Submitter:

Name:Owen Ambur

Email:Owen.Ambur@verizon.net

Organization:

Name:U.S. Networking and Information Technology Research and Development Program

Acronym:NITRD

Stakeholder(s):

• Executive Office of the President


• National Science and Technology Council: About the National Science and Technology Council -- The National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) is the principal means by which the Executive Branch coordinates science and technology policy across the diverse entities that make up the Federal research and development enterprise. A primary objective of the NSTC is establishing clear national goals for Federal science and technology investments. The NSTC prepares research and development strategies that are coordinated across Federal agencies to form investment packages aimed at accomplishing multiple national goals. The work of the NSTC is organized under five committees: Environment, Natural Resources and Sustainability; Homeland and National Security; Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) Education; Science; and Technology. Each of these committees oversees subcommittees and working groups focused on different aspects of science and technology. More information is available at http://www.whitehouse.gov/ostp/nstc.


• John P. Holdren: National Science and Technology Council Chair; Assistant to the President for Science and Technology; Director, Office of Science and Technology Policy


• Pedro I. Espina: Staff: Executive Director of the National Science and Technology Council & Executive Secretary of the Committee on Technology


• Committee on Technology


• Thomas C. Power: Committee on Technology Chair; Deputy Chief Technology Officer of the United States for Telecommunications, Office of Science & Technology Policy


• Office of Science and Technology Policy: About the Office of Science and Technology Policy -- The Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) was established by the National Science and Technology Policy, Organization, and Priorities Act of 1976. OSTP's responsibilities include advising the President in policy formulation and budget development on questions in which science and technology are important elements; articulating the President's science and technology policy and programs; and fostering strong partnerships among Federal, state, and local governments, and the scientific communities in industry and academia. The Director of OSTP also serves as Assistant to the President for Science and Technology and manages the NSTC. More information is available at http://www.whitehouse.gov/ostp.


• Subcommittee on Networking and Information Technology Research and Development: About the Subcommittee on Networking and Information Technology Research and Development -- The Subcommittee coordinates the multi-agency Networking and Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD) Program to help: * Assure continued U.S. leadership in networking and information technology * Satisfy the needs of the Federal government for advanced networking and information technology * Accelerate development and deployment of advanced networking and information technology This focus enables the United States to maintain world leadership in science and engineering, enhance national defense and national U.S. productivity and competitiveness and promote longterm economic growth, improve the health of the U.S. citizenry, protect the environment, improve education, training, and lifelong learning, and improve the quality of life. It also implements relevant provisions of the High Performance Computing Act of 1991 (P.L. 102-194), as amended by the Next Generation Internet Research Act of 1998 (P. L. 105-305), and the America Creating Opportunities to Meaningfully Promote Excellence in Technology, Education and Science (COMPETES) Act of 2007 (P.L. 110-69). For more information, visit http://www.nitrd.gov/.


• George O. Strawn: Subcommittee on Networking and Information Technology Research and Development Co-chair -- Director, National Coordination Office for Networking and Information Technology Research and Development


• Farnam Jahanian: Subcommittee on Networking and Information Technology Research and Development Co-chair -- Assistant Director, Computer and Information Science and Engineering Directorate, National Science Foundation


• Bryan A. Biegel: Subcommittee on Networking and Information Technology Research and Development Member -- Acting Deputy Division Chief, Advanced Supercomputing Division. National Aeronautics and Space Administration


• Alan Blatecky: Subcommittee on Networking and Information Technology Research and Development Member -- Director, Office of Cyberinfrastructure. National Science Foundation


• Robert Chadduck: Subcommittee on Networking and Information Technology Research and Development Member -- Principal Technologist for Applied Research, National Archives and Records Administration


• Pedro I. Espina: Subcommittee on Networking and Information Technology Research and Development Member -- Program Analyst. Office of Science & Technology Policy


• J. Michael Fitzmaurice: Subcommittee on Networking and Information Technology Research and Development Member -- Senior Science Advisor for Information Technology, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality


