GAO urges shift in HPCC

By Juan Antonio Osuna
CRA Staff

The General Accounting Office, an investigative arm of Congress, urged the Clinton administration to shift its $1.1 billion High-Performance Computing and Communications (HPCC) program into high gear, saying the program can no longer remain the "loosely coordinated, scientifically oriented research effort" it once was.

Specifically, the 40-page report, released in November, urged the administration to produce a detailed agenda of technical priorities, develop consistent guidelines for budget reporting, work more closely with industry and increase emphasis on software tools.

Such a technical agenda, according to GAO, would ensure that the shift toward the so-called "National Challenges" is more than just cosmetic. At the start of the Clinton administration, HPCC was expanded to meet a set of National Challenges that address education, heath care and other broad economic and social needs. To do this, the administration added a new component to HPCC called "Information Infrastructure Technology and Applications."

However, the report said, "Both participants and outside observers have questioned the extent to which the program is actually shifting its emphasis toward NII technology issues, given that the level of funding for IITA projects to develop applications in areas such as education and health care is minimal compared with funding for hardware systems development."

Funding levels for each of HPCC's five components may not reflect reality, GAO said, as each agency has its own informal guidelines for deciding which activities fall under HPCC and which components of HPCC they belong to.

For example, the report noted that the National Science Foundation includes four supercomputer centers under HPCC but not supercomputers at the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

In another example, GAO said hardware spending normally falls under the High-Performance Computing Systems component but also shows up in the Advanced Software Technology and Algorithms and Basic Research and Human Resources components, depending on the judgment of agency HPCC managers.

"Because of these inconsistent classifications, it is difficult to determine what areas HPCC is really emphasizing," GAO said, adding that better reporting procedures along with a prioritized, technical agenda would allow more strategic planning of limited HPCC funds.

Finally, the report relayed comments from industry officials that the program has neglected their needs. To remedy this, the report said the director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy should expedite the creation of an HPCC advisory committee that includes industry representatives, as originally mandated by the HPCC Act of 1991.