNet advocates an NSF funding boost in recognition that "the pioneering research supported by NSF is the foundation of our nation's global leadership — in economic growth, technological advancement and quality of life.... NSF-supported basic research has led to advances that have fueled the growth of America's economy."

The TechNet campaign cites a 1999 report of the President's Information Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC) that stated the United States was "gravely under-investing in the long-term, high-risk research that can replenish the reservoir of ideas that will lead to innovation in IT in generations to come." PITAC figures show government IT research and development funding growth from $489 billion in FY1991 to $1,929 billion in FY2001, with a small decrease in subsequent years. The House of Representatives FY2004 NSF budget request totals $5.6 billion. DARPA annual funding, inclusive of IT research, totals about $3 billion.

— Seth Grimes

Contributing editor Seth Grimes consults on database and analytic technologies.

RESOURCES

CSTB: www7.nationalacademies.org/cstb

PITAC: www.hpcc.gov/pitac

TechNet: www.technet.org

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