[Senate Hearing 106-1091]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 106-1091
S. 2046, NEXT GENERATION INTERNET IN THE PRESIDENT'S FISCAL YEAR 2001
BUDGET
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, AND SPACE
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON COMMERCE,
SCIENCE, AND TRANSPORTATION
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED SIXTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
MARCH 1, 2000
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Commerce, Science, and
Transportation
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WASHINGTON : 2002
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SENATE COMMITTEE ON COMMERCE, SCIENCE, AND TRANSPORTATION
ONE HUNDRED SIXTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
JOHN McCAIN, Arizona, Chairman
TED STEVENS, Alaska ERNEST F. HOLLINGS, South Carolina
CONRAD BURNS, Montana DANIEL K. INOUYE, Hawaii
SLADE GORTON, Washington JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER IV, West
TRENT LOTT, Mississippi Virginia
KAY BAILEY HUTCHISON, Texas JOHN F. KERRY, Massachusetts
OLYMPIA J. SNOWE, Maine JOHN B. BREAUX, Louisiana
JOHN ASHCROFT, Missouri RICHARD H. BRYAN, Nevada
BILL FRIST, Tennessee BYRON L. DORGAN, North Dakota
SPENCER ABRAHAM, Michigan RON WYDEN, Oregon
SAM BROWNBACK, Kansas MAX CLELAND, Georgia
Mark Buse, Staff Director
Martha P. Allbright, General Counsel
Kevin D. Kayes, Democratic Staff Director
Moses Boyd, Democratic Chief Counsel
------
Subcommittee on Science, Technology, and Space
BILL FRIST, Tennessee, Chairman
CONRAD BURNS, Montana JOHN B. BREAUX, Louisiana
KAY BAILEY HUTCHISON, Texas JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER IV, West
TED STEVENS, Alaska Virginia
SPENCER ABRAHAM, Michigan JOHN F. KERRY, Massachusetts
BYRON L. DORGAN, North Dakota
C O N T E N T S
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Page
Hearing held March 1, 2000....................................... 1
Statement of Senator Frist....................................... 1
Prepared statement........................................... 4
Statement of Senator Rockefeller, IV............................. 25
Witnesses
Lane, Neal, Ph.D., Assistant to the President for Science and
Technology, and Director, Office of Science and Technology
Policy......................................................... 5
Prepared statement........................................... 7
Colwell, Rita R., Ph.D., Director, National Science Foundation... 12
Prepared statement........................................... 14
Lindberg, Donald A.B., M.D., Director, National Library of
Medicine....................................................... 18
Prepared statement........................................... 21
Meredith, Thomas Carter, Ed.D., Chancellor, The University of
Alabama System................................................. 31
Stacy, Bill, Ph.D., Chancellor, The University of Tennessee at
Chattanooga.................................................... 33
Prepared statement........................................... 36
Tolbert, Stephen, President and Chief Executive Officer, Global
Systems & Strategies, Inc...................................... 41
Prepared statement........................................... 44
Appendix
Breaux, Hon., John B., U.S. Senator from Louisiana, prepared
statement...................................................... 53
Hollings, Hon., Ernest F., U.S. Senator from South Carolina,
prepared statement............................................. 53
Houweling, Douglas Van, President and CEO, University Corporation
for Advanced Internet Development, prepared statement.......... 54
Response to written questions by Hon. Bill Frist to:
Dr. Rita R. Colwell.......................................... 56
Dr. Neal Lane................................................ 59
Dr. Donald A.B. Lindberg..................................... 55
S. 2046, NEXT GENERATION INTERNET IN THE PRESIDENTS FISCAL YEAR 2001
BUDGET
----------
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 1, 2000
U.S.Senate,
Subcommittee on Science, Technology, and Space,
Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:42 p.m., in
room SR-253, Russell Senate Office Building, Hon. Bill Frist,
chairman of the subcommittee, presiding.
Staff members assigned to this hearing: Elizabeth Prostic,
Republican professional staff; and Jean Toal Eisen, Democratic
professional staff.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. BILL FRIST,
U.S. SENATOR FROM TENNESSEE
Senator Frist. Good afternoon. I want to welcome all of our
guests here today.
As the Subcommittee on Science, Technology, and Space
convenes its first hearing of the millennium, it is
appropriate, I believe, that the Next Generation Internet
occupies the prestigious position of being the first hearing
before this committee in this millennium. The Internet that is
one of the most significant developments of the last decade.
Its significance, we all know, is not limited to the new
industries that it has created, nor even the new educational
opportunities that it affords. The impact of the Internet goes
beyond all of those things and really delves into many areas we
have not yet explored.
We look back at the development of electronic commerce. We
have seen the Internet radically alter the economic landscape
of this country. Advances in industries are taking place at
breakneck speed, faster and faster each and every day. And at
the heart of all of this are really two components, as we all
know. One is computers and the advances made in computer
sciences, and the other is communications. More and more, we
are seeing that the Internet really is the combination of
computers and communications going hand in hand.
If we wanted to look at a prototypical success story, I
think we should look at the development of the Internet. There
are so many different dimensions that we have all either been a
part of or studied or touched upon. There is the element of the
public and private collaboration. There is the element of the
successful commercial application of technology that was first
part of Federal mission-directed research. It also shows a
successful transition of an operational system from initially
the public sector over to the private sector.
But, and what I brag about (because people ask me all the
time, ``How in the world could you leave medicine to go to the
public
sector?'') is that it shows one of the great investments and
payoffs of the public sector: the public investment. And now we
have had so much success and so much positive change that we
have a whole new set of challenges before us. With the advent
of tools that have made the Internet more accessible and more
easy to use, there has been an explosion in the amount of
traffic that none of us, even 10 years ago, would have
predicted.
As computers become more powerful and applications more
sophisticated and more advanced, and user interface becomes
easier and easier to use and to manipulate, we can look
forward, clearly, to an even greater demand for network
bandwidth. So we have all the revolutionary advances to date,
how they affect our daily lives, but, again, we have to see
where we are today, see what challenges there are, what
barriers there are in terms of speed and reliability and
accessibility and versatility. So I think now, really more than
ever, over the last 5 years, it is a useful time to see how we
can invest in that next generation, in that next step.
And then, we will see the unfolding of great new
technologies. Again, drawing upon my own personal experience,
the miraculous rewards that we will see with telemedicine
delivering care and the exchange of the benefits of science
with communities that simply do not have access today. Distance
learning in our lifetime, I have the opportunity of sitting on
a board of a major higher education institution, and the
dominant theme in our last board meeting was: What about
distance learning? How involved do we get? How does it change
the culture of learning? How does it change the nature of our
great higher educational institutions?
I initially introduced the Next Generation Internet
Research Act in 1998. And if we just go back to that period of
time and look at enactment, you can go down the list--you see
the National Science Foundation since that time has connected
over 170 universities and other facilities to look at a test
bed with hundredfold increase in network performance. And in
the Department of Defense, there is currently a deployment of a
test bed with a thousandfold increased performance at over 20
sites to support networking research and applications
deployment.
So we look at these areas of real success over the last 3
years, but I also think that it is really clear that there are
areas where we have not progressed, where there are certain
limitations and certain barriers. In the review of the first 2
years of NGI, the President's Information Technology Advisory
Committee recommended that the program should continue to focus
on the utility of NGI's giga bandwidth to end users, its
increased security and its expanded quality of service.
Importantly, the committee shared Congress' concern that no
Federal program specifically addresses the geographical penalty
issue and the imposition of costs on users that are different,
depending on where they are located, specifically, in rural and
less urban areas, where the costs, disproportionately, are
greater than the cost imposed on users in more urban locations,
locations of higher populations. And this is a disappointment.
As I look back, and as we look at that oversight, it is a
disappointment that that has not been more adequately
addressed.
And we foresaw that in Congress. We thought we had
addressed this geographic penalty, in part, through the
authorization of NGI in 1998. But my sense is that it was not
taken as seriously as it might be.
Today we are going to hear from two panels of experts. And
let me apologize in advance. As I mentioned to our panelists,
we are in the middle of a series of votes. And my colleagues
are actually still on the floor voting. And when they call the
next vote, I will likely suspend the hearing for a few minutes
and run over and vote and come back. So I want to apologize in
advance.
I am very excited about our two panels today. The first
will consist of the President's Science Policy Advisor, Dr.
Neal Lane, and other administration leaders, who will testify
about ongoing research and development projects and programs
being performed at their respective agencies. Also, I hope that
we will look at some of the budgetary issues and highlight some
of the new initiatives that the White House is undertaking this
year.
The second panel will shift perspective, and we will hear
from private industry pioneers, who will address some of the
endless possibilities of the Internet and help paint the
picture of the transformation that is associated with progress
in Internet and Internet technology. We will also hear from two
prominent university presidents, who offer a different view of
the Next Generation Internet: how their institutions, their
students and their faculties, in some ways, are being left
behind.
So we have tremendous advances, tremendous inroads in the
broad range of fields, yet we have one other area that I think
has to be addressed in our panels and discussion today. And
that is the digital divide. We are just simply leaving behind
too many of our fellow Americans.
Internet II, which is a powerful consortium of over 150
universities and colleges, has a high, exorbitantly high, entry
fee which simply precludes participation by both universities
who will testify today. And I think that sends an important
message to us as we address this issue of the digital divide. I
have introduced legislation, with Senator Rockefeller and other
colleagues, to address many of these geographical barriers.
I would also like to focus our hearing today on the
President's new budget request for the NGI and large-scale
networking programs. I hope the administration will be able to
help the committee understand the nuances of these programs,
despite what seems to be name changes each year. And, again,
that is going to require both some talking today, and working
with the committees and our staffs.
With that, let us go directly to our first panel. Let me
simply say that I would like each witness to try to present his
or her testimony in about 5 minutes. That means you will have
to summarize your entire opening statements. Written opening
statements will be made a part of the record. We will begin
with the first panel. I will probably have to leave after Dr.
Lane, but we will see what happens with this next vote.
Our first panelist, Dr. Neal Lane, is Assistant to the
President for Science and Technology and Director of the Office
of Science and Technology Policy. He is a familiar face in this
particular room, and I want to thank him in advance for
participating so actively, so aggressively in the overall
development of science policy. He is followed by Dr. Rita
Colwell, Director of the National Science Foundation; and Dr.
Donald Lindberg, Director of the National Library of Medicine.
Let us begin with Dr. Lane, and we will proceed in that
order.
Dr. Lane, welcome.
[The prepared statement of Senator Frist follows:]
Prepared Statement of Hon. Bill Frist, U.S. Senator from Tennessee
I would like to welcome all of our guests here today as the
Subcommittee on Science, Technology, and Space convenes its first
hearing of the millennium. It is rather appropriate I believe that the
Next Generation Internet (NGI) should occupy this prestigious position.
After all, the Internet is one of the most significant developments of
the last decade. Its significance is not limited to the new industries
that it has created, nor the new educational opportunities that it
affords.
The impact of the Internet goes beyond those things. With the
development of electronic commerce, the Internet has radically altered
the economic landscape of this country. Advances in industries are
taking place at a faster and faster pace. At the heart of this
exponential rate of change are two things: computers and
communications. More and more we are seeing that computers and
communications means the Internet.
If you had to find a prototypical success story, it could very well
be the Internet. There are in fact, multiple dimensions to its success.
It was and is a successful public-private collaboration. It
demonstrated successful commercial application of technology developed
as part of federal mission-directed research program. It showed a
successful transition of an operational system from the public to the
private sector. Perhaps most of all, it is a prime example of a
successful federal investment.
In some respects the Internet is now ``suffering'' from too much
success. With the advent of tools that have made the Internet easy to
use, there has been an explosion in the growth of network traffic. As
computers become more powerful, applications more sophisticated, and
the user interfaces become easier to use, we can look forward to an
even greater demand for network bandwidth.
As we marvel about the revolutionary advances of the Internet and
its ability to improve our daily lives, we often forget that the
Internet is reaching its maximum potential because of the constraints
on its speed, reliability, accessibility, and versatility. Therefore,
now more than ever, we must look to the future and invest in the next
generation Internet. If we want to experience the miraculous rewards of
telemedicine and distance learning in our lifetime, we must, as a
nation, continue to invest in research and develop advanced networking
technologies.
Since the enactment of the original ``Next Generation Internet
Research Act'', which I introduced in 1998, the National Science
Foundation has connected over 170 universities and facilities to a
testbed providing a 100-fold increase in network performance. And the
Department of Defense is currenily deploying a testbed with 1000-fold
increased performance at over twenty sites to support networking
research and applications deployment. As we applaud the success of the
first three years of the NGI initiative, we must also realize its
current limitations.
In the review of the first two years of NGI, the President's
Information Technology Advisory Committee recommended that the program
should continue to focus on the utility of NGI's gigabit bandwidth to
end-users, its increased security, and its expanded quality of service.
More importantly, the committee shared Congress' concern that no
federal program specifically addresses the geographical penalty issue--
the imposition of costs on users of the Internet in rural or other
locations that are disproportionately greater than the costs imposed on
users in locations closer to high populations. I must admit that this
is a great disappointment for myself and my colleagues who fought to
combat this geographical penalty through the authorization of NGI in
1998. Unfortunately, the White House did not take us seriously.
We will hear today from two panels experts. The first will consist
of the President's Science Policy Advisor, Dr. Neal Lane, and other
administration leaders who will testify about the ongoing R&D projects
and programs being performed at their respective agencies. They will
also address budgetary issues and highlight new initiatives that the
White House is undertaking this year.
Our second ranel will offer a different perspective. Two innovative
private industry pioneers will address the endless possibilities of the
Internet and its potential to transform and save lives. However, we
will also hear from two prominent university presidents who offer a
different view of the next generation Internet. Their institutions,
their students, and their faculty are being left behind. While
scientists throughout the country have made tremendous inroads during
the past few decades, the digital divide makes the truth clear and
simple: we are leaving many of our fellow Americans behind. Internet2,
a powerful consortium of over 150 universities and colleges, charges an
exorbitant entry fee which precludes participation from both
universities that will testify before us today. I have introduced
legislation with Senator Rockefeller and other colleagues to eliminate
these geographical barriers.
I would like to focus our hearing today on the President's new
budget request for the NGI and Large Scale Networking programs. I hope
that the administration will he able to help the committee understand
the nuances of these programs, despite the constant name changes from
year to year. Thank you.
STATEMENT OF NEAL LANE, PH.D., ASSISTANT TO THE PRESIDENT FOR
SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, AND DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF SCIENCE AND
TECHNOLOGY POLICY
Dr. Lane. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the
subcommittee. I want to thank you for this opportunity to
testify about the important research and development
investments proposed by S. 2046, the Next Generation Internet
2000 Act.
These crucial investments would strengthen and expand
research authorized, thanks to your sponsorship, by the NGI Act
of 1998. The Administration has been heartened by the active
bipartisan support for efforts to strengthen our Nation's
investment in information technology research. Your leadership
here in the Senate, Mr. Chairman and members of the
subcommittee, has been instrumental in building support for
Federal IT research, which promises to pay enormous dividends
for the American people.
Today we live in an era of unprecedented promise and
prosperity, built on advances in science and technology.
Creative businesses have translated the results of federally
funded advanced research into innovative products and services
that enhance our daily lives. Nowhere is this more dramatically
illustrated than in the IT sector. New computing, networking
and communication tools allow Americans to shop, to do
homework, to get health care advice online, and enable
businesses of all sizes to successfully compete in the
international economy.
More than a third of all U.S. economic growth over the past
5 years is attributable to this sector. Today, more than 13
million Americans hold IT-related jobs. Over 800,000 jobs were
created by IT companies in the past year alone. Information
technology is changing everything in ways we do not yet fully
understand.
This remarkable progress has been built on a foundation of
Federal research investments, leveraged by universities and
industry. The President's Information Technology Advisory
Committee, or PITAC, has emphasized that continued Federal
investment is essential to maintain this momentum. We have
heeded PITAC's recommendations in the President's fiscal year
2001 budget.
Our fiscal year 2001 budget presents a single, integrated
information technology R&D portfolio, as recommended by PITAC,
which includes the Base High Performance Computing and
Communication programs, including Next Generation Internet, the
new activities established by last year's Information
Technology for the 21st Century Initiative, and the DOE's
Accelerated Strategic Computer Initiative, or ASCI. The
President is requesting $2.315 billion for IT research and
development, 35 percent more than last year's appropriations.
Under NSF's leadership, the agencies will continue to
support the following goals, based on PITAC's recommendations:
improvements in software to enhance privacy and security of
data, along with improvements in the ease of use; continued
advances in high-speed computing and communications; and a
better understanding of the social, economic and other impacts
of IT, with emphasis on ensuring that all Americans will
benefit from these technologies. The President's request for IT
research and development addresses all of these goals.
