Rally Behind the New PITAC Report

By Ed Lazowska

Federal support for research in information technology is "dangerously inadequate" and is "taking a short-term focus," according to the Interim Report of the Presidential Information Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC), sent to the White House on August 6. "Unless steps are taken now to reinvigorate federal research in this critical area, we could see a significant reduction in the rate of progress over the coming decades. The cost to the nation of such a reduction would be significantly greater than the investments needed to address the problem now."

Chaired by Bill Joy (Sun Microsystems) and Ken Kennedy (Rice University), PITAC was established in February 1997, fulfilling a mandate of the High Performance Computing Act. A recent flurry of public activity follows a year of intensive behind-the-scenes effort by the Committee. A letter report sent to the White House on June 3 warned that recent trends will "interrupt the flow of ideas that are needed to fuel the information economy and solve critical national problems," and recommended that "over the next five years federal funding for information technology R&D be doubled or better" and "creatively managed to ensure that sufficient attention is given to innovative, long-range projects." In his June 5 commencement address at MIT, President Clinton responded by promising that his FY2000 budget "will call for significant increases in computing and communications research." The filing of the Interim Report, and the President's August 10 response in which he observed that "we have a duty -- to ourselves, to our children, and to future generations -- to make these and other farsighted investments," are the latest actions.

The key findings and recommendations of the PITAC Interim Report include:

• Information technology will be one of the key factors driving progress in the 21st century.
• Vigorous IT R&D is essential for achieving America's aspirations.
• We have had a spectacular return on past federal IT research investments.
• Current federal support for IT research is "dangerously inadequate."
• There is also a dangerous focus on near-term problems.
• As a result, "critical problems are going unsolved and we are endangering the flow of ideas that has fueled the information economy."
• Four areas of the overall research agenda particularly need attention: software, scalable information infrastructure, high-end computing, and socio-economic and workforce impacts.
• There must be new modes of research support: support for projects of broader scope and longer duration (multi-investigator, multi-year), centers for "Expeditions into the 21st Century," and "Enabling Technology Centers."
• There should be a lead agency for coordinating information technology research, probably NSF.

It is essential that those of us engaged in computing research read and absorb the PITAC Interim Report, and actively support its major themes. The "high-order bits" are uncontestable: the nation needs a greater investment in computing research, and a greater focus on high-risk long-term questions. The rest is details. Resist the temptation to circle the wagons and fire inwards! The Presidential Information Technology Advisory Committee has created an enormous opportunity, which is ours to seize or to lose.

Material related to PITAC may be found on the web at http://www.ccic.gov/ac/. Relevant presentations from the CRA Conference at Snowbird are linked from the top of theCRA homepage:http://www.cra.org.