Federal IT budgeting revisited
Once again, politics rears its ugly head. On one side, the folks charged with discovering and delivering the innovations (namely the researchers). On the other side, the folks charged with investing the nation’s IT research capital (namely the legislators). InfoWorld has an interesting article from last week in which the government attempts to explain the new IT spending initiatives. The fact that DARPA funding is now being channeled in new directions compared to the past is disturbing to many in the academic community. But according to Representative Dana Rohrabacher of California
The question is whether we should channel the amount of money being spent on research into esoteric projects at the universities that may or may not ever come to fruition and help anybody
Evidently, the academians and researchers called upon by the administration for advisory/recommendation purposes either aren’t being heard or are being ignored. Let’s hope that Rep. Rohrabacher’s understanding and opinion of research aren’t shared by the majority of his colleagues. Most academic researchers do meaningful research and they take it seriously as well. Furthermore, basic research has served as the foundation for the multitude of technological accomplishments achieved in this country. Federal budget repositioning isn’t new and no one wants to needlessly throw money away, but new directives issued by the administration are worrisome. The archive for webcasts by the House Committee on Science can be found here http://www.house.gov/science/webcast/index.htm. Check out the Computing Research Policy Blog as well as this ACM blog, which has more information on congressional hearings.
Previous CTWatch blog entries about the IT funding issues are below:
Revitalize HPC, but do it frugally
Federal supercomputing funding: Is it a consensus problem?
Former SecDef on the “technology base”