Your NGI 2000 Act authorizes the large-scale networking
component of our program, which represents about 13 percent of
the President's overall fiscal year 2001 budget for information
technology R&D. Your support, indicated in S. 2046, is a very
important first step toward meeting our national needs for
information technology research. Fast, reliable, ubiquitous
networks provide the lifeblood for the 21st century economy.
Networking research is a core element of our Federal IT
research portfolio. And the Administration welcomes your
support for these important activities.
We feel strongly, however, that networking research must be
conducted as an integral part of a program providing balanced
investment in IT research, as well as research in social, legal
and ethical issues raised by advances in information
technology. This approach, which guided development of our
interagency information technology R&D program, is consistent
with PITAC's directive to strengthen our Federal information
technology research programs by providing adequate funding for
a complete and balanced IT research portfolio.
We were pleased to see the Committee address one of the
Administration's priorities, the digital divide, in several
sections of the bill. We are concerned, however, that specific
set-asides provided for institutions in rural communities and
minority serving institutions may not be the most efficient and
effective way to provide greater opportunities for these
institutions. We would like to work with you to ensure that
existing mechanisms and programs are strengthened, to permit
greater participation in federally funded IT research and
access to the IT R&D resources.
Also, we note that the bill directs the National Academy of
Sciences to conduct a digital divide study. The Administration
believes that this requirement should be deleted, because it
duplicates efforts already underway at the Department of
Commerce.
Finally, the proposed legislation does not appear to
authorize funding for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration, NOAA, a long-time participant in the Federal IT
programs and one of the agencies developing key NGI
applications. We hope that the subcommittee will modify its
proposal to authorize funding for NOAA, as outlined in the
President's budget.
Mr. Chairman, as you know, our staffs have worked closely
together during the initial drafting of your bill, and I am
heartened to see the continued interactions our offices have on
many issues of importance to the entire science and technology
enterprise, and I thank you for that.
So, in conclusion, we thank you and the subcommittee for
your continued support of IT research. The strong bipartisan
support generated by these and complementary proposals allows
us to invest in America's future and ensure its continued
prosperity. We believe strongly that the President's proposal
for a comprehensive IT R&D portfolio is essential to the
Nation's prosperity and its ability to secure public benefits,
ranging from national security to environmental protection.
And I look forward, Mr. Chairman, to working with the
Committee on these issues in the weeks ahead. Thank you very
much.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Lane follows:]
Prepared Statement of Neal Lane, Ph.D., Assistant to the President for
Science and Technology, and Director, Office of Science and Technology
Policy
Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee, thank you for this
opportunity to testify about the important research and development
investments proposed by S. 2046, the Next Generation Internet (NGI)
2000 Act. These investments are a vital portion of the Administration's
information technology (IT) research portfolio that strengthens and
expands the important Federal networking research authorized, thanks to
your sponsorship, by the NGI Act of 1998.
The Administration has been very encouraged by the active
bipartisan support which both chambers of Congress have provided for
efforts to strengthen our nation's investments in information
technology research and development and we look forward to continued
support for the exciting new work proposed in the Administration's
proposed FY2001 budget. Here in the Senate, your leadership, Mr.
Chairman and that of the members of the Subcommittee, has been
especially instrumental in helping your colleagues recognize that the
advances in information technology which are so vital to the overall
success of our nation's scientific and technical expertise, as well as
to its economic prosperity, require a foundation of wise, sustained
Federal research investments.
We are enjoying a time of unprecedented possibilities and
prosperity, built on advances in science and technology enabled by
Federal support for R&D. Creative businesses have translated the
results of Federally funded advanced research into innovative products
and services enjoyed today. This innovation has improved our quality of
life, strengthened our national security, and unleashed an
extraordinary era of post-war economic growth. Many of America's
industries are now the most competitive and technologically advanced in
the world. The Federal government has had an important role in
sharpening our high-tech edge. Through policies such as investing in
education, encouraging private-public partnerships, and limiting
regulation of the Internet, the Administration has enhanced
opportunities for scientific discovery and allowed innovation to
flourish. Most importantly, as the President noted in his February 24
remarks to the Granoff Forum at the University of Pennsylvania, this
Administration has worked to accelerate R&D at every level--pushing for
an extension of the Research and Experimentation tax credit and
increasing our national science and technology budget every single year
over the last seven years.
The Nation Benefits from Federal IT R&D Investments
The case for sustained and adequate Federal investments in R&D is
made most dramatically in the information technology sector. The
President's Information Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC) notes
that ``that the technical advances that led to today's information
tools, such as electronic computers and the Internet, began with
Federal Government support of research in partnership with industry and
universities. These innovations depended on patient investment in
fundamental and applied research.'' The PITAC emphasizes, however, that
continued Federal investment is essential to maintain this momentum. In
their February 1999 report to the President, Information Technology
Research: Investing in Our Future, the PITAC called for doubling
Federal IT R&D investments over five years and expanding the existing
coordinated interagency research programs to achieve a more balanced
research portfolio. The Administration responded to the PITAC's
proposals in FY 2000 with a major increase in IT research funding
through the Information Technology for the Twenty-First Century
initiative. We continue to build on the PITAC's recommendations with
the programs recommended in the President's FY 2001 budget.
Although the dividends that our nation has reaped from past Federal
investments in computing and communications research are well recorded,
they are worth repeating. Federal support of IT R&D, leveraged by
industry and academia, has led to technical advances which today are
transforming our society and driving economic growth and the creation
of new wealth. New computing, networking, and communications tools
allow Americans to shop, do homework, and get health care advice
online, and enable businesses of all sizes to join the international
economy. Since 1995, more than a third of all U.S. economic growth has
resulted from IT enterprises, and during the past decade, more than 40
percent of U.S. investment in new equipment has been in computing
devices and information appliances. The IT sector is growing at double
the rate of the overall economy and will soon account for 10% of the
economy. Companies doing business on the Internet had an average market
capitalization of $18 billion in 1999, more than 30 times the average
market cap for all companies listed on the NASDAQ.
As computers, high-speed communication systems, and computer
software become more powerful and more useful, IT penetrates deeper
into our home, work, and education environments. Nearly half of all
American households now use the Internet, with more than 700 new
households being connected every hour. More than half of U.S.
classrooms are connected to the Internet today, compared to less than
three percent in 1993. In 1993, only a few technical organizations knew
what an address like http://www.senate.gov meant, and today, there are
nearly 13 million registered addresses. Today, more than 13 million
Americans hold IT-related jobs, which are being added six times faster
than the rate of overall job growth. Over 800,000 jobs were created by
IT companies in the past year alone.
This astonishing progress has been built on a foundation of Federal
agency investments in research conducted in universities, Federal
research facilities, and partnerships with private firms. The Federal
HPCC Program met its 1996 goals of demonstrating computers that perform
a trillion operations per second and communication networks that
transmit a billion bits per second. The Next Generation Internet
initiative has exceeded its year 2000 goals by connecting more than 170
universities and other research centers at rates 100 times faster than
those available when the project began and more than 15 institutions at
rates 1,000 times faster. Such ultra-high-speed networks provide
desktop-to-desktop connections nearly 20 million times faster than
typical Internet connections to home computers.
The President's FY2001 IT R&D Budget
The President's FY 2001 budget reports all aspects of IT research--
the base HPCC programs (including Next Generation Internet) and the new
activities established by last year's Information Technology for the
Twenty-First Century initiative--in a single integrated IT R&D program.
The President is requesting $2.315 billion for IT R&D, $594 million
more than last year's appropriations and a billion dollars more than
the FY 1999 appropriation. The largest increases above FY 2000 funding
are proposed for the National Science Foundation, which is leading the
interagency effort (+$223M), the Department of Energy (+$150M), the
Department of Defense (+$115M), the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration (+$56M), and the Department of Health and Human Services
(+$42M).
IT R&D Budget Summary
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Percent
FY 2000 ($M) FY 2001 ($M) Increase
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Department of Commerce........ $36 $44 22
Department of Defense......... 282 397 41
Department of Energy.......... 517 667 29
Environmental Protection 4 4 0
Agency.......................
Health and Human Services..... $191 233 22
National Aeronautics and Space 174 230 32
Administration...............
National Science Foundation... 517 740 43
TOTAL......................... $1,721 $2,315 35%
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Agencies will continue to support the basic goals established in
last year's initiative, focusing on fundamental research in software;
development of information systems that ensure privacy and security of
data and allow people to get information they want, when they want it,
in forms that are easy to use; support for continued advances in high-
speed computing and communications, including work needed to ensure
that raw speed translates into usable speed; and work to understand the
social, economic, and other impacts of IT with emphasis on ensuring
that all Americans will benefit from these technologies. The U.S.
research community responded to last year's call for research ideas
with a flood of creative new proposals, a demand which far exceeded the
supply of new funding in agencies such as NSF and DOD. As a result,
with FY 2000 funding, NSF will start 25 small research centers and five
larger centers.
As in previous years, the proposed IT research portfolio is based
on coordinated, interagency investments which leverage expertise across
agencies to give the best returns on those investments, both financial
and technical. FY 2001 IT R&D priority areas include:
Teams to Exploit Advances in Computing: Expanded activities by NSF,
DOE, NIH, NASA, and NOAA will support new partnerships where
information scientists, mathematicians, and experts in areas such as
medical research, weather modeling, and astronomy can work together to
build tools for solving the Nation's most pressing information
problems. These partnerships will advance information science and lead
to research breakthroughs in application areas.
Infrastructure for Advanced Computational Modeling and Simulation: In
FY 2001, NSF plans to establish a second terascale (five trillion
operations per second) computing facility to support the civilian
research community.
Storing, Managing, and Preserving Data: Current networks and data
storage systems are straining to support vast amounts of information.
NASA's new earth observing satellite will generate data equivalent to
three times the information in the Library of Congress every year.
Research will include developing devices capable of storing a years
output of such systems in devices the size of PC hard disks; searching
data in a variety of formats including pictures, video, audio; and
developing improved ways of filtering information, data mining, and
tracking lineage and quality of information.
Managing and Ensuring the Security and Privacy of Information: Research
will focus on systems that can ensure privacy and security without
compromising speed and ease of use. DOE, for example, recently
developed a prototype chip that can encrypt 6.7 billion bits per
second. Work will accelerate in network protection and advanced
encryption.
Ubiquitous Computing and Wireless Networks: This research will ensure
that mobile and wireless systems can be integral parts of the Internet.
These inventions will permit devices embedded in equipment, vehicles,
portable or wearable devices such as medical monitoring equipment, and
even kitchen appliances to identify themselves to networks
automatically and operate with appropriate levels of privacy and
security.
Intelligent Machines and Networks of Robots: Fundamental research in
robots will help revolutionize our work and our lives--from earthmoving
devices in hazardous environments to devices that fit inside blood
vessels and help operating room surgeons to simple household robots.
For example, NASA needs space probes that are smart, adaptable,
curious, self-sufficient in unpredictable environments, and capable of
operating in groups.
Future Generations of Computers: New paradigms will use advances in
quantum computation and molecular and nano-electronics to devise
radically faster computers to solve problems previously described as
``uncomputable,'' such as full-scale simulations of our biosphere or
surgical simulations. Viewing cells as computational devices will help
enable the design of next generation computers that feature self
organization, self repair, and adaptive characteristics that we see in
biological systems.
More Reliable Software: Software bugs and glitches continue to shut
down airports, delay product shipment dates, and crash 911 emergency
systems. Methods to design and test software need to be as productive
and predictable as tools used to design and test aircraft and bridges.
Broadband Optical Networks: DOD researchers have shown that optical
networking can provide 1,000 times faster network backbone speeds.
Improvements in optical switching and development of all-optical end-
user access technologies will let users take full advantage of these
speeds.
Educate and Train a New Generation of Researchers: New investments will
fund more researchers, who are critical to increasing both IT research
and teaching, and support major research centers. Programs such as the
teams to exploit advances in computing will provide opportunities to
educate and train a new generation of researchers whose skills cross-
disciplinary boundaries.
Large Scale Networking (LSN) R&D
The research priorities addressing network capabilities fall under
the Large Scale Networking (LSN) R&D component of the coordinated,
interagency IT R&D programs. Our ability to fully capture the future
benefits of IT depends on learning how to build and use large, complex,
highly-reliable and secure systems. The President's FY2001 budget
proposes $334 million for LSN R&D, which includes:
the LSN base programs in traditional networking research to
support agency mission requirements
the Next Generation Internet (NGI) initiative, and
research in Scalable Information Infrastructure (SII)
LSN base programs explore long range fundamental networking
research issues and transition developing LSN products into tools to
support agency missions. Continuing the Federally-supported R&D
responsible for the core technologies that made the Internet and
Internet applications possible, LSN focuses on technologies needed by
the Federal agencies, infrastructure to support agency networking, and
networking applications development.
Since its inception in 1998, the Next Generation Internet (NGI)
initiative has been a primary focus of LSN, building on the LSN base
programs to provide the networking research, testbeds, and applications
needed to assure the scalability, reliability, and services required by
the Internet over the next decade. The program has provided fast
network testbed connections to 170 universities and other facilities,
exceeding program goals for connecting 100 sites. It is now focused on
two goals: providing revolutionary networking capable of operation a
speeds a thousand times faster than typical systems operating when the
program began, and providing key functionality for high speed networks
including reliability, scalability, security, an ability to multicast,
an ability to gracefully accommodate mobile wireless users and other
users that may enter and leave the system, and other requirements of
complex modern networks.
Scalable Information Infrastructure (SII) is the newest component
of LSN. It was developed in response to PITAC recommendations for an
expanded Federal role in networking R&D that includes interoperability
and usability. The SII research goal is to develop tools and techniques
that enable the Internet to grow (scale) while transparently supporting
user demands. An integral part of LSN, SII R&D complements the LSN and
NGI efforts. SII research will focus on deeply networked systems:
anytime, anywhere connectivity; and network modeling and simulation.
The President's FY 2001 budget request by agency for the LSN
component of IT R&D is as follows:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
FY 2001
Agency (millions)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Department of Commerce..................................
National Institute of Standards & Technology.......... 4.2
National Oceanic & Atmospheric Admin.................. 2.7
Department of Defense................................... 87.2
Department of Energy.................................... 32.0
Department of Health and Human Services.................
Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality............ 7.4
National Institutes of Health......................... 65.6
National Aeronautics and Space Admin.................... 19.5
National Science Foundation............................. 111.2
------------------------------------------------------------------------
* numbers may not add due to rounding
Next Generation Internet 2000 Act
The Administration believes that the support for the LSN component
of the coordinated, interagency IT R&D programs indicated in S. 2046,
the Next Generation Internet (NGI) 2000 Act is an important first step
towards meeting our national needs for IT research. Fast, reliable,
ubiquitous networks provide the lifeblood for a 21st century economy.
They are essential for the conduct of business providing tools that can
tie even the smallest businesses into international production and
sales networks and let businesses of all sizes speed the rate they
develop, test, produce, and market goods and services worldwide. Modern
information networks are becoming essential elements of education and
training, critical for providing safe air and highway transportation,
and central for strategies aimed at boosting national productivity
while minimizing the impact of economic activity on the natural
environment. Fast, flexible, easily reconfigured networks are essential
tools for our nation's military at peace, at war, and in the multiple
peacekeeping and other tasks they are asked to provide. This is clearly
a vital element of our national IT research portfolio, and the
Administration welcomes the Subcommittee's support in gaining funding
for this important research.
We feel strongly, however, that networking research must be
conducted as an integral part of a program providing balanced
investment in advanced software, high-end computing, high confidence
systems, human-machine interface issues, and applications research
which draw on innovations in both information science and research
teams in areas such as advanced materials, climate and weather
modeling, or astrophysics, as well as research into the social, legal,
ethical and other issues raised by advances in information technology.
This approach is consistent with the PITAC's directive to strengthen
our Federal IT research programs by providing adequate funding for a
complete and balanced IT research portfolio. We commend the
Subcommittee for acknowledging in Section 3(1) of the bill the
importance of supporting other IT research carried out by our Federal
IT R&D programs. The language of the bill indicates, somewhat
confusingly, that these activities should be authorized through the
Next Generation Internet Program and the Large Scale Networking
Program. However, the other elements of the Federal IT R&D program are
complementary to, not subordinate to, the networking research
authorized by the bill.
Networking research must be tied closely to research on the
computers, the software, and the applications that drive them. Many of
the most intractable problems in network research involve management of
networks which may connect millions or even billions of nodes,
providing high security and privacy at low cost in dollars or
communication speed, and building systems which do not fail
catastrophically when faced with component failures or hostile
intrusion. All of these areas require close collaboration with
researchers working software, the next generation of computers, and
other parts of the information technology research program supported in
our budget.
The President's FY2001 IT R&D budget presents all IT research,
along with networking research, in a balanced R&D portfolio, as
recommended by the PITAC. We hope that the Senate will support
authorization for the entire range of information technology research
as proposed by the President's budget and in accord with the PITAC's
recommendations.
We were pleased to see the Committee's interest in providing the
resources of information technologies to minority-serving institutions,
rural communities and other underserved areas and groups. As you know,
the Administration is seriously concerned about the nation's digital
divide and its impact on the ability of these institutions to
participate in our research enterprise. However, we believe that the
bill is too prescriptive in providing resources for research on
infrastructure for rural, minority and small colleges. Programs such as
EPSCoR and the Minority Institutions Infrastructure already provide
mechanisms through which these issues can be addressed. Also, starting
with its new FY 2000 funding for IT R&D, the NSF has called on
proposers to explore linkages with other institutions including HBCUs,
Hispanic institutions, EPSCoR states and others to broaden the
participation in the program. This strategy is used in many other ITR&D
programs and links traditionally strong majority institutions with the
strengths at HBCUs. We are concerned that specific set-asides provided
through the legislation may not be the most efficient and productive
way to provide greater opportunities for these institutions. We would
like to work with the Committee to ensure that existing programs are
strengthened to permit greater participation in Federally-funded IT
research and access to IT R&D resources.
We note that section 7 of the bill directs the National Academy of
Sciences to conduct a digital divide study. The Administration believes
this requirement should be deleted from the bill because it duplicates
efforts already underway at the Department of Commerce. Commerce's
National Telecommunications and Information Administration published
the first ``digital divide'' study in 1995. Its most recent study,
``Falling Through the Net: Defining the Digital Divide'' (July 1999),
has become the leading source of critical information on Internet
access and computer usage. The NTIA study uses data collected by
Commerce's Bureau of Census. The President's 2001 budget includes
funding to permit NTIA to make this an annual study.
Many of the funding levels authorized by S. 2046, as introduced on
February 9, are consistent with those proposed for the LSN R&D programs
in the President's FY2001 budget. One exception is that the proposed
legislation does not appear to authorize funding for the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). NOAA is a long-time
participant in the Federal LSN programs, including the Global Ocean
Interactive Network (GOIN) demonstration project in March 1999 which
linked U.S. ocean researchers with partners in Japan. Using links
supplied by NASA, DOD, and NSF, NOAA's Pacific Marine Environmental
Laboratory (PMEL) demonstrated the first NOAA applications over the
NGI, including Ocean Share, a collaborative environment for
oceanographic research, and 3-D tools using VRML to demonstrate the
evolution of El Nino, fisheries larval drift, and fur seal feeding
trips. Further research will include exploring methods of using
advanced networks for aggregating the vast quantities of data from
NOAA's satellite and radar weather sensors and multicasting the data to
the nation's research community for the development of improved weather
forecasting, developing tools to enhance collaboration among
atmospheric scientists and oceanographers over the NGI, and increasing
the robustness, security, and flexibility of networks for environmental
research. We hope that the Subcommittee will modify its proposal to
authorize funding for NOAA, as outlined in the President's budget.
Finally, although it received separate authorization in the NGI Act
of 1998, the work on the Next Generation Internet initiative has always
been an integral part of ongoing work in the Large Scale Networking
component of the coordinated, interagency IT R&D program. This year, as
noted above, LSN includes not only the base programs and NGI, but also
expanded research in Scalable Information Infrastructure research. It
appears that all of these elements, which are combined in the LSN R&D
portion of the overall IT R&D program we plan to undertake, are
authorized by S.2046. The Administration clearly prefers that the
Committee take a more comprehensive approach to authorizing IT
research. While the Committee takes this suggestion under advisement,
we would urge you to refer to the programs authorized by the current
proposed legislation as Large Scale Networking, rather than by the name
of one of the program subcomponents (NGI).
I hope that we can work with the Committee to make these
modifications and resolve any other issues during the weeks ahead.
Conclusion
We thank the Subcommittee for its continued support of these vital
research programs, first through the NGI Act of 1998 and now with the
proposed NGI 2000 Act. These investments are an essential part of a
larger, balanced portfolio of research developed according to the
PITAC's directives for adequately funding our Federal IT research
programs. The strong bipartisan support generated by these and
complementary proposals allow us to invest in America's future and
ensure its continued prosperity. We hope that we can work with the
Committee to support the entire IT research portfolio proposed by the
President. We believe strongly that this program provides a balanced
program of research essential to the nation's prosperity and its
ability to secure public benefits ranging from national security to
environmental protection. I look forward to working with the Committee
on these issues in the weeks ahead.
Senator Frist. Thank you, Dr. Lane.
Dr. Colwell.
STATEMENT OF RITA R. COLWELL, PH.D., DIRECTOR,
NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION
Dr. Colwell. Chairman Frist and members of the
Subcommittee, I thank you for inviting me to testify at this
very important meeting. I welcome the opportunity to discuss
how NSF has promoted excellence in computer and information
science research and how we can all be confident that NSF's
investments deliver a high return to the taxpayer.
I have prepared a written statement that I will submit for
the record and I will be very brief in my summary.
Mr. Chairman, the Next Generation Internet program has been
a tremendous success. The NGI has helped pushed the frontiers
of computer and information science and engineering. It has
allowed scientists and engineers across the country to do
first-class, cutting-edge research. And the NGI has fostered
the rapid transfer of research ideas to the private sector,
helping to fuel the economic engine of the country.
But, I should point out, technology transfer is only part
of the NGI's contribution. A broader and perhaps more important
trend has been the transfer of people, trained in the most
cutting-edge IT concepts, to the private sector. In a
preliminary review of the NGI program, the President's
Information Technology Advisory Committee, which we all refer
to as PITAC, found that numerous NGI-funded scientists,
engineers and students, who were first funded at universities,
have gone on, in just a few short years, to found startup
companies with an estimated market capitalization of about $27
billion.
Mr. Chairman, as my friend and colleague, Neal Lane, has
just mentioned, the economic impact of IT investments has been
enormous. The challenge now is to sustain this record of
success. Last year, the PITAC concluded that Federal support
for long-term research on information technology has been, in
their words, ``dangerously inadequate.'' This has led to the
governmentwide initiative in Information Technology R&D, for
which NSF is the lead agency.
NSF investments in high-speed networking research are an
integral part of the IT R&D initiative. Mr. Chairman, the NGI
program has been a great success in knowledge transfer, as I
have mentioned.
We have also seen impressive gains in the geographic reach
of high-speed connections. The NSF has had as its original goal
under the NGI program to connect 100 universities, using the
vBNS network. Today I am pleased to announce that over 170
connections, and the awards for these connections, have been
made to U.S. universities. This includes over 40 universities
in EPSCoR states, nearly one-quarter of the total. We have also
taken steps to improve connectivity to Hispanic, Native
American and historically black colleges and universities,
through a 4-year, $6 million award to Educause.
Now just hooking up campuses to backbone networks is not
enough to achieve true high-speed connectivity everywhere. New
research problems have to be solved so that all of us can
benefit. For example, achieving high performance from end user
to end user, the so-called broadband last mile problem, remains
difficult. Some commentators have remarked that the current
network situation is a lot like having a four-lane highway,
beginning the highway but not having the ending or leaving the
ending with dirt roads. You cannot have the highways and then
dirt roads.
Meeting this challenge and other related challenges, such
as user authentication and verification, will be a major focus
of future NSF networking efforts--what I guess we could refer
to as the next Next Generation Internet.
Mr. Chairman, in marking the 50th anniversary of the
National Science Foundation, we are celebrating vision and
foresight. And I would remark that the recently retired hockey
great Wayne Gretsky used to say: I skate to where the puck is
going, not where it has been. So, at NSF, we try to fund where
the fields are going, not to where they have been. Our task is
to recognize and nurture emerging fields and to support the
work of those with the most insightful research. And we prepare
future generations of scientific talent.
To conclude, Mr. Chairman, let me again thank you for
holding this hearing so that we may exchange views on the
future direction of this important area. Let me also restate
the NSF's willingness to work with you and the entire
Subcommittee to ensure a robust Federal IT investment,
including the NGI program.
And we look forward especially to extending the Federal IT
partnership to help ensure U.S. world leadership in information
technology. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Colwell follows:]
Prepared Statement of Rita R. Colwell, Director,
National Science Foundation
Mr. Chairman, members of the Subcommittee, thank you for allowing
me the opportunity to testify on the National Science Foundation's role
in fostering the next stages of the information revolution.
I am pleased to be here today. This is a topic of utmost importance
for the future of our nation's economy and the well-being of our fellow
citizens. A healthy, long-term federal investment in high speed
networking and information technology overall is critical if the United
States is to remain a world leader--not only in science and
engineering--but in our economy, national security, health care,
education and overall quality of life.
My prepared remarks today will include a short history of NSF's
support for cutting edge concepts in high-speed networking and their
transfer to the private sector along with a brief discussion of the
following topics:
NSF's participation in the multi-disciplinary Federal
Information Technology Research and Development Initiative (IT R&D) for
which NSF is the lead agency;
NSF's participation in the Next Generation Internet
Program--an integral component of the IT R&D initiative--our
cooperation with private industry through the rich transfer of new
ideas to the private sector, our cooperation with the other NGI
agencies;
NSF's efforts to promote connectivity and access for all,
including our efforts to improve connectivity for rural and minority-
serving institutions and our strong support for cutting-edge education
activities designed to ensure that our citizens will have the
scientific, mathematical, engineering, and technological expertise
needed to excel in tomorrow's knowledge-based economy.
NSF Support for High-Speed Networking: A Record of Accomplishment
Mr. Chairman, this Subcommittee has long been a strong, bipartisan
supporter of the federal investment in IT R&D. In the early 1980's,
this Subcommittee strongly encouraged NSF to invest in high-performance
computing resources for the nation's academic scientists and engineers.
The subcommittee also was a leader in the enactment of the High
Performance Computing Act of 1991. This leadership continued with the
passage of the bipartisan Next Generation Internet Act of 1998.
With this backing from the Subcommittee and the entire Congress,
NSF has continued to support some of the most successful and innovative
computer-communications concepts and technologies at their earliest,
most experimental stages. NSF funded university-based supercomputer
centers in the mid-1980's to provide academic scientists and engineers
with access to state-of-the-art computing power.
To facilitate access to the centers, NSF began a parallel effort in
networking. It built on fundamental investments by DARPA in a more
restricted environment, and resulted in the formation of the national
NSFNET backbone network and regional networks connecting university
students and faculty to the supercomputing centers. In a very brief
period of time, NSFNET and the regional networks began performing
important communication and information access functions in addition to
supercomputer center access. Through this development and its
subsequent privatization, the Internet industry was born.
Mr. Chairman, the story of NSF's longstanding support for backbone
networks is now well known but it is only one example of how
fundamental IT investments by NSF and other agencies have paid huge
dividends for the nation. Support of fundamental networking research
has received less publicity but is equally important to the future of
information science and technology.
For example, it was David Mills, an NSF grantee at the University
of Delaware, who made it possible to have one Internet as opposed to a
Tower of Babel of competing electronic networks. Mills developed the
first widely-used Internet routers--the gateways and switches that
guide the bits and bytes of data around the globe at the speed of
light. That's why many people say NSF put the ``inter'' in Internet.
Today CISCO Systems--the premier maker of Internet router technology--
now has a market capitalization of $454 billion dollars.
Knowledge Transfer Not Just Technology Transfer
Innovations like the Internet router only occurred through
sustained, long-term federal investments in information science and
engineering by many agencies. One might think that these past successes
assure us of an equally bright future. Unfortunately, in a fast paced,
technologically-rooted information age, the worst thing we could do is
rest on our laurels.
The key point is that the IT R&D conducted by private industry--be
it performed by large or small firms--is now primarily near-term and
product-focused. There are many reasons for this trend. With increased
global competition, increasingly rapid product cycling and high
expectations from shareholders, IT industry managers tend to focus on
activities that maximize short-term payoffs. Market pressures are often
too great and technology changes too rapid to allow for major
investments with a long-term perspective.
When the subject of technology transfer is brought up, there is one
aspect of the impact of basic research that is often overlooked--the
role of NSF's investments in people. NSF's Engineering Directorate
recently sponsored a set of studies on today's leading technologies:
areas like cell phones, fiber optics, and computer assisted design.
It's well known that the great majority of the seminal work in these
areas was performed by private industry--at labs like Corning, AT&T,
and Motorola.
Does that mean that NSF had no role? Hardly. When you go back and
look at the work, a clear pattern emerges. Scientists and engineers who
went to graduate school on NSF fellowships and research assistantships
often brought the key insights to industry. In a number of cases, they
became the entrepreneurs who created new firms and markets.
To quote from the study--``NSF emerges consistently as a major--
often the major, source of support for education and training of the
Ph.D. scientists and engineers who went on to make major
contributions....'' It is this transfer of people--the highly trained
scientists and engineers supported by NSF and other agencies--that is
making a tremendous impact on our knowledge-based economy.
The NGI program is a tremendous success in this regard. In a
preliminary review of the NGI program, the President's Information
Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC) found that numerous NGI-funded
scientists, engineers and students--first funded at universities--have
gone on in just a few short years to found start-up companies with an
estimated market capitalization of over $27 billion.
Information Technology Research (ITR)
The impact of information technology on our society has been much
wider and much more pervasive than anyone could have anticipated just a
few years ago. Advances in computing, communications, and the
collection, digitization and processing of information have altered the
everyday lives of all our citizens.
There is no question that as Internet growth has gone through the
roof, IT has become the essential fuel for the nation's economic
engine. Even the ever-cautious Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan has pointed
to innovations in IT as the driving force behind our strong economic
growth.
The numbers speak for themselves. As Neal Lane has mentioned, more
than a third of our economic growth in the past five years has resulted
from Information Technology. IT investments have spurred an enormous
upswing in worker productivity that has fueled the current economic
boom. The challenge now is to sustain this record of success.
Last year, the PITAC concluded that federal support for long-term
research on information technology has been ``dangerously inadequate.''
In its words ``support in most critical areas has been flat or
declining for nearly a decade, while the importance of IT to our
economy has increased dramatically.'' This has led to the government-
wide initiative in Information Technology R&D for which NSF is the lead
agency.
The Information Technology Research Initiative at NSF will
emphasize research and education on a broad range of topics. Focus
areas include:
Advancing computer system architecture; research on
software, hardware, system architectures, operating systems,
programming languages, communication networks, as well as systems
that acquire, store, process, transmit, and display information.
Improving information storage and retrieval; research on how
we can best use the vast amount of information that has been
digitized and stored.
Connectivity and access for all; research that aims to
overcome the digital divide separating the information ``haves''
from the ``have-nots'' and research on inequality of access to and
use of computing and communications technology.
Scalable Networks of Embedded Systems; As the scale of
integration of systems that may be achieved continues to grow,
systems must be designed with both hardware and software aspects
treated from a unified point of view.
Novel approaches; new models of computation and physical
processes such as molecular, DNA and quantum computing. These
efforts are deeply anchored in the mathematical and physical
sciences and the biosciences.
Through our part of the multiagency IT R&D program, the
InformationTechnology Research (ITR) initiative, NSF will seek to
strengthen Education in IT, including:
programs that provide scholarships, fellowships and
traineeships;
improved undergraduate research participation;
encouragement of graduate students to participate in K-12
education; and develop new curriculum; and
research aimed at understanding the causes of
underrepresentation of various segments of society in the
workforce.
NSF will also increase research on Applications of IT across fields
of science and engineering. This will also be a critical component of
the ITR initiative. This includes simulation to tackle research
problems across the frontiers of science and engineering. Important
networking applications include:
Collaboration Technologies
Digital Libraries
Distributed Computing
Remote Operations and
Security and Privacy issues
Finally through the ITR Initiative, NSF will increase it's support
for Infrastructure including the Next Generation Internet Program.
Support for infrastructure will include:
computing facilities ranging from single workstations to
clusters of workstations to supercomputers of various sizes and
capabilities;
large databases and digital libraries, the broadband
networking, data mining and database tools for accessing them;
appropriate bandwidth connectivity to facilitate interactive
communication and collaboration and software to enable easy and
efficient utilization of networked resources; and
networks of large and small physical devices.
NGI Connections at NSF: A Tremendous Success
Mr. Chairman, the NGI program has been a great success. Enabled by
fundamental advances in optical networking under supported by DARPA and
NSF, the number of very high performance networks has increased and the
available bandwidth for research and education has had phenomenal
growth.
A diverse array of US universities in all 50 states now have high-
speed connectivity thanks to NGI investments. In fact, many more
institutions than originally anticipated now have high-speed access
thanks to the program. Connectivity to Alaska and Hawaii has improved
dramatically as well.
NSF's original goal under the NGI program was to connect 100
universities using the vBNS network and the Internet2 Coalition's
Abilene network. Today NSF is excited that over 170 university
connection awards have now been made. This includes over 40
universities in ESPCoR states--nearly one-quarter of the total.
This increase in connectivity has resulted in interest in high
performance networking in both academia and industry. It has had
enormous impact on the knowledge transfer I mentioned earlier. Having
so many more scientists, engineers and students from across the nation
involved in high-speed networking activities has dramatically increased
the available talent pool for industry.
Universities form a rich, fertile proving ground for new network
ideas and concepts that can be quickly transferred to the private
sector. Without consistent federal funding, such a well-spring of ideas
could run dry.
What's Next for NGI: The Next-Next Generation Internet
In marking our 50th anniversary, we are celebrating vision and
foresight. The recently retired hockey-great, Wayne Gretzky, used to
say, ``I skate to where the puck is going, not to where it's been.''
Mr. Chairman, at NSF, we try to fund where the fields are going,
not to where they've been. We have a strong record across all fields of
science and engineering for choosing to fund insightful proposals and
visionary investigators.
It is our job to keep all fields of science and engineering focused
on the furthest frontier. Our task is to recognize and nurture emerging
fields, and to support the work of those with the most insightful
reach. And, we prepare future generations of scientific talent.
In this tradition, NSF is looking at new directions for the NGI
program. One trend is clear: high-speed fiber backbone networks are
rich seed beds for new capabilities.
Now that connectivity has been dramatically increased, new
fundamental research problems must be tackled. In today's networked
world, dramatic increases in backbone speed do not automatically
translate into dramatic increases in performance. Many of these
problems will not be easily solved without new, novel approaches.
Today, achieving high performance from end user to end user--the so
called Broadband Last Mile Problem--remains difficult. Some
commentators have remarked that the current situation is like having a
four-lane highways beginning and ending with dirt roads.
To increase backbone speed, efficiency and stability, we will need
fundamental research into new middleware network service capabilities.
This includes research in user authentication and verification,
distributed computing services, and distributed storage services. Also,
NSF will support research dealing with satellite and other wireless
technology to help reach into areas where wireline and fiber are not
possible or practical.
We will also need research into new optical access technologies. In
the future optical backbones will use more and more optical routing.
Research is needed to discover how to appropriately extend the reach of
these technologies. This will correspondingly extend the reach of
networks and ensure that institutions not now taking advantage of high
performance networking have the opportunity to do so.
Bridging the Digital Divide
This brings me to my last point. Today we find ourselves on a
precipice--looking down into that worrisome gap known as the digital
divide. We are all here today because we believe in the power of
information technology to bring about the most democratic revolution in
literacy and numeracy the world has ever known.
We also know that if we're not careful, this same power could be
economically divisive. We imagine universal connectedness, with talk of
``tetherless networks'' that anyone could tap into anytime, anywhere.
But we could also broaden the gap between the information rich and
the information bereft. In our own nation, sociologists have identified
groups whose access to telephones, computers, and the Internet lag far
behind the national averages.
These information gaps appear among nations as well. Most of those
who live in the Third World have never used a telephone. Our worldwide
web is a thinly stretched one. Less than two percent of the world is
actually on the web. If we subtract the United States and Canada, it's
less than one percent.
The report by the President's Information Technology Advisory
Committee (PITAC) spells out some of these gaps. ``For instance,'' says
the committee, ``whites are more likely than African-Americans to have
Internet access'' at home or work. ``We expect there are similar gaps
with other minority groups, such as Hispanics and Native Americans.
Recent research...suggests that the racial gap in Internet use is
increasing.''
In September 1999 NSF made a four-year $6 million award to EDUCAUSE
to help minority-serving institutions develop campus infrastructure and
national connections. The award addresses Hispanic, Native American,
and Historically Black Colleges and Universities. The scope includes:
Executive awareness, vision, and planning
Remote technical support centers
Local network planning
Local consulting and training
Satellite/wireless pilot projects
New network technologies: Prototype installations
Grid applications
Conclusion
To conclude Mr. Chairman, let me again thank you for holding this
hearing so that we may exchange views on the future direction of this
important area. Let me also restate NSF's willingness to work with you,
the subcommittee and the full committee to ensure a robust federal IT
investment including the NGI program. The PITAC report has raised
important concerns over our lack of federal investment in fundamental
IT research and we at NSF are responding to the challenge. We look
forward to extending the federal IT partnership to help ensure U.S.
world leadership in IT.
Thank you.
Senator Frist. Thank you, Dr. Colwell.
Dr. Lindberg, welcome. And you can remind everybody who the
first physician was to use the National Library of Medicine
Internet base.
Dr. Lindberg. I might just do that.
Senator Frist. Dr. Lindberg, you are welcome. It seems like
yesterday, by the way, although many things have occurred since
then.
STATEMENT OF DONALD A.B. LINDBERG, M.D., DIRECTOR, NATIONAL
LIBRARY OF MEDICINE
Dr. Lindberg. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Like Dr. Colwell, I
have a full statement for the record, and I will make a very
much abbreviated set of remarks if you will permit.
The Next Generation Internet and large-scale networking
project that you are considering is extremely important and
will be helpful to the country. I think it should be viewed as
a continuation of the High-Performance Computing and
Communications program that began in 1991 in legislation, and
1992 in action, and extended up through 1997, as well as of
course the Internet today, which shows much of its success
because of the HPCC program.
I have a bias, because I was asked to be the first head of
the National Coordination Office of the HPCC program as it
operated under OSTP. And I did so from 1991 to 1995 very
happily. Consequently, I have a profound respect for the
goodness of the scientific collaboration one can obtain from
members of the other Federal agencies and the importance of
pulling together when the effort is warranted by a major
national need.
The Internet today has certainly helped and changed the
National Library of Medicine. And as you noted, you presided,
at a very signal moment; namely, on April 16, 1996, when you
did the first public search of MEDLINE on the World Wide Web.
Senator Frist. And better yet, I searched for my name, and
we found some articles there, scientific articles.
[Laughter.]
Dr. Lindberg. They were good ones.
As a matter of fact, at that time, we were doing roughly 7
million searches a year of MEDLINE. And that event started an
escalation of use that really has been quite remarkable. We are
now up to 250 million searches per year on that same data base,
which, as I say, you first inaugurated.
We are really not surprised, in a way, because MEDLINE is
essential for the conduct of modern science and the conduct of
modern health care when one is after up-to-date scientific and
medical information. We were surprised, however, that about a
third of these MEDLINE searches now are conducted by the
public, by patients, families and friends. That is to say, non-
doctors, non-medical scientists.
Because of this surprising event, we created a new data
base, called MEDLINEplus, which is aimed directly at the
public. And this is now off and running, a rather good success.
I can give you more information about that if you wish.
We added to this complex just yesterday morning a data base
called Clinicaltrials.gov, which gives detailed information on
behalf of the 4,000 clinical trials that NIH either conducts or
supports in 47,000 locations.
Because not every household in the U.S. has a personal
computer and a World Wide Web connection, we started studies a
couple of years ago with 39 public library systems to try to
discover if help could be found for those who would otherwise
be forgotten. This has been a helpful program, and it has given
us the basis for a new set of outreach grants, some 49 in
number, which are meant to encourage partnerships between
medical libraries, which really are still pretty key in this
field, and community, especially rural, organizations. The
latter include public libraries, churches, elder care
institutions, and really all those who will encourage the
spread of electronic health information to the public.
I might insert that I wholeheartedly agree with you that we
cannot forget to get Internet everywhere, or Next Generation
Internet, everywhere in the country where it is needed,
including the last mile or yard or inch.
I should mention that one other part of the National
Library of Medicine which has benefited greatly from the
improving network system. This is the National Center for
Biotechnology Information, where Genbank and the results of the
Humane Genome Project come to reside. They are very much
dependent upon Next Generation Internet for their ultimate
success.
As you know, the real product of the Human Genome Project,
this worldwide distributed experiment, is information. There is
only one human genome, we believe. The information all comes to
reside at NCBI, that is to say NLM. It is exchanged daily
between the U.S., Europe and Asia. There are now 5 million DNA
sequences, made up of 5 billion nucleotide-based pairs. A sort
of amazingly symmetrical set of numbers.
All this would be wholly unthinkable without high-speed and
reliable network connections. Again, I could comment more about
the details of that matter.
I should mention specifically support by the National
Library of Medicine of NGI biomedical developments. This really
started in 1992, with our request for biomedical participation
in the High-Performance Computing and Communication program. We
originally couched this request in terms of the areas that had
been cited in the guideline legislation.
I will not recite those six categories. But we actually
found, to our surprise, that by far the more scientifically
meritorious proposals all fell in the area of telemedicine.
Consequently, our next request for solicitations in 1995
focused on telemedicine. And these awards were, scientifically
and medically, extremely interesting. In fact, to this day,
they continue to yield important insights both in medicine and
communications technology.
In 1998, NLM requested phase I NGI proposals along the same
lines. In this case, of course, the proposals for NGI were
somewhat different, because the NGI program speaks of
technology that does not exist at the moment and has
applications in areas that would not be possible without the
new technology. Consequently, there are new challenges for
medical institutions to participate.
That was the reason we made the awards bi-phasic.
Nonetheless, we awarded about two dozen phase I awards, and
then a reduced number of larger phase II awards for the most
successful ones. I am prepared to go through these and describe
these in detail, but I think for the moment you might allow me
just to mention a few examples of the types: privacy of
computers based on patient records, tele-immersion teaching of
surgical anatomy, nomadic computing as practiced by ambulances
and helicopters, tele-mammography networks, multi-center
clinical trials, telemedicine with nursing homes, and radiation
treatment planning. These are examples.
The lessons learned so far, in my view, are pretty
straightforward. First, there are increasingly numerous
interesting and useful biomedical applications in these
advanced networks. In other words, it is a very useful field.
And, second, biomedical applications do seem to be different
from the rest and require more than just speed. I will give you
four things that are examples of what is more than just speed.
Firstly, quality of service is probably much more important
for the health applications than any other single element.
Second, medical data privacy. Without that, we are never going
to get day-to-day useful ordinary applications. Security, in
the sense that every other system needs it. We do not want to
be destroyed by hackers. And then, fourthly, an element which
is called nomadic computing. It sounds a little strange, but it
fits the wandering style of the physician who moves from clinic
to clinic and floor to floor and hospital to hospital.
Also, as it turns out, one of our awards meets the
wandering style of the young mother, who is a working mother
and trying to keep in contact with the pediatrician and the
child and the drug store and all the other things that modern
life is beset by. So nomadic computing turns out to be a pretty
solid specification.
Now, we need to translate all this into proper engineering
and physics. Bits per second, packet length, jitter, latency,
these kind of figures. These do not have much meaning medically
yet. So our objective is to translate that so that we know what
medical procedures and decisionmaking require for that level of
communication. That is really the major task.
There is another side of it, I must say, I find equally
interesting; namely, what kind of practice can be enabled by
this work. Is tele-dermatology a very good application? It
seems like it. Is home health care going to be a radically new
departure? Can we improve the quality of care and reduce the
errors in decisionmaking? I think all those are quite possible.
So, in a way, I am prepared to give examples, but I think,
in truth, the best is yet to come. Every week we see really
good new applications of biomedical uses of the Next Generation
Internet. And I heartily endorse your help to that program.
Thank you for the opportunity to be here.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Lindberg follows:]
Prepared Statement of Donald A.B. Lindberg, M.D., Director,
National Library of Medicine
Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee:
It is a pleasure to report to you on the role of the National
Library of Medicine in helping the health sciences prepare to use the
capabilities of the Next Generation Internet for the betterment of the
public health. You may recall that from 1991 to 1995 I had a dual
appointment as both NLM Director and head of the OSTP Coordination
Office for High Performance Computing and Communications. This was a
major interagency program that included 14 departments and agencies. At
that time the Internet was still ``terra incognita'' to most of the
medical community, and I was pleased to be able to help establish a
medical component in the HPCC arena.
Much has changed in the past few years, and, Mr. Chairman, as you
may recall, you played an important role in that evolution. On April
16, 1996, you conducted the first public search of our database,
MEDLINE, on the World Wide Web. Since that time, MEDLINE usage has
soared from 7 million searches a year to a current rate of 250 million.
Health professionals and scientists, of course, see Web-based MEDLINE
searching as a great asset in their research and clinical care. They
can now easily find out what their colleagues are publishing by
searching an up-to-date database of more than 10 million scientific
journal article references and abstracts. What amazed us, however, was
to discover that MEDLINE is also being used by the general public. We
estimate that about 34 percent of all MEDLINE searches are done by the
public--for information about their own health and that of family
members and friends.
We realize that not everyone has direct access to the Internet and
can take advantage of MEDLINE or our new consumer health site,
MEDLINEplus. To help remedy this, last month the Library made 49
``outreach'' (attached) awards to medical libraries around the country.
The aim is to help them to work with local public libraries, schools,
senior centers, and other community organizations to help bring the
benefits of electronic health information to those who otherwise would
be forgotten. I believe that all of us, not just those concerned
specifically with the Next Generation Internet, should seek ways to
ensure that all Americans have access to the information they need to
keep themselves healthy.
To ensure that the Internet will continue to support the health
sciences, the NLM is a strong supporter of the Next Generation Internet
effort. To help create a sound theoretical underpinning for medicine
and the NGI, we have sponsored a number of research projects in
universities and hospitals and also studies by the Institute of
Medicine (on Telemedicine) and the Computer Science and
Telecommunication Board (on Data Privacy). All conclude that health
care and biomedicine place important demands on the capabilities of the
future Internet in such areas as quality of service, medical data
privacy, and system security.
These elements are important considerations in many of the testbed
applications the Library has supported over the last several years.
Spread out over three phases, the NLM will support more than $45
million in NGI projects. These include telemedicine-related projects,
advanced medical imaging, and patient-controlled personal medical
records systems. These projects have given rise to a new nomenclature,
for example, tele-immersion, tele-presence, tele-trauma, tele-
mammography, tele-psychiatry, internetworking, and nomadic computing.
Spanning the generations, from at-risk infants in Boston to home-bound
seniors in Missouri, this research seeks to improve quality, lower
costs, and increase effectiveness for delivering health care. We hope
the projects will lead to new applications based on the ability to
gather information at a distance and to transfer massive amounts of
data instantaneously and accurately while maintaining medical data
privacy. In the last phase of our support, in FY 2001, there will be a
set of meetings to record ``lessons learned'' from this work and also a
scale-up of selected promising projects to regional or national level.
Advanced medical imaging is a special category that requires more
bandwidth than is currently available on the Internet. The extremely
large size of NLM's Visible Human image datasets challenges existing
storage and network transmission technologies. A full set of the
images--both electronic and photographic--would require the capacity of
more than 100 CD-ROMs. Since this is obviously impractical, we are
investigating advanced compression and networking techniques to
minimize storage capacity and improve transmission speed over the
Internet. The need for such techniques is even greater when we consider
that we are currently working with other NIH Institutes and the
National Science Foundation to create a super-detailed head and neck
anatomical atlas. We will also include appropriate image manipulation
tools for use via the Internet, based on open software conventions.
Another area of medical science that requires increased
communication capabilities is human genome research. As you may know,
the NLM's National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI)
maintains the enormous GenBank database of molecular sequences. It now
contains some 5 million nucleotide sequences with a total of nearly 5
billion base pairs, and the Web site where GenBank is made freely
available, receives some 800,000 queries per day from 120,000
scientists and others around the world. In addition to academic
institutions, major biotechnology and pharmaceutical firms are among
the heaviest users of the NCBI Web site. They not only search GenBank,
but use NCBI-created computational tools such as that which allows
researchers to use the growing body of known 3-dimensional structures
to infer approximate 3D sequence structure from similarity
relationships.
In summary, Mr. Chairman, the need for the capabilities of the Next
Generation Internet is apparent to us who work in biomedicine. Its
increased bandwidth and expected Quality of Service provision will
allow the transmission of complex images in real time for diagnostic
purposes, which is not currently possible. Using the Internet to
coordinate the gathering and dissemination of information required for
conducting extensive multi-site clinical trials is yet another example
of a medical application beyond the present capability of the network.
