CRA Testimony on the President's Information Technology
Advisory Committee's Interim Report to the President


given by Edward Lazowska, Chair, Department of Computer Science & Engineering,
University of Washington, and Chair, Board of Directors, Computing Research Association

before the Subcommittee on Basic Research,
Committee on Science, U.S. House of Representatives

October 6, 1998


Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to testify before you today on the health of the nation's computing research program. My name is Edward D. Lazowska. I am Chair of the Department of Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington, and Chair of the Board of Directors of the Computing Research Association. I also chair the National Science Foundation's Advisory Committee for the Computer and Information Science and Engineering Directorate, and sit on the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board of the National Research Council.

I am testifying today in my role as Chair of the Computing Research Association. The Computing Research Association (CRA) represents nearly 200 academic departments of computer science and computer engineering and industrial and non-profit laboratories that engage in fundamental computing research. The major professional societies in the computing fields are also CRA affiliates. Including the members of those affiliates, CRA represents a combined membership of more than 100,000 professionals involved in computing.

It is a pleasure to appear before this subcommittee to discuss the state of computing research and to give a computer science and engineering perspective on the President's Information Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC) Interim Report to the President. The House Subcommittee on Basic Research has a long and distinguished record in encouraging and shaping the nation's efforts to develop computing and computational science and engineering. This commitment dates back to your critical work in building the foundations for and overseeing the original High Performance Computing Act (HPCA), and was most recently reflected in your work on the Next Generation Internet Research Act of 1998 (H.R. 3332), recently passed by the House.

In all of this important work, you have demonstrated an awareness of four important facts:

This is why the computing research community has always stressed a balanced research portfolio. The HPCA incorporated such a balance by establishing "Basic Research and Human Resources" as one of its four priorities.

In response to your questions concerning the President's Information Technology Advisory Committee Interim Report, I would like to make two specific points:

1. The PITAC Interim Report gets the history and status exactly right

The bottom-line messages of the PITAC Interim Report, as I interpret them, are the following:

2. The PITAC Interim Report correctly proposes a balanced program of research

As my colleagues at this table have indicated in their testimony, high-end computing is of great importance — to the research communities that will use it, to other users in industry and government who will apply the techniques developed by the research users, and to the nation that will benefit from the technological advances. We also agree that there is a vital role for the federal government because of the unusual and limited commercial market for high-end machines and their importance to some government missions.

My colleagues also have indicated that high-end computing and communication is much more than hardware and fiber. It is tempting to frame computational researchers' needs starkly — faster machines and faster networks. The truth is, however, that even when narrowly construed, advancing the forefront of high-end computing and communications requires enormous and fundamental research advances in software as well as in hardware, and the needed progress in hardware in turn requires continued research advances in areas such as VLSI technology, computer-aided design tools, and computer architecture. (I should note that the programs being carried out by the NSF Partnerships for Advanced Computational Infrastructure are exemplars of this balanced approach to high-end computing and communication.)

And we agree that continued fundamental research advances in computing and communications are essential to many key areas of our nation's agenda, far beyond their critical contributions to the conduct of science and engineering. Appropriately, then, the PITAC Interim Report identified four areas for particular attention:

Conclusion

As spectacular as the rapid growth in information technology has been, the best is potentially yet to come.

Advances in communication, such as low-cost wireless systems and very-high-speed Internet technology, together with advances in computing, such as novel software capabilities and the continued improvement of 50 percent per year in cost-performance that we should be able to achieve, create entirely new possibilities that we could only dream about just a few years ago. Information technology is not only providing new tools with which to do our work, but it is fundamentally transforming the nature of that work. The PITAC Interim Report lists several visions of those changes: new, more powerful forms of human communication; greater and more flexible access by people to the knowledge base of society; on-line, lifelong education available without limitations on age, geography, or accessibility; the transformation of medical care; and new forms of electronic commerce.

These visions may seem far off, but many are, in fact, just on the horizon. Yet, to realize this promise requires more, not less, investment in fundamental research on information technology if we are to build systems that are safe, reliable, efficient, and useable.

In science policy, at the end of all the debates over why and how and where, the bottom- line (and toughest) question always seems to focus on level of funding. The PITAC Interim Report suggests increasing support for computing research by $1 billion over the next five years. Given what we, as well as the PITAC, see as a severe shortfall in support at this time, we concur with that recommendation. The enormous potential for the nation justifies this investment.

We concur in this recommendation while fully understanding that, despite the easing of the past budget crunch, demands for funds are still very tight, and there are many conflicting views on how to direct future government spending. Nevertheless, we believe that our current economic strength rests in no small measure on past investments in computing and communications research, and that the future holds similar promise. As the new kid on the block, so to speak, computing research has had to fight from its inception for a share of the R&D pot. When research budgets were growing rapidly, that was not a problem. In more recent years, though, the zero-sum game has become more difficult, and setting priorities based on societal importance is not a popular concept in some science policy circles.

CRA, together with our colleagues in industry and academia, is committed to working toward the goal set by the PITAC. We know it will be difficult, and we recognize that a heavy burden of proof rests with us. But we feel that a renewed commitment to computing research, as called for in the report, is both an appropriate and necessary step toward assuring the future economic, social, and scientific strength of our nation. We look forward to working with this subcommittee to put substantial flesh on the bones of the recommendations in this report.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the opportunity to testify today. I would be happy to address any questions you may have.

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