Defense Appropriations - House and Senate each approve their respective versions of the FY 2003 Department of Defense Appropriations, H.R. 5010. The House bill includes $11.3 billion for Defense Research, Development, Test and Evaluation (RDT&E) in FY 2003, including $1.41 billion for basic research, $54 million more than the President request for FY 2003. DARPA's Computing Systems and Communications Technology account would grow to $425 million in FY 2003, $500,0000 over the President's request. The House plan would also provide $60 million for DARPA's Embedded Software and Pervasive Computing program.
The Senate version of the bill includes $10.7 billion in RDT&E funding in FY 2003, slightly less than the House version, but includes $1.49 billion in basic research funding. The Senate plan would increase DARPA's Computing Systems and Communications Technology account by $59 million over the FY 2002 level, but still fall $7 million short of the President's requested level.
The bill goes to conference in September.
House Committee Report - Senate Committee Report
VA-HUD-Independent Agencies Appropriations (NSF) - Senate Panel Approves Big Increases at NSF, CISE
Before leaving for Congress' traditional August break, Senate appropriators approved a 14.8 percent increase to the National Science Foundation's (NSF) research account over FY 2002, a move that would set the agency on a funding trajectory that could lead to doubling the agency's research budget in five years. The measure approved by the Senate Appropriations Committee, the VA-HUD-Independent Agencies Appropriations Act of 2003 (S. 2797), would increase funding at NSF by $564 million over its FY 2002 budget, an increase of 11.8 percent overall. Included in that increase is a nearly 20 percent increase to the Computing and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) directorate over FY 2002, an increase of $92 million over the current year budget.
The Committee's recommendation would set CISE's total funding level at $616.94 million for FY 2003, including $10 million for terascale computing systems, $25 million for new cyber security research grants, and $15 million to support advanced broadband research. In its report accompanying the bill, the Committee justified the additional funding for cyber security research by noting that the Nation has become vulnerable to cyber-attacks, "in part, because critical aspects of daily life rely on computer systems, networks and the internet (e.g., water systems and electricity grids)." The report goes on to note that "currently available technologies provide inadequate protection, yet relatively little research is being conducted to develop new approaches to protecting computer systems and networks. The private sector has had little incentive to invest in cyber security because the market emphasizes only speed and convenience," and that "the Federal Government has not filled the gap, but instead has chronically underinvested in cyber security." The Committee's recommendation of $25 million to be used to support further research in cyber security is intended for both individual investigators and a number of interdisciplinary research centers in computer and network security research.
The Committee also noted favorably the recent report of the NSF Blue Ribbon Commission on Cyber-infrastructure, praising the commission's vision of greatly expanded research in high-performance computing, optical networking, software applications, and large-scale digital libraries. "Such an initiative," the Committee believes, "if focused around a number of critically important challenges, could accelerate the pace of discovery in all science and engineering disciplines, and serve as a 'multiplier' for the Government's substantial investment in R&D. The Committee urges NSF to give this careful consideration in developing the fiscal year 2004 proposal."
The bill is likely to receive consideration by the full Senate in September. The House has not yet completed work on its version of the bill. While the House is not expected to be as generous as the Senate, there remains strong support among House members to approve significant increases at NSF. In June, the House overwhelmingly passed a measure introduced by Science Subcommittee on Research Chairman Nick Smith (R-MI) that authorized funding at NSF on a schedule that would double its budget in five years ("authorized" just means the appropriators have been granted the authority to spend up to that level, however, it's no guarantee that they'll use all that authority). The House is also on record having supported an increase of at least 8 percent to NSF's research budget for FY 2003, a level included in the House-passed FY 2003 Budget Resolution.