Other applications require a guaranteed level of service (for example
no data loss, or assured privacy protection) that today's Internet
cannot provide. There are many others that I have not mentioned, such
as home healthcare, continuing medical education, public understanding
of science, or even reduction of errors in medical practice. Actually,
the very best applications have not yet been developed! Each week
brings even better and more imaginative biomedical uses of networks.
I'm confident the final result will be a major improvement in American
health care.
Senator Frist. Thank you, Dr. Lindberg.
I thank all three of you for your outstanding testimony.
And I have had the opportunity to read your testimony.
As an aside, it is interesting every time the students come
in you realize, as we are listening to this testimony and you
see those students over there, the world that this work has
opened up, whether it is addressing the fundamental
infrastructure or the applications or the digital divide, the
implications that it has for their future. So as we sit up
here, watching them come in and out, it makes you realize how
important both the work that you do is and our investment and
our addressing the problems that are introduced by the advances
that are made. It is fascinating.
Dr. Lindberg, it is fascinating, in your opening statement,
when we did that in 1996, in terms of access, World Wide Web,
Internet-based information, the figure that you cited, not just
the growth in access of information, but the public's access of
one out of three of those searches of MEDLINE being the public.
At the time, I would not have predicted it. We would have
predicted some. And I remember even that day that we talked a
little bit about when you let this information out, what
happens.
How do you reflect upon that? Now we have 3-4 years of
experience with it. Before that time, probably one in 20
searches, I am guessing, would have been by a non-medical
person and now it is one in three.
Dr. Lindberg. I think it would probably be less than 1
percent.
Senator Frist. And then today, what are the implications
today? Obviously people have that. We talk about costs. We talk
about quality. We talk about empowering consumers. We talk
about intelligent consumers. We talk about preventive medicine.
Is there any way you can--it is all of those things--but where
you can see all of those queries coming in? How would you
summarize it?
Dr. Lindberg. Well, I think there is a new factor loose in
health care, and that is the activated patient, long ignored.
We hear frequently now of patients who will consult the medical
literature even before they consult their physician. And rather
than shy away from this, I welcome it. I think this is probably
an informed patient who is increasing his or her likelihood of
getting a good benefit when they do see the doctor or they go
to the hospital.
This clinical trials database that we just announced
yesterday is a wonderful thing. It means that anyone who is not
satisfied with the treatment they are offered--I mean who can
be satisfied if they tell you there is no treatment and you are
going to die? Anyone with any sense is either going to find
another doctor or another information source or something. That
is not hard to imagine--you can now at least find out what the
Federal Government, through NIH, is paying for. And in years to
come, we will add those trials conducted by the drug houses and
perhaps even internationally.
So I think that this is an era in which we just have to
acknowledge that the patients of today are very different from
40 years ago. They are better educated. They are more
sophisticated. They are more ready to be partners in the
decisions about their own care and in fact their own steps to
remain healthy. I think it is a wonderful development.
Senator Frist. It is impressive, in 3 and a half years, the
changes that are there.
I want to turn to Senator Rockefeller. But, Dr. Lane, let
me just mention--and I appreciate the directness of your
testimony and the comments that were made and the suggestions--
I will have to state that there is some confusion to me,
reading through the testimony and looking at the numbers, how
funding for the interagency program is structured. Which means
that I need to spend more time, and maybe our staffs can get
together and spend more time in the near future, to better
understand the overall funding structure.
And it would also be helpful to me if your office could
prepare a more detailed list of the funding components within
each of the participating agencies, including the amount of
funding requested for each of the individual programs. And we
do not need to go through it now, but that would be very
helpful. It would help me understand and share with other
members on this subcommittee.
Dr. Lane. We will provide all that, Mr. Chairman.*
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* Information was not available at press time.
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Senator Frist. Let me ask just one question. If the
President's Information Technology Advisory Committee called
for a doubling of Federal information technology R&D over a 5-
year period and an expansion of the interagency research
programs to achieve a more balanced portfolio--the President's
2001 budget requests a 35-percent increase over the preceding
year, which, if maintained, would mean a doubling in just over
2 years--could you explain that observation, this rapid
doubling, at least, or rapid curve, shooting up this year,
which would be more than a doubling versus what the initial
recommendation was?
Dr. Lane. Mr. Chairman, first, the Information Technology
Advisory Committee did a very careful job of giving their best
sense of how these increased investments ought to go. But I
also think they would agree that their anticipation was that we
would then bring the agencies together and look in some more
detail of what we are doing and what are reasonable numbers on
a year-by-year basis. And that has been done.
And the President's budget request last year--and we only
got two-thirds of that through the appropriation process, so we
started a little behind where we thought we ought to be, and so
this year, we catch up a bit in that regard--but puts us pretty
well on the doubling track, I think. But the thing I would want
to emphasize is that it also reflects our deeper analysis of
what is possible and how fast we need to make progress in these
important areas and the very high priority the President and
Vice President put on this area.
Senator Frist. On the balanced portfolio, could you give
examples? Or how is it more balanced now than it has been in
the past?
Dr. Lane. I think part of the confusion that probably many
have with the different names that are associated with the
programs comes from the fact that in the original High-
Performance Computing and Communication Act, there was an
important networking component that was called large-scale
networking. And we have used that same name to try to capture
the program as it evolves. And all that has really happened is
that the technology has moved so rapidly and the opportunities
and the challenges changed so rapidly that, understandably,
there are new components of the program that come along.
So, in 1998, the NGI effort put an emphasis on more
attention to networking research, but also test beds, because
the need was there and the opportunity was there. And then,
finally, in the President's fiscal year 2001 budget, as a
result of the PITAC report--actually, fiscal year 2000 and then
continuing this year--is this thing called scalable information
infrastructure. It is just an evolutionary track toward a
higher level of complexity, higher bandwidth, an increasing
need to address some of these fundamental problems such as my
colleagues have spoken to.
So we believe it is a unified program. And we also
emphasize that networking should not stand on its own. It must
couple to high-end computing. It must couple to social
behavior, and economic issues. It must couple to other aspects
of the President's overall program. Because these interrelate
and they depend on one another. And we look forward to working
with you to better articulate how all this fits together.
Senator Frist. Thank you very much.
Senator Rockefeller.
STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER IV,
U.S. SENATOR FROM WEST VIRGINIA
Senator Rockefeller. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I had one of
the worst scheduling days of my life and I totally apologize to
you and particularly to the panel and the panel that succeeds
it.
I had a meeting recently in which a very small company came
in and described how they were going to provide an
infrastructure for a high-speed network, which would cover half
the country. I had known them as a very, very small company,
but they had plans to become a big company very quickly.
I was trying to think, on the one hand, you have the
ability of a company to make those plans. Now, whether they can
raise the money for it and do it, that's another thing--but if
they raise the money for it, they will do it. And it is all
laid out. They have figured out how they can do it and beat
others to market in some very smart ways. It was a very
fascinating hour or so.
So, you have that sort of infrastructure at the very large
level that is privately initiated. If they can get across
LATA--and they can--they can build this new network.
My daughter is on the board of trustees at Spelman. Spelman
College, as you know, is a terrific African-American women's
college. The college has decided, on a small scale, that the
best way for African-American women to advance in this society
is to excel in the fields of math and science.
So they are making an institutional commitment to change
their curricula to reflect that. Which, I have to assume, has
wrenching effects on all kinds of faculty and students who are
there, majoring in teaching or other subjects that they think
are really important and, to some extent, or altogether, may be
getting pushed aside for a new institutional thrust. That is
the broad idea, which has consequences on all of us.
How does this bill, which I proudly cosponsored with
Senator Frist and others, address the information
infrastructure for the next generation? In a way, a new
infrastructure is difficult to build, as my two examples
illustrate. Can we control this new infrastructure since the
ground rules for some of the relevant technologies were laid
out in the Telecommunications Deregulation Act?
Dr. Lane, would you comment first?
Dr. Lane. I will make a quick comment, but I certainly want
you to have a chance to hear from my colleagues on this issue.
I will say a couple of things, Senator. First of all, it is
great to see you today, and I really appreciate the opportunity
to be here.
Many of the quite extraordinary advances that are going on,
what companies are doing, what regions are doing, institutions
are doing, are stunning, I think, by any measure. Every time I
hear one of these stories, I am impressed with the vision and
the commitment. The recognition that information technology is
changing everything about how we live and how we learn and how
we do business and how we ensure the public's health and well-
being.
But when you look sort of one level down and start to ask
questions of a company or an institution about what it is they
plan to do and what kind of barriers do they see they face--it
may be there are cost barriers or there are other kinds of
barriers--then all of these issues that have come up in the
PITAC report and in some of the testimony here start to come
forward.
There are things like privacy and security--and of course
we know about security problems from our recent experiences in
this country--and speed and end-to-end high bandwidth. We have
very impressive progress being made all over the country on the
speed at which we are able to communicate across the backbone,
but we cannot deliver, for the most part, anything like that
same speed to the room, to the desk, whether it is in the
classroom or in our home or anyplace else.
There are some fundamental questions about, do you go to an
all-optical system, and how do you design the optical switches
that you will need? Because, right now, we waste a lot of our
time converting from optics, photons, to electrons, and we have
to get past that. And there are many, many, many technological
barriers in the way.
These are very fundamental questions. And they are the
kinds of things that industry really cannot afford to address.
They do not have time. They have got to get out there and
compete in an increasingly competitive market. And they are
very dependent on the Federal Government to make those
investments, those long-range investments, in those fundamental
challenging problems that we need answers to so that the next
next generation of computation and communication will be ours
to enjoy.
Senator Rockefeller. Can I expand the question, Dr.
Colwell, so you can answer it, too? Because, in a way, it is
philosophical. Exactly as you say, the network will be all
optical. They are going to do the whole thing. It sounds
improbable maybe, but it was very impressive.
And then, this new book by Michael Lewis, they use the word
impose--I think Jim Clark used the word--we are going to impose
technology on the American people. I think that was exactly the
quote. We are going to impose the technology on the American
people. So the next question is, how do we account for social
responsibility when we ``impose'' this new technology?
Now, into our Next Generation Internet bill is built 10
percent for ESPCoR, and that does certain things. But social
responsibility is a very large bandwidth in this country. And
do we face up to any of that?
Dr. Colwell. Well, I am very pleased with the connections
program that the NSF has run. And that is to make sure that the
connections to rural areas and to the underserved are made. And
we pledged--and this is a program Neal Lane started--I am very
happy to say that we had pledged to make 100 of these awards
and we were able to make 170. And 40 of these were to ESPCoR
institutions.
I would like to comment about your earlier statement,
because I think it is very important. We make the connections
across academia and all the states, but we can say that the
tracks are laid and the companies are providing the high-speed
connectivity, but we have a lot of research yet to do. For
example, we are creating a billion-node Internet, but we really
cannot simulate a million-node network. And so we have some
fundamental breakthroughs that we have to make in many
disciplines, not just in computer science, but in mathematics,
physics, chemistry, social and behavioral sciences, in order to
ensure a stable and a well-connected Internet.
And so the issues that Neal Lane raised--end-to-end user
connectivity, scalability, but also middleware software--are
important. We do not have an operating system for the Internet.
And so this is important for us to develop. Companies can make
the connections and provide the high speed, but there is an
awful lot to be done before we are there.
Dr. Lane. May I just add a comment to that?
Senator Rockefeller. Please.
Dr. Lane. I shudder when you quote someone as saying we are
going to impose technology on the American people, because I
worry that the American people feel that, indeed, that does
happen to them all the time. And I want to make clear that the
President and the Vice President, whenever they talk about
technology, and information technology in particular, emphasize
to me or in public comments the importance of sitting down with
the American people and considering what they want and what
their values are.
That if we just plow forward with imposing technology on
the people, first of all, we may get pushed back. Second, we
are likely to miss the very things that the American people
need and want. And, the third thing, it is just wrong, from my
point of view.
So I want to emphasize that, in the President's budget
request and coming out of PITAC's recommendations, we have a
strong emphasis on social and economic issues associated with
information technology, doing whatever it takes to support
research to help us understand what are the implications of
these important technologies on people's lives. And NSF plays a
very important role in that activity.
That is a new piece of technology. And you will also see it
in the President's nano-technology initiative. There will be
attention given to social, behavioral, economic, work force
aspects. And I think we should do it for every kind of
technology initiative that we have.
Somebody ought to ask the question, as you did, Senator, to
what extent does this address the values of the American
people? And we think that is a very important question, and we
will respond to it.
Senator Rockefeller. Dr. Lane, I think you have answered
the question in exactly the right way. But it struck me that
the President could not help holding out what is possible in
science and none of us can help it. When the President was
giving his state of the Union, he was talking about the little,
tiny machines which could clean out your arteries and do all
kinds of things. That is what is so fascinating--the
possibilities.
Those possibilities of science are what this bill address--
creating the next generation internet, making sure that we are
keeping up with others. I am not sure that we are keeping up,
and I want to ask about that: do we have time, between this
generation of the Internet and the next generation, to do what
has to be done?
But philosophically, at the bottom, the people--and it is
not just people in Silicon Valley, which that book was written
about, but people everywhere--do not have time, because of
competition. I mean theirs is so much more brutal a
competition. By the way, I have told the airlines they have got
to stop telling us that every nickel makes a difference,
because the new economies could wipe them out. Now, every penny
makes a difference, and that is all they have time to think
about.
So the question is what are the effects of new technologies
on all of us, as the American people. We can say we have got to
distribute resources in a balanced manner so we will do ESPCoR.
We will make sure the next generation internet gets into this
or that community, and we will hope there are more Spelman
Colleges.
But, in the end, we are not in control. It seems to me--and
I want to put this as a question, not as a statement--that the
forces of innovation are always going to overrun, the forces of
the corrections necessary to make the innovation broadly or
fairly applicable. As a U.S. Senator, I have to worry about
that fair application, coming from the state that I do. So I
wonder if you could just respond to this idea--the out-of-scale
proportion of the power of innovation versus the power of the
rest of us to try to equal things out.
Dr. Lane. Senator, we believe in a free market system in
America, and it has always had associated with it these kinds
of tensions, I guess, and conflicts. And often we have serious
problems associated with that.
I think that is what we call leadership. If you look at the
President's speech to the Cal Tech faculty, when he went out
and sort of rolled out the science and technology initiative--
so there the President is speaking to the scientists, the
researchers, and he is emphasizing how important it is to pay
attention to American values--not just in thinking about what
kind of research to do or how to feel about the new
technologies, but in the whole process of doing it and to
encourage further engagement--I mean real dialog, if you like,
with the American people.
The second thing I would say is that we have a window of
time--I do not know how long it is--in information technology
where it is still evolving, where we are still figuring out
where it is going and how to use it. It is getting cheaper for
its capability, in per bit, or per bit per second or per
computation. There is a time here when we could, if we give
proper attention to the issues you are raising, we could use
this technology, we can ensure that this technology really does
start to close the gap. We call it the digital gap; it is more
complicated than a digital divide or a gap, but that is the
idea.
And I think if we look back at this time and discover that
we did not pay attention to what might just be an enormous
opportunity with this technology to address some of these
issues that we have been grappling with for decade upon decade,
we will have not done our job. So I appreciate the emphasis you
place on this. And yes, I do agree and want you to continue to
worry about these issues.
Senator Rockefeller. Dr. Colwell.
Dr. Colwell. I would like to say it also provides a very
strong argument for continuing the investment to ensure
connectivity. We can, through virtual centers, connect
scientists in every part of the country. We can connect
citizens to the opportunities that would not otherwise be
possible.
And I think we have seen this through, for example, the
partnerships that we have provided in advanced computing. This
reaches out to every part of the country, and so it does not
leave anybody out. And that is the power of it. And that is why
we really have to keep the investment going. And the timing is
critical.
Senator Rockefeller. Well, my final question would be, do
we do enough in this bill? Are there things that you think that
we are deficient on?
Dr. Colwell. Well, I would not say deficient, but I do
think that there are some things that we do need to pay
attention to. And that is scalability. It is a key
recommendation from PITAC--modelling and simulation of network
behavior, the issue of the billion-node network, but we are not
even able to simulate a million-node network. So there are some
fundamental breakthroughs that are needed.
And I think the applications across all of science and
engineering really need to be a priority. But, Neal, I think
you wanted to say something else.
Dr. Lane. I would add, just to repeat a comment I made
earlier, that the networking part of the information
infrastructure program for the Federal Government is now built
into a larger information technology R&D program. It is well-
coordinated. It connects where it makes sense to connect. It is
coordinated among agencies where you want agencies to work
together. And so it is a little bit artificial to separate the
networking part, Internet, away from high-performance
computing, high-end computing, social, behavioral, ethical,
economic considerations.