• Marilyn Freeman: Subcommittee on Networking and Information Technology Research and Development Member -- Deputy Assistant Secretary for Research & Technology, Army


• Douglas B. Fridsma: Subcommittee on Networking and Information Technology Research and Development Member -- Director, Office of Standards and Interoperability, Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology


• Deborah A. Frincke: Subcommittee on Networking and Information Technology Research and Development Member -- Deputy Director of Research, National Security Agency


• Arti Garg: Subcommittee on Networking and Information Technology Research and Development Member -- Program Examiner, Office of Management and Budget


• Robert Gold: Subcommittee on Networking and Information Technology Research and Development Member -- Director, Information Systems and Cyber Security, Office of the Secretary of Defense


• Daniel A. Hitchcock: Subcommittee on Networking and Information Technology Research and Development Member -- Associate Director, Office of Advanced Scientific Computing Research, Department of Energy, Office of Science


• Charles J. Holland: Subcommittee on Networking and Information Technology Research and Development Member -- Special Programs, Microsystems Technology Office, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency


• Douglas Maughan: Subcommittee on Networking and Information Technology Research and Development Member -- Division Director, Cyber Security R&D, Science and Technology Directorate, Department of Homeland Security


• Robert Meisner: Subcommittee on Networking and Information Technology Research and Development Member -- Director, Office of Advanced Simulation and Computing, Department of Energy, National Nuclear Security Administration


• David Michaud: Subcommittee on Networking and Information Technology Research and Development Member -- Director, High Performance Computing & Communications Office, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration


• Kam Ng: Subcommittee on Networking and Information Technology Research and Development Member -- Deputy Director of Research, Office of Naval Research, Navy


• Charles H. Romine: Subcommittee on Networking and Information Technology Research and Development Member -- Director, Information Technology Laboratory, National Institute of Standards and Technology


• Vacant: Subcommittee on Networking and Information Technology Research and Development Member -- Director, Center for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology, National Institutes of Health


• Gary L. Walter: Subcommittee on Networking and Information Technology Research and Development Member -- Computer Scientist, Atmospheric Modeling and Analysis Division, Environmental Protection Agency


• Lt. Col. Dan Ward: Subcommittee on Networking and Information Technology Research and Development Member -- Chief of Acquisition Innovation, Air Force


• Virginia Moore: Subcommittee on Networking and Information Technology Research and Development Staff -- Executive Secretary


• U.S. Federal Government: The Federal Role -- In 1991, the legislative mandate for coordination of Federal IT R&D focused on networking and highend computing (then the two technologies deemed vital for Federal missions).29 Today, advanced information technologies of many different kinds play essential and critical roles in every high-priority government mission addressing the Nation's goals and needs, and all Federal agencies rely on IT capabilities and benefit from IT research advances.


• NITRD Agencies: Collaboration in Support of Mission Requirements -- The framework for multiagency coordination of Federal IT research, continuously evolving to encompass the widening range of technologies and application domains, has proven to be highly effective. Collaboration among the Federal research agencies in the NITRD Program has become an intellectual and scientific imperative imposed by the diversity, complexity, interdependencies, and dynamism of contemporary IT environments. No single agency or disciplinary skill set can span more than a fraction of the IT knowledge base and investigative frontiers. Through coordination, agencies identify common mission requirements, assure focused research efforts in time-critical R&D components, and share information on addressing IT's higher-risk, higher-payoff challenges. By leveraging each other's common interests, work products, and technical expertise, NITRD agencies derive increased value and cost-effectiveness from Federal research investments and assure R&D coverage across the entire spectrum of technologies and domains. Such combined efforts produce broadly applicable results that no one agency could attain on its own and that propel innovation. For example, the field of telemedicine -- including two-way telepresence, remote diagnostic and haptic devices, and robotic surgical systems -- emerged out of pioneering collaborative investigations and proofs-of-concept primarily funded by NIH/National Library of Medicine (NLM), NSF, DoD, NASA, and the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA).