So we think this is a great first start. There are some
small issues having to do with--I think NOAA is not currently
mentioned in the bill, and they are a very important agency
here, and there are a few issues like that--but we think it is
an important first start. We would like to see the whole
program authorized. We would like to see the whole Federal
effort in information technology R&D authorized and the
appropriate connections made between the different parts.
Senator Rockefeller. And, Mr. Chairman, before I continue
my outrageous behavior and walk out on you entirely, let me
emphasize again that I understand that we could spend all of
our time trying to make each and every person totally equal in
access by March 29th, and it will not happen. Innovation is
sacred unto its own core value and to the American ethos, as
you indicated, Dr. Lane.
And we can also hold ourselves up by putting up barriers.
And I am not talking about sort of Internet taxation or some of
the more conventional types of things, but perhaps sort of the
social reaction against innovation, which could be very
damaging to all of us for the very hurts that lie inside of me
potentially as I look at states like my own. And that is why I
am on the bill.
I have only a desire to see this drive forward with the
assumption that all of you and us working together, and the
American people, are going to have to try very, very hard to
make the whole thing as fair as possible. But an alternative
cannot be to say, oh, well, we have got to slow down this until
we can catch up on this. And I understand that.
Dr. Lane. Thank you, Senator. If I might just add one
thing. I think we have to do things in parallel with our R&D
effort. And the President's digital divide program that he has
brought forward with the fiscal year 2001 budget lays out a
number of other things that we can do in addition to R&D to
address shorter-term needs, tax advantages, tax incentives, for
companies to work with the community. It is all in the spirit
of partnership.
Senator Rockefeller. And I understand that. But it is like
every time I hear one of those on my side of the aisle talking
about 100,000 new teachers, when I know perfectly well we need
2.5 million. I feel good, but I also know that it sounds good
to say 100,000 new teachers, but you are not really addressing
the problem.
Dr. Lane. We can always do more, sir.
Senator Rockefeller. And we do not have to agree on that
publicly.
Senator Frist. I agree.
[Laughter.]
Senator Frist. Let me ask a couple of questions, and then
we will move on to our second panel.
Senator Rockefeller, before you leave, under my tab,
following Dr. Lindberg's testimony, there are a series of
projects in here. It says projects funded by the National
Library of Medicine, January 2000. That is always very
dangerous to present this in a complete document. And Alabama
looks good and Arizona looks good. Arkansas looks good.
California looks good, Connecticut, the District of Columbia.
The only two states that do not have these grants in there,
Dr. Lindberg, are West Virginia and Tennessee. Remember that in
your next funding from the National Library of Medicine.
Because Tennessee is not in there, nor is West Virginia. We
have got to be in there.
Senator Rockefeller. And to get to the Tri-cities of
Tennessee from West Virginia is only about an hour and a half
drive by car. So this is a ferocious task that Dr. Lindberg has
in front of him.
Senator Frist. We will put the charge out there.
Dr. Lindberg. Well, I was going to comment that when I last
saw Senator Rockefeller, we were putting our Smartcards into a
reader connected to the computer in West Virginia. And my
pseudo practitioner card let me, combined with his pseudo
patient card, let me read his medical record and find out he
had been immunized against tetanus or something like that. And
I think West Virginia is a pioneer in this. I'm glad NLM
supported this network.
The use of Smartcard technology, very extensive in Europe,
very minor in the U.S., I think is an example of the counter-
argument that we have not even begun to do good coordination of
the information technology and the health care technology. I
think that is a very good experiment. That is what lets you
certify you are the patient and you are the doctor and the
access is authorized.
Senator Frist. Extending that a little bit, you mentioned
in your testimony, on telemedicine itself, we are not quite
there. And it is very useful to hear about the progress that
has been made, but also put out there what it is going to take
to capture that next step in terms of telemedicine. Is there
going to be an incremental jump, do you think, in the next
couple of years in terms of telemedicine, the cost of that?
Dr. Lindberg. I do. I think that one of the very important
areas is what is sometimes now called home health care. And
this fits very well with the development of wearable computers
and computers that can continue to take pulse and blood
pressure and temperature and so forth. So that, to a great
extent, you can really do a physical examination at home right
now.
Senator Frist. That is tremendously exciting.
Dr. Lindberg. Yes, Senator.
Senator Frist. Dr. Colwell, let me jump real quickly, just
because the second panel, I know we should move to the second
panel here shortly. Both university presidents have submitted
testimonies basically saying that the NSF has a bias toward the
Internet II universities. What is your agency doing to ensure
that all of the hundreds of universities around the country are
not left behind just because they are not a part of the
Internet II consortium?
Dr. Colwell. I mentioned the connectivity program. That is
specifically to augment grants for high-performance network
connections, to defray the costs, for rural institutions and
for the non-research institutions. And so, through this
program, we have made a substantial number of awards. And 40 of
these have gone specifically to the ESPCoR institutions in
ESPCoR states.
In our latest funding request that has gone out, we are
making a concerted effort to ensure that we do connect, go the
last mile to connect every one of the institutions throughout
the country. We are making a concerted effort. This is part of
our specific task for the next year.
Senator Frist. Thank you. We will keep the record open for
further questions. Dr. Lane, in terms of the categories and
line items, I very much want our staffs to get together so it
will be clear for me.
Dr. Lane. I look forward to it.
Senator Frist. Let me thank all three of you. There are
many different questions, many different topics. It is always
frustrating when there are so many topics that we could talk
about, but we appreciate your taking time and investing it with
us today. Thank you.
We will go straight to the second panel at this juncture. I
would ask that they come forward.
Dr. Thomas Carter Meredith, Chancellor of the University of
Alabama System; Dr. Bill Stacy, Chancellor of the University of
Tennessee Chattanooga; and Mr. Stephen Tolbert, President and
CEO of Global Systems & Strategies.
As I mentioned in my opening statement, the focus will
shift, as we look at some of the end users, the implications of
our current policy today. Let us go in that order. I will begin
with Dr. Meredith, followed by Dr. Stacy and then Mr. Tolbert.
STATEMENT OF THOMAS CARTER MEREDITH, ED.D., CHANCELLOR, THE
UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA SYSTEM
Dr. Meredith. Thank you, Senator Frist. And thank you for
the opportunity to be here today to talk about the critical
importance of an advanced telecommunications infrastructure for
higher education, and especially to research universities.
I have a longstanding commitment to the deployment and use
of information technology in higher education, as evidenced
here in my 9 years as a campus president and now in my current
role as the Chancellor of a system of three doctoral research
institutions, the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa, the
University of Alabama at Birmingham, and the University of
Alabama at Huntsville. We have combined our own resources and
NSF grants to develop joint access to Internet II through the
creation of the Gulf Central Gigapop. ``Joint'' is the key
word, as our three very competitive universities are
increasingly holding hands now on major projects to assist our
state and our Nation.
I am here on behalf of the states participating in ESPCoR,
the Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research. A
number of members of this subcommittee represent ESPCoR states,
and we appreciate their past and continuing support for our
efforts. As you know, ESPCoR focuses on the 19 states and
Puerto Rico, which historically have received the least amount
of Federal R&D funding from the National Science Foundation,
the National Institutes of Health, and other Federal programs.
ESPCoR members represent approximately 16 percent of the
U.S. population, and receive only about 8 percent of the NSF
research budget, and about 5 percent from NIH. ESPCoR states
have relatively large rural populations, and many have research
strengths based in agriculture and natural resources, which
were the traditional economic keystones of their states. A
number have special under-represented groups to assist, as
well.
And while agriculture and natural resources remain
significant parts of our economy, we are experiencing business
and industrial expansions in other areas. Our institutions are
attracting faculty who are conducting research in disciplines
requiring access to global resources, access that will depend
on participation in the Next Generation Internet.
We know we are educating our students for a new economy
based more on information, knowledge and business skills than
in the past. And we know that our states' economies and our
citizens' and students' standard of living are increasingly
tied to a global economy.
There are nationally and internationally recognized
research programs emerging in the ESPCoR states, including
several NSF engineering research centers. And in my own state,
the University of Alabama Medical Center in Birmingham is
recognized as one of the finest medical centers in the country.
Access to the Internet and, specifically, to the Next
Generation Internet, is crucial to these programs and to the
overall economic and educational development in the ESPCoR
states. Let me zero in on the issue at hand: the Next
Generation Internet authorization legislation.
Thanks to efforts in this subcommittee, and through the
help of George Strong, the ESPCoR office, and others in NSF,
ESPCoR institutions have been able to participate in the Next
Generation Internet despite early indications that it might be
limited to only 50 or 100 institutions. We faced the real
possibility of being shut out of perhaps the major
infrastructure initiative of this decade. And it goes without
saying that this would have severely crippled our research
capabilities.
However, we did obtain at least one high-speed connection
for each ESPCoR state. And we did have representatives from our
states included on several committees and panels. And we are
included in several NSF initiatives. However, the job is not
finished. ESPCoR states continue to struggle with connection
costs and with the development of scientific applications of
the advanced networking systems. I believe we have the people;
our need is infrastructure and support.
The rural infrastructure and the minority and small college
Internet access initiatives are also of particular importance
to the ESPCoR states, where cost of Internet access remains a
significant barrier, as you mentioned earlier.
Let me close with two points. One is the importance of
providing an assurance that the ESPCoR states will continue to
be included in the Next Generation Internet program. This is
essential to our being competitive for funding from NSF and
other agencies. We may have a brilliant faculty member with a
truly outstanding proposal. But if we do not have the
connectivity and the infrastructure, that faculty member is
disadvantaged in grant competition and therefore research
capability.
Second, we ask you to work with us. I have had experience
in three ESPCoR states now--Mississippi, Kentucky, and Alabama.
All three have real research success stories, developed in the
settings where we teach, work, conduct our research, and
interact with our communities and states. Help us with
resources. Help us by including us in the relevant committees,
panels and boards. Help us in finding collaborations. We can
make important contributions to the development of Internet
technology, infrastructure and applications.
There is a real danger of a higher education digital
divide, that has been discussed today, that could leave
institutions in many states, particularly rural states, out of
the Next Generation Internet. The importance of this issue to
research, student education, business, and economic development
is underscored by its prominence at the National Governors
conference which just concluded here. During that conference,
Alabama Governor Don Siegleman announced plans to call together
leaders from across our state to address how Alabama can meet
the technology challenges of the 21st century. There is a
commitment there.
I believe the bill before you puts us on the right track to
prevent a digital divide in higher education. And I appreciate
your efforts, and I thank you for allowing me to be here today.
Thank you.
Senator Frist. Thank you, Dr. Meredith.
Dr. Stacy.
STATEMENT OF BILL STACY, PH.D., CHANCELLOR,
THE UNIVERSITY OF TENNESSEE AT CHATTANOOGA
Dr. Stacy. Thank you, Senator Frist.
I appreciate very much the commitment to the policy
considerations that you and your subcommittee and your
colleagues in the U.S. Senate pay to science, to technology and
to space. The wise investments of you and your colleagues and
the U.S. Senate, particularly your 1998 bill, have propelled
efforts to create and to claim the incredible assets of
technology and science that extend the reach and the power of
the human mind. Your investments to motivate America's
brightest intellects to pursue the potential of the Next
Generation Internet and large-scale networking programs serve
this Nation's highest ambitions and, indeed, its highest
obligations.
NGI, Internet2, large-scale networking programs, such as
Abilene and the very High Backbone Net services, push back the
frontiers of knowledge, and offer computational sophistication
that many of us thought unbelievable just decades ago. Such
intellectual tools provide hope for medical research, the
Nation's security, for environmental preservation, for
business/industrial modelling. In short, the potential of the
NGI extends and builds on what causes any of us to marvel at
what is reported at any scientific journal this month and,
indeed, in every daily newspaper this week.
Federal funding of the NGI encourages and enables our best
brains, whether in universities, research corporations or
foundations, to pursue those discoveries whose applications
seem destined to outpace even today's e-medicine, e-commerce,
e-data management, I suppose even e-politics, whatever those
e's are that are revolutionizing the intellectual, economic and
social lives of Americans.
My brief comments accompany a better statement which I
prepared and have delivered to your committee. And it talks of
the challenges of a metropolitan university who claims as its
only reason for being its response to the areas, clusters, that
it serves. Joining me for an indication of the excitement of
research at the University of Tennessee, is President Wade
Gilley. He has just joined us and has signalled a dramatic
recommitment to research for the land grant flagship university
at Knoxville. Dr. Duane McKay has recently accepted appointment
as the Vice President for Research and Technology of our
University System.
My remarks focus on the value of the NGI and the request
that this committee consider broadening access. The country
cannot allow ``haves and have-nots.'' Maybe we are beyond that,
but probably we ought not allow ``have and have-mores'' either.
I think Senator Rockefeller was trying to get a handle on that
in his comments a moment ago. In university parlance, we talk
about breadth and depth. And I think it is time perhaps that we
could broaden access to the sophistication of combinatorics and
other possibilities this Internet will allow us.
Fast Internet is the key to so many things. It is surely
our national goal. With limited resources as you began, it was
proper I think to focus it. But now, as you see developing
value, I just think it is enormous and maybe we could share
some of the access and entry points.
A major disconnect occurs with faculty, with universities,
with businesses, with communities, where that territorial
absence of that cluster of sophistication exists. There are
whole regions omitted from the high-speed networks. You know
that if you put some sort of a map of the Internet II over
Internet I, it looks remarkably similar.
Sure, it is Boston and it is New York to Philadelphia, and
it is Pittsburgh and it is Chicago and it is Atlanta, and it is
a little in St. Louis, and it is Florida and all the national
labs, and it is Boulder and it is the West Coast, and you see
it in, San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle. And then
you look at lots of areas of this country where that cluster of
sophisticated technology is absent. So I would say to you that,
as part of a system at the University of Tennessee, our campus
I think will not be a part of the developing of the
sophisticated protocols that many of the Carnegie I research
doctoral universities will provide.
Nonetheless, the absence of access for any faculty, for any
business, in a community where there is a great deal of
research potential, for the Tennessee Valley Authority, looking
at electric power, at water, at resources, great insurance
corporations headquartered in our area, logistics, looking at
water--there are many areas where access to the computational
potential that would be involved would make a tremendous
difference.
Our sister institution at Knoxville, the flagship
university, in its Carnegie I status, has been able to make
that connection to the performance network. And the
connectivity has been able then to generate other access and
other grant opportunities, a great deal of sophisticated
research, both in this country and in cooperation around the
world.
You have seen a number of those things. It is wonderful to
see the early harvest Internet application initiative,
providing that privacy, authentication, authorization, to
support medical applications. And you have seen the University
of Tennessee College of Veterinary Medicine, having the live
animal clinic caseload, sharing with colleges of veterinary
medicine throughout the Southeast.
You have seen the Radiology Department of the University of
Tennessee's Health Care in Memphis involved in a program to
monitor and direct ultrasound studies throughout the region.
And so there are many opportunities in telemedicine, medical
research, distance education, lots of ideas. Indeed, in the
Architecture School, using some on-demand live and archived
digital video, to help us in the teaching and the research of
architecture.
To just summarize, I think my comments are these three. The
country and the world are well-served by that wise investment
begun by this country over the years. And it is highlighted by
your 1998 Act. And what you are now considering is pursuing the
assets of this next generation of Internet II. Higher education
joins you in making this a very high priority in the
intellectual lives of the Nation's campuses throughout the
country.
While the work of discovery and protocol for the Next
Generation Internet remains critical to understanding,
applications are already beginning. America's genius of the
free market has entrepreneurs seeking to rush the applications
to Americans even before the ink is dry on the last discovery.
And third, the request that I bring to you is for broadened
access. We need to be sure that the NGI is accessible to any
faculty member, any person bright enough, competent enough to
contribute to its development or its application. Pricing now
allows only about 25 of the 700 universities in the South to be
members--25 of 700. Across the country, you heard 150, maybe
170, of nearly 4,000 colleges have that connection.
The strategy perhaps could allow campuses or systems some
way to distribute access through the flagship campus. Current
membership fees currently disenfranchise campuses that could
compete on their own merit for applied research and development
in a secondary applications.
The reality of this Republic is that its best resource is
always its people. The genius of America lives and works in
every state and region of this country. We are a mobile
population, to be sure, but we cannot all live in Silicon
Valley. We need to have the ability to make intellectual
opportunities and capacity more readily available to more
people in more places. The competitive nature of freedom to
think, to create, to apply inevitably works for the advantage
of all Americans.
Thank you very much for what you are doing for this
country.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Stacy follows:]
Prepared Statement of Bill Stacy, Ph.D., Chancellor,
The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
Since its founding in 1886, The University of Tennessee at
Chattanooga has been dedicated to providing quality education to a
diverse population of over 8,600 students, focusing on the development
of excellence in undergraduate education and in selected areas of
graduate study. We increasingly strive to provide the best public
undergraduate education in Tennessee. Our goal is to assist the
economic development and to improve the quality of life for Tennessee
and the surrounding region through expansion of its intellectual
capital.
The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga's professional and
graduate programs are better able to serve our students through the
unique assets of the metropolitan, living laboratory of Chattanooga and
surrounding metropolitan clusters. The University of Tennessee at
Chattanooga has developed into an excellent Master's Comprehensive I
Carnegie institution and is now evolving into distinction as a
comprehensive public metropolitan university. The campus ``accepts its
relationships to the surrounding metropolitan region as its essential
rationale, its reason for being,'' in the words of Daniel Johnson and
David Bell in their treatise on this emerging model of higher education
institutions.
The purpose of my testimony today is to relate the experiences of
The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga in the Next Generation
Internet environment, and the challenges we face to achieve full
participation in that environment. We are completely aware of the
impact high performance networking will have on how we conduct our
instructional and research activities in the 21st century, and that
some of those activities will undergo profound change. As in the case
of many non-Research I institutions, however, The University of
Tennessee at Chattanooga does not currently have equitable access to
NGI funding, and to the national and regional high performance
networking infrastructure, and, thus, is not benefiting from the rich
opportunities for collaboration, innovative instructional delivery and
resource sharing that the NGI allows. While one goal of the NGI and
Internet2 initiatives is to extend the fruits of advanced networking to
all levels of educational use, this is far from being a reality today.
As documented in the 1999 EDUCAUSE report Advanced Networking for All
of Higher Education: ``It was noted during a meeting among affiliate
members of the Internet2 project late in 1997 that consideration of how
the products of these leading edge efforts might `diffuse' to the
broader higher education community--and how to prepare for it-was
lacking.''
In the absence of a strategy for diffusion, institutions like The
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga may have to be content with
waiting for the eventual ``trickle-down,'' while most likely having to
tolerate the consequences of being on the wrong side of the ``digital
divide'' and the impact that will have on our status and
competitiveness. Such a scenario is intolerable to us, and, thus, we
are appealing for your consideration of the strategic funding and
support that will be necessary to reduce inequities in the NGI
environment before those inequities become unassailable.
Simply stated, The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga does not
have the financial resources necessary to support campus involvement in
NGI/Internet2. In fact, of the more than 700 four-year and two-year
universities and colleges in the nine-state Southeastern University
Research Association network (including Alabama, Florida, Georgia,
Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and
Tennessee) who are eligible for participation in the NGI/Internet2,
only 25 institutions are currently members. These numbers clearly show
that campuses like The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga have
overwhelmingly chosen not to participate. Since the benefits of
participation are readily evident, one can assume that non-
participation results from prohibitive factors.
For The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga to gain its own
access to Internet2/Abilene, membership fees, connector fees,
participant fees, and other charges are estimated at $277,000 for the
first year with equal recurring charges in subsequent years. At a time
of extremely tight state funding and with the commitment to hold
student fees to levels that do not limit accessibility, such costs,
even for crucial expenditures, are beyond the reach of most campuses.
Significant problems face campuses that are unable to participate
in the NGI/Internet2. As The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
recruits Ph.D.-qualified faculty members, access to networks such as
NGI and Internet2 is becoming increasingly important. As doctoral
candidates, these faculty members took advantage of the opportunities
afforded them by these networks, and their research efforts depend on
continued use. The inability of institutions like The University of
Tennessee at Chattanooga to provide this high speed access will either
deter candidates from joining their faculties or for those who accept
positions, their research will be stifled. Similarly, faculty members
whose research interests develop on campuses lacking network access may
choose to leave for positions where access is available. In either
case, the result is a loss of well-qualified faculty members for
campuses who lack the resources to maintain network connections.
The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga has increased its
emphasis on research, especially applied research that addresses the
issues and needs of a metropolitan region. Applied research has more
relevance in the educational environment as students can readily see
knowledge ``applied'' to solving real problems. Likewise, applied
research increases the opportunities for partnerships between the
campus and the community. Grant funding for NGI/Internet2 projects does
not appear to favor applied research efforts.
Curriculum development and the implementation of new degree
programs, especially graduate and doctoral programs, is affected by the
lack of access to NGI/Internet2. Student and faculty research will
increasingly become dependent--in some fields the need is already
absolute--on access to high speed network connections, and campuses
that do not have connections will be unable to recruit faculty and
students in those disciplines, effectively disabling the program
development.
The current fee structure is certainly a deterrent to participation
for campuses such as The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga where,
at present, perhaps no more than 10 faculty embers are engaged in
research which could require use of high speed access to computational
capabilities. This discounts the possibility of significant research
accomplishments by small teams or individuals at regional institutions
and instills a bias in the system toward large institutions where a
greater number of users would result in high demand for bandwidth.
Despite lack of involvement in high speed access projects, The
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga has made great technological
strides, especially in its on-campus fiber network. In terms of campus
network infrastructure, The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
meets the standard requirement of delivering at least 100 Mbps to the
desktop for on-campus traffic; this surpasses the capabilities of many
NGI/Internet2 participating campuses.
We may lack the external network connection to access NGI/
Internet2, but The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga does not lack
vision and desire for participation. If The University of Tennessee at
Chattanooga had access to the NGI/Internet2, the types of research
activities which might be advanced include the design of mechanical
prostheses, gait analysis, and computational physics, engineering, and
chemistry. One faculty member in mathematics studies acoustic models
and uses algorithms to detect objects in shallow water. Both the
military and oil industry have expressed interest in this research,
which is threatened if he does not gain high speed connection. A major
insurance company with its headquarters in Chattanooga has worked with
a business faculty member to explore new financial models for stock
market predictions. Environmental modeling could include the tracking
of pollution in the Tennessee River through partnerships in a water
quality research center which includes the Tennessee Valley Authority,
the Tennessee Aquarium, and the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.
Chattanooga has received international attention for its successful
efforts in air and water pollution control and interest in
environmental research is significant both on The University of
Tennessee at Chattanooga campus and in the community.
The direct public benefit from expanded access to the NGI for
campuses like the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga would be the
quicker response to identified needs through applied research results.
In a recent address, U.S. Congressman Zach Wamp tied the development of
additional graduate and doctoral programs at The University of
Tennessee at Chattanooga with the economic vitality and future of
Chattanooga and the surrounding area. Jim Kennedy, president of the
Chattanooga Area Chamber of Commerce echoes Wamp's sentiment.
``Chattanooga is a city that has reinvented itself,'' said Kennedy,
``and we are in the midst of a strategic planning process--the success
of which will hinge in large part on The University of Tennessee at
Chattanooga's ability to deliver on applied research. Moreover, the
change in technical training required of college graduates underscores
the need for a well-wired university.''
In comparison to The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga's
experiences, I would like to illustrate what NGI participation and
federal support can enable by describing the experiences of The
University of Tennessee, the flagship institution of The University of
Tennessee System in Knoxville. I hope my illustration will demonstrate
what the NGI is enabling now in some reaches of higher education, and
what the NGI will enable in future, once the challenges to full
exploitation of NGI resources are overcome. Most significantly, I hope
this illustration will serve to elucidate what benefits institutions
like The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga are being deprived of
in our current exclusion from the NGI.
A charter member of Internet2, The University of Tennessee was the
recipient in 1997 of an NSF High Performance Connections grant ($350k)
to fund connection to the very High Performance Backbone Network
Services (vBNS) national backbone. Since February 1999, UT has accessed
the vBNS via the regional GigaPOP at The Georgia Institute of
Technology in Atlanta with a 45Mbps. (DS-3) connection, and has also
connected to the regional Southeastern Universities Research
Association network, Southern Crossroads, via the GIT GigaPOP.
Currently, both the Knoxville and Memphis University of Tennessee
sites are preparing to migrate to Abilene, the Internet2 gigabit
backbone. With the relaxation of the Abilene conditions-of-use in 1999,
primary Abilene participants are now in a position to sponsor secondary
participants, once meritorious use is demonstrated. Organizations, such
as libraries, museums, K12, and institutions such as The University of
Tennessee at Chattanooga, who would not otherwise enjoy Abilene access,
are now presented with that opportunity. We anticipate this very
encouraging development will foster more pervasive access to the NGI
and should generate some very fruitful outcomes.
In addition to High Performance Connections program funding, The
University of Tennessee was jointly awarded $6.5m in 1998 by the NSF
and the Ministry for Science and Technology of the Russian Federation
for the MIRNet project--to provide Next Generation Internet services to
collaborating US-Russian scientists and educators. The goals of the
MIRNet project include assisting meritorious scientific collaborations
requiring advanced, high performance internet services; connecting the
Russian Next Generation Internet network to the US v BNS, and other
next generation networks in the US and elsewhere; and, more broadly,
encouraging and supporting productive cooperation between the US and
Russian scientific communities.
The University of Tennessee, therefore, by virtue of its Carnegie I
status, and its demonstrated need for high performance network
connectivity, has been able to successfully compete for federal agency
support, and has thus been enabled to fully participate in the NGI
efforts being pursued under the aegis of Internet2, a consortium of
over 170 U.S. research institutions, government, and over 50 industry
partners.
With the enabling network infrastructure in place, The University
of Tennessee has been positioned to pursue and secure additional
funding, including awards from The Southeastern Universities Research
Association for development and promotion of next generation video-
over-IP technologies; from The NSF Knowledge & Distributed Intelligence
(KDI) program for development of interactive, online supercomputing
training modules; and from The NSF for a Scalable Intracampus Research
Grid (SInRG) project for the deployment of a research grid on The
University of Tennessee campus at Knoxville, mirroring the technologies
and the interdisciplinary research collaborations that are
characteristic of the emerging national technology grid.
Like many of the 100 research institutions awarded grants in the
NSF High Performance Connections program, The University of Tennessee
is faced with challenges to optimal use of its advanced networking
capabilities. The challenges include last mile or local loop problems,
i.e., the quality of the connection to the end user's desktop, and the
need for campus networking upgrades, the characteristically high cost
of high performance applications and the lack of funding for
application development, the high demands on faculty time and lack of
incentive to develop applications, the need for advanced middleware and
resolution of network performance issues. Next generation
internetworking in general, is still essentially a testbed environment,
with network engineering issues, such as Quality-of-Service, yet to be
resolved. Many of the technologies that can realize the benefits of
broadband networks are emerging, and thus can suffer from poor
interoperability, lack of standardization, and high cost.
The dearth of traffic and applications taking advantage of the
advanced research network infrastructure is a cause for concern
nationally, which, not surprisingly, has resulted in a reevaluation of
the merits of funding infrastructure. Universities, such as The
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, which have not already received
infrastructure funding, therefore, will likely find making a case to do
so difficult. The NSF Division of Advanced Networking Infrastructure
and Research has now recognized the need to support end-to-end
application development through funding of advanced network services,
and has concluded that direction and support in this area is vital for
full utilization of our NGI resources to be realized. This conclusion
has been fully endorsed in the Internet2 community. Certainly, although
there is disappointmentwith the current state of application
development, the essential infrastructure is now in place, thanks to
federal agency support. It is critical that disappointment does not
lead to this support being abandoned and a loss of momentum; continuing
support will serve to enable us to exploit achievements to date and
realize the full potential of the NGI.
While The University of Tennessee, like many of its peers, has
faced challenges to application development, it has still been in a
position to reap other benefits of membership in the NGI/Internet2
community. Some of the benefits of NGI participation are obvious--
access to collaborative tools, remote virtual environments, remote
instrumentation, distributed computing resources, and digital
libraries, for example. However, as Research-1 institutions coalesce
around the NGI/Internet2 focus, additional and equally significant
benefits for their Information Technology organizations and
constituencies have emerged-sharing of resources and expertise,
development of a skilled IT workforce, emergence of multi-institutional
partnerships and collaborations, and the leveraging of these
partnerships towards more effective relationships with industry and the
vendor community, and the opportunity to contribute to the design and
implementation of the NGI.
The University of Tennessee has made good use of these membership
advantages, and has demonstrated leadership in NGI/Internet2 in
initiating and fostering multi-institutional collaborations, such as
The Video Development Initiative, a multi-institutional effort to
promote the deployment of digital video in higher education, and the
Internet2 Distributed Storage Infrastructure (I2-DSI), a replicated
hosting service for Internet content and applications. The University
of Tennessee Health Science Center in Memphis is an active member of
the ``Early Harvest'' Internet2 initiative which seeks to provide
privacy, authentication and authorization tools to support medical
applications. The Health Science Center and The University of Tennessee
College of Veterinary Medicine are also participating in a new Health
Sciences initiative sponsored by Internet2.
The University of Tennessee is currently endeavoring to leverage
its own resources, and the collective resources it now has access to,
towards application development. Brief descriptions of some of the
applications underway at The University of Tennessee illustrate how
NGI-enabled applications can enrich instruction and research.
Virtual Rounds is an application at The University of Tennessee
College of Veterinary Medicine that entails the sharing of live animal
clinical caseloads with the colleges of veterinary medicine in the
southeast. Geographical obstacles have previously restricted veterinary
teaching hospitals from sharing caseloads, but by taking turns at
presenting live cases via high-quality teleconferences, the
participating colleges can not only increase the number and variety of
live animal cases their students are exposed to, but can also benefit
from interaction with their peers. Sharing of clinical cases is the
first step in the exploitation of emerging technologies and NGI
capabilities for the sharing of resources and for collaboration in
veterinary medical education.
Since 1995, the Radiology Department at The University of Tennessee
Health Science Center in Memphis has utilized remote directed abdominal
ultrasound, with a radiologist at a central site monitoring and
directing ultrasound studies being actually performed by trained
technologists at various sites throughout Memphis and West Tennessee.
While one of these studies can be relatively easily accommodated on
commodity telecommunications links, abdominal ultrasound is only one of
many radiology studies which itself is a subset of other medical
procedures. To mature from a niche application to comprehensive remote
delivery of patient procedures will require significant additional
aggregate bandwidth. In addition, The University of Tennessee Health
Science Center operates training programs and has numerous clinical
interactions at many sites, including Jackson, Dyersburg, Nashville,
Knoxville and Chattanooga, while The School of Nursing in Memphis
offers graduate degrees entirely over the Internet. However, with the
congestion on today's commodity Internet, there are limitations to the
scale and degree of interactivity achieved.
The health sciences arena is one that is likely to be greatly
impacted by the NGI, but application developments are still in their
infancy and much of the promise remains to be tapped. The National
Institute of Health has been a strong advocate of the NGI but support
for grass-root efforts and an ubiquitous high speed networking
infrastructure for use in telemedicine, medical research and distance
education applications is critical. With the enabling infrastructure in
place, for example, The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga would be
able to access the large gene databases located at the Department of
Energy and other sites to support its participation in the human and
mouse genome projects, and enhance its offerings in biological science
education.
The University of Tennessee is partnering with regional and
national networking organizations (The National Laboratory for Applied
Network Research (NLANR), the National Center for Atmospheric Research
(NCAR) and the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center) to work towards a
solution to the poor performance of large file transfer. The short-term
goal is to meet theimmediate demand at The University of Tennessee for
large data transfer, demand from faculty/researchers in High Energy
Physics, and Computer Sciences, for example. Over the long-term, the
envisioned goal of this project, called Web100, is to arrive at
improved performance in commercial host software in general in order to
fully avail of bandwidth.
The University of Tennessee has recently accelerated its
application development, and is also planning additional applications,
including the development of virtual design studios for use in
architectural instruction and research, the creation of high-quality
on-demand live and archived digital video assets for use in all
disciplines, digital library development, and the fostering of
collaborative opportunities through the development of a high-quality
teleconferencing-over-IP service.
Finally, with the recent award to The University of Tennessee and
Battelle partnership of the management contract for The Oak Ridge
National Laboratory, The University of Tennessee, Oak Ridge Associated
Universities (Duke University, Florida State University, Georgia
Institute of Technology, North Carolina State University, University of
Virginia and Virginia Tech), and The Department of Energy will now be
able to pool and leverage NGI resources and expertise towards
supporting and fostering excellence in areas such as neutron science,
distributed computing, biotechnology and advanced materials, and
network research.
``Advanced Networking for All of Higher Education: Recommendations
and Report from the Institutional Opportunities for Advanced
Networking'' Net@EDU Conference, January 1999, Austin, Texas: p. 7.
CONCLUSIONS
In conclusion, I hope my testimony demonstrates the eagerness of
The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga to participate in the NGI/
Internet2. I hope that I have also shown that funding for enabling
infrastructure is just the beginning, and much more can be achieved if
federal agency support continues. One recommendation would be to change
the Internet2 fee structure to allow levels of membership based on an
institution's expected use of the network. Current network use does not
even come close to exceeding bandwidth limits, and the benefits gained
from expanded access to campuses like The University of Tennessee at
Chattanooga are far greater than the risk of system overload.
The higher educational community is just starting to witness the
first fruits of the NGI, but already there is ample evidence of the
contribution the NGI is likely to make to successfully fulfill our
research, instruction and public service missions in the 21st Century.
In closing I would like to leave you with this. The steel rails
used to deliver goods and information in the past have been replaced by
miles of electronic fiber. Since the fiber network largely follows the
rail lines, the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga is well situated
geographically to access the fiber networks necessary for NGI and
Internet2 use. The dream of a Tennessee Technological Corridor running
from Knoxville to Oak Ridge to Chattanooga will not be a reality until
The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga is afforded participation in
the NGI and Internet2. Oak Ridge, Tennessee, well known as a major
computational center, is only 90 miles from Chattanooga; however, it
may as well be across the country because of The University of
Tennessee at Chattanooga's inability to access it through a high speed
network. Please help us bridge that 90 miles, and we guarantee the
investment will be multiplied in return.
Senator Frist. Thank you, Dr. Stacy.
Mr. Tolbert.
STATEMENT OF STEPHEN TOLBERT, PRESIDENT AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE
OFFICER, GLOBAL SYSTEMS & STRATEGIES, INC.
Mr. Tolbert. Thank you, Senator Frist. I thank you for the
opportunity for inviting me to speak about this compelling
issue.
I am Steve Tolbert. I am the President of Global Systems &
Strategies. We are a small, fast-growing network architecture
design firm. My company provides high-end network engineering
consulting services to a variety of private sector clients as
well as government agencies, including the Health Care
Financing Administrator, Department of Defense, and the Food
and Drug Administration.
I am also a member of the Northern Virginia Technology
Council Board of Directors and Executive Committee. And as
such, I am the founder and Chair of NVTC's Telemedicine Working
Group, which is a new regional initiative in telemedicine.
In speaking today, I represent the perspective of my firm
as well as other private sector interests in high technology,
as both consumers and also designers of Internet services, and
also the perspective of the NVTC Telemedicine Working Group.
Our society's dependence on information technology and the
Internet services that glue us together is growing at a
staggering rate. Every day more businesses, more Federal, state
and local government agencies and more individuals jump to new
Internet-based services and technologies as a way of getting
just about anything done.
To appreciate our increasing dependency on technology, we
need only look back 60 days at the Y2K scare. America's public
and private sector businesses stopped forward progress on many
fronts and spent billions of dollars vaccinating themselves
against the Y2K bug. Families across the country even built
bunkers, with months of supplies, certain that society would
grind to a halt with crippled technology.
We are squarely in the midst of the information age, and
our way of life depends on how we embrace this new order. The
Internet is at the center of this dramatic trend. It has become
the connecting fabric of today's modern business and even
today's modern family. We hand out E-mail addresses as readily
as we hand out phone numbers today.
From Fortune 100 businesses to local, family owned produce
farms, almost every business uses information technology and
the Internet in some capacity. Today, the Internet is at an
interesting crossroads. Based partly on 20-year-old technology,
the Internet's capacity and capabilities are being exhausted by
our amazing ability to think up new ways to use it. It is
literally becoming a victim of its own success.
Today's Internet will not support tomorrow's demands. We
must begin implementing NGI now to protect our current rate of
progress and also our global leadership. For example, we are
fast depleting available unique addresses on the current
Internet. While work-arounds are available that may extend
current addressing schemes, they compromise other key features
and only solve the problem for particular uses of the Internet.
On the other hand, the address space offered by NGI could
provide up to 32 unique addresses for every square inch of dry
land on the planet. Not terribly useful--as a mathematician
with too much time on his hands--but it is a clear indication
that we will not be facing this problem again for generations
if we adopt NGI.
Other problems relate to the current technology's inability
to adequately support new uses, such as transmission of high-
speed real-time multimedia images, like complex medical images
or full-screen, full-motion video conferencing. A single MRI
image can include up to 20 gigabytes, 20 billion bytes of
information, which, over a standard dial-up Internet
connection, would take roughly 38 days to transmit. I would
submit that in some cases the transmission would outlast the
patient.
If you are fortunate enough to have access to a, quote,
unquote, high-speed T-1 connection, it would take more than 30
hours. A typical connection to NGI would move this image in 30
seconds, and allow real-time diagnosis.
Finally, our national telecommunications infrastructure
does not provide adequate access to today's Internet. While
most regions have telephone access, and therefore low-speed
access to the Internet, many rural areas do not have higher-
speed services critical for applications such as, again,
telemedicine.
Consider the transmission of medical images--even less
complex x-rays. Support for full-motion, full-screen video
conferencing between remote patients and physicians or
specialists requires three to six times the speed of a standard
telephone line. Rural access to NGI could support such services
as lifelike video conferencing and real-time transmission of
medical images, including full-motion images, such as
ultrasound.
There are more esoteric applications, such as telerobotic
surgery, that are made possible by the bandwidth promises of
NGI. These advantages, or advances, would not only change the
cost of rural health care and, in fact, national health care,
they would save lives.
The Next Generation Internet and its supporting
technologies can solve many of the current obstacles and truly
enable the next generation of information technology. For
example, NGI supports high-speed multimedia transmission,
including voice, enhanced security, vastly increased
addressing, and more robust fault resistance. But while many of
the specific technologies needed have been developed by various
public and private consortia and research organizations, there
is still substantial work ahead to make NGI viable and a
national solution.
Additional research in high-speed, high-availability
network technologies is needed to produce the next wave of
higher-speed yet inexpensive network equipment and software.
Specifically, research is needed to support affordable high-
speed rural access with technologies such as wireless and
satellite communications. There is also much work to be done
planning the transition to NGI. The process of migrating the
Nation's pervasive Internet technology to a new generation of
technologies is non-trivial and, by some estimates, may cost up
to $100 billion.
I would argue, however, that the alternative of an
exhausted Internet would cost more, through lost revenues, lost
competitive edge, and the inability to deliver needed services.
If we agree, then, that the reasons to move NGI are clear and
compelling, the remaining question becomes: Why should the
government dedicate substantial funds to the issue? Why won't
natural market forces compel the high-technology industry to
develop and deploy NGI on its own?
I would argue that substantial progress on specific fronts
by private industry is probably inevitable. However, I would
also argue that the development of a coherent solution in the
timeframes needed before the current Internet becomes a barrier
is unlikely without additional motivation and focus. For
example, without directed research, few companies would make
near-term investments in high-speed rural access. The economics
simply do not support it.
In this case, there is a divergence between the national
interests on the one hand and the competitive interests and
pressures of the private sector on the other. As I stated
earlier, to ignore the rural access issue could cost lives.
Motivated by Federal support, industry could develop and deploy
technologies that, in providing lower-cost rural access, could
improve availability of quality health care and help to narrow
the digital divide.
Federal investment and coordination would also provide two
other fundamental benefits. It would certainly accelerate
progress toward a faster, more robust national
telecommunications infrastructure. Furthermore, it would serve
to homogenize the diverse efforts of those involved, leading to
national technical standards and avoiding the frequent delays
introduced by competing proprietary technologies.
Other dividends produced by the investment would include
the following: First, achieving a faster, more robust national
telecommunications infrastructure would support additional
economic growth, not just in the high technology industry, but
across every industry that could benefit from universal access
to fast, reliable communications. There is clear precedence in
the dividends produced by investments in the technology
sector--a sector that accounted, as Dr. Lane pointed out, for
roughly one-third of the economy's growth between 1995 and
1998.
Second, the country has enjoyed global competitive
leadership that in fact began with similar investments in
infrastructure that fueled the industrial revolution 100 years
ago. Accelerating the deployment of a more capable
infrastructure would help to sustain this leadership, both
business-to-business relationships and collaboration among
research and educational institutions would be enhanced.
Often overlooked in discussions about advanced technology
investments, the social impact of an improved national
telecommunications infrastructure would be profound. Again,
regarding telemedicine, the impacts on the delivery and access
to timely, high-quality health care services alone could
improve the quality of life.
Finally, the government itself is a substantial consumer of
telecommunications services and would benefit directly from
accelerated deployment of a faster, more secure
telecommunications infrastructure, though, admittedly, this
would be initially tempered by the government's own transition
costs.
In conclusion, I strongly support the changes to the Next
Generation Act that this subcommittee is considering, and I
again appreciate the opportunity to speak to you today about
this.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Tolbert follows:]
Prepared Statement of Stephen Tolbert, President and Chief Executive
Officer, Global Systems and Strategies, Inc.
Chairman Frist:
My name is Steve Tolbert and I am the president of Global Systems &
Strategies, Inc., (GSS) a small, fast-growing network architecture
design firm in the mid-Atlantic region. My company provides high-end
network engineering consulting services to a variety of private sector
clients as well as Government agencies such as HCFA, DOD, and FDA. I am
also a member of the Northern Virginia Technology Council (NVTC) board
of directors and executive committee, and as such, am the founder and
chair of NVTC's Telemedicine Working Group. In speaking here today, I
represent the perspective of my firm, as both a consumer and designer
of Internet services, as well as that of the NVTC Telemedicine Working
Group.
Our society's dependence on information technology and the Internet
services that glue us all together is growing at a staggering rate.
Every day, more businesses, more federal, state, and local government
agencies, and more individuals jump to new internet-based services and
technologies as a way of getting just about anything done. To
appreciate our increasing dependency on technology, we need only to
look back 60 days at the Y2K scare. America's public and private sector
businesses stopped forward progress on many fronts and spent billions
of dollars vaccinating themselves against the Y2K bug. Families across
the country even built bunkers stocked with months of supplies, certain
that society would grind to a halt with crippled technology. We are
squarely in the midst of the information age and our way of life
depends on how we embrace this new order.
The Internet is at the center of this dramatic trend. It has become
the connecting fabric of today's modern business and even today's
modern family. We hand out e-mail addresses as readily as we hand out
phone numbers. From Fortune 100 businesses to local, family-owned
produce farms, almost every business uses information technology and
the internet in some capacity.
Today, however, the internet is at an interesting cross-roads.
Based partly on twenty-year old technology, the Internet's capacity and
capabilities are being exhausted by our amazing ability to think up new
ways to use it. It is becoming a victim of its own success. Today's
Internet will not support tomorrow's demands--we must begin
implementing the Next Generation Internet (NGI) now to protect our
current rate of progress and our global leadership.
For example, we are fast depleting available, unique addresses on
the current Internet. While work-arounds are available that may extend
current addressing schemes, they compromise other key features and only
solve the problem for particular uses of the Internet. The address
space offered by NGI could provide up to 32 unique addresses for every
square inch of dry land on the planet--not terribly useful, but a clear
indication that we would not be facing this problem again for
generations.
Other problems relate to the current technology's inability to
adequately support new uses such as transmission of high-speed, real-
time multi-media images like complex medical images or full-screen,
full-motion video conferencing. A single MRI image can include up to 20
gigabytes of information, which, over a standard dial-up Internet
connection, would take roughly 38 days to transmit. If you're fortunate
enough to have access to a ``high-speed'' T-1 connection, it would
still take more than 30 hours. A typical connection to NGI would move
this image in 30 seconds.
Finally, our national telecommunications infrastructure does not
provide adequate access to today's Internet. While most regions have
telephone access and therefore, low-speed access to the internet, many
rural areas do not have higher speed services critical for applications
such as telemedicine. Again, consider transmission of medical images,
even less complex x-rays. Support for full-screen, full-motion video
conferencing between remote patients and physicians or specialists
requires 3--6 times the speed of a standard telephone line. Rural
access to NGI could support such services as life-like video
conferencing and real-time transmission of medical images (including
full-motion images such as ultrasound.) These advances would not only
change the cost of rural health care--they would save lives.
The Next Generation Internet and its supporting technologies can
solve many current obstacles and truly enable the next generation of
information technology. For example, NGI supports high-speed multi-
media transmission, including voice over IP, enhanced security, vastly
increased addressing, and more robust fault resistance. But, while many
of the specific technologies needed have been developed by various
public and private consortia and research organizations, there is still
substantial work ahead to make NGI a viable, national solution.
Additional research in high-speed, high-availability network
technologies is needed to produce the next wave of higher speed, yet
inexpensive network equipment and software. Specifically, research is
needed to support affordable, higher-speed rural access with
technologies such as wireless and satellite communications. There is
also much work to be done planning the transition to NGI. The process
of migrating the nation's pervasive Internet technology to a new
generation of technologies is non-trivial, and by some estimates, may
cost up to $100 billion. I would argue, however, that the alternative
of an exhausted internet would cost more through lost revenue, lost
competitive edge, and the inability to deliver needed services.
If we agree that the reasons to move to NGI are clear and
compelling, then the remaining question becomes, ``why should the
federal government dedicate substantial funds to the issue?'' Why won't
natural market forces compel the high-technology industry to develop
and deploy NGI?
I would argue that substantial progress on specific fronts by
private industry is probably inevitable. However, I would also argue
that the development of a coherent, more capable national
telecommunications infrastructure that, at the same time treats both
rural, individual access and urban, Fortune 100 access in the
timeframes needed before the current Internet becomes a barrier, is
unlikely without additional motivation and focus.
For example, without directed research, few companies would make
near-term investments in high-speed rural access--the economics simply
don't support it. In this case, there is a divergence between the
national interest on the one hand and the competitive interests and
pressures of the private sector on the other. As I stated earlier, to
ignore the rural access issue could cost lives. Motivated by federal
support, industry could develop and deploy technologies that, in
providing lower cost rural access, could improve availability of
quality health care and help to narrow the digital divide.
Federal investment and coordination would also provide two other
fundamental benefits. It would certainly accelerate progress towards a
faster, more robust national telecommunications infrastructure.
Furthermore, it would serve to homogenize the diverse efforts of those
involved, leading to national technical standards and avoiding the
delays introduced by competing, proprietary technologies.
Other dividends produced by this investment would include the
following:
Achieving a faster and more robust national
telecommunications infrastructure would support additional economic
growth, not just in the high technology industry, but across every
industry that could benefit from universal access to fast, reliable
communications. There is clear precedence in the dividends produced by
investments in the technology sector, a sector that accounted for
roughly \1/3\ of the economy's growth between 1995 and 1998.
This country has enjoyed global competitive leadership
that in fact began with similar investments in infrastructure that
fueled the industrial revolution 100 years ago. Accelerating the
deployment of a more capable telecommunications infrastructure would
help to sustain this leadership. Business to business relationships and
collaboration among research and educational institutions would be
enhanced.
Often overlooked in discussions about advanced technology
investments, the social impact of an improved national
telecommunications infrastructure would be profound. The impact on the
delivery and access to timely, high-quality health care services alone
could improve quality of life across the country.
Finally, the government itself is a substantial consumer
of telecommunications services and would benefit directly from
accelerated deployment of a faster, more secure telecommunications
infrastructure, though, admittedly, this would be initially tempered by
the government's own transition costs.
In conclusion, I strongly support the changes to the Next
Generation Internet Act under consideration by this subcommittee.
Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to speak to you today
about this compelling and timely issue.
Senator Frist. Thank you, Mr. Tolbert.
Let me ask each of you a couple of questions. Dr. Meredith,
you commented on the desire of many non-ESPCoR states to
participate in the program because it does respond to a basic
need, basic infrastructure support, that is necessary to
enhance a national research base. Do you believe this need for
infrastructure support may become a national problem as we go
forward into the future?
Dr. Meredith. I do not think there is any question about
it, Senator. We cannot do our work. We have so much capability
on so many campuses that are not located in all the places that
my good friend, Chancellor Stacy, was talking about. We have
such incredible pockets of talent that need to have an outlet.
And if that infrastructure is not present, if it is not there
to allow that outlet to occur, the Nation loses. Our states
lose.
As you know, ESPCoR particularly is directed toward
research that benefits that state in particular and the Nation,
as well. But it must directly impact that state. All that is
lost if the infrastructure is not available to allow those
people the access.
Senator Frist. Chancellor Stacy, could you comment on how
membership in Internet II factors into who receives grants from
the NSF and other Federal agencies?
Dr. Stacy. The first part of the access is that
connectivity. And that becomes really the first part. And for
small institutions such as ours, for instance, you start by
needing to pay a membership fee in UCAID. And then it becomes a
matter of your need to purchase additional somethings, maybe
like Abilene, the connectivity, and on and on. And then it
becomes the phone line. It costs about $300,000 for the first
step, just to begin.
Once