• NIH


• National Library of Medicine (NLM)


• NSF


• DoD


• NASA


• Department of Veterans Affairs (VA)


• Federal Laboratories: Infrastructure for Leadership -- The multidisciplinary reach of Federal NITRD funding is extended through R&D activities in Federal laboratories, universities, research institutions, and partnerships with industry. These diversified efforts engage thousands of researchers and their students in the intellectual challenges of networking and IT and provide the principal source of education and training for the new generations of IT researchers, inventors, entrepreneurs, and technical professionals the Nation needs. In addition, the Program's emphasis on coordination and collaboration across agencies and private sector institutions helps promote the transfer of research results and prototypes to Federal nonresearch agencies and out to the marketplace. For example, the NITRD advanced-networking agencies have collaborated with private-sector partner Internet 2 in developing an infrastructure called perfSONAR that makes it possible, for the first time, to automatically measure the performance of optical networks across multiple domains. Optical networking technology is at the leading edge of next-generation networking speeds and capacity. Accurate performance information is needed by network operators, managers, and security enforcers to support isolating and correcting network bottlenecks and anomalies; to support the configuration of network links in dynamic environments; and to detect, isolate, and correct security breaches and problems. Information on network segments in each domain is needed, requiring cooperation among the agencies and science networks maintaining these domains and network links. As a result of NITRD efforts, the perfSONAR infrastructure is being adopted by science networks, commercial network managers, and international science networks through cooperative development and deployment. NITRD coordination of advanced technological capabilities to support Federal missions also helps define national research needs in critical technologies, such as high-end systems, advanced networking, cyber-physical systems, and cyber security and information assurance. In addition, the NITRD research portfolio promotes the types of multidisciplinary thinking and approaches that are necessary to develop highly complex systems of systems with a myriad of heterogeneous components.


• Universities


• Research Institutions


• Industry


• Researchers


• Students


• IT Researchers


• Inventors


• Entrepreneurs


• Technical Professionals


• Private Sector Institutions


• Internet 2


• Research Partners: Partnership Synergies Are Essential -- Since the dawn of the digital age, U.S. technological and economic innovation has been fueled by continuing cycles of basic exploration, experimentation, prototype implementation, feedback, and deployment of novel products. This "ecosystem" for innovation encompasses Federal researchers, private-sector researchers and developers, students and educational institutions, entrepreneurs, industries, and end users. Today, such interactions are more necessary than ever, and many forms of engagement are needed at global scales. Strengthening security in cyberspace, for example, will require international collaboration among governments, service providers, researchers, standards organizations, law enforcement, and other stakeholders on security architectures and protocols, crime investigation, and identity management, among other issues. In a related area—the robustness and end-to-end performance of the U.S. cyber infrastructure -- partnerships between government and industry in realistic-scale testbeds, technology standards, and prototype deployments of new infrastructure models such as clouds are essential to speed research advances in networking and network security to the marketplace. Innovative partnerships with the open-source software development community also should be pursued, including policy frameworks that recognize intellectual property. The exploration initiated by NITRD agencies in recent years of open-source approaches to address the challenges of complex and ultra-scale software should be continued and expanded. Foundational long-term R&D is required to maintain a full pipeline of scientific findings and concepts for the future. This role is played by Federal research investments in advanced sciences, technology, and engineering, which complement industry's focus on bringing new products rapidly to market. The NITRD Program's vision for the future aligns with the strategic plans of its member agencies to pursue such fundamental technological advances as essential means of addressing the some of Nation's most critical needs. The NITRD Strategic Plan recognizes, however, that the scale and complexity of 21st century national challenges demand ongoing outreach and partnership development by the NITRD enterprise to generate synergies in the Nation's broader IT ecosystem that can accelerate beneficial advances for society and the world. The NITRD agencies look forward to working with the research community, the private sector, and IT stakeholders everywhere to realize the future of promise described in this strategic plan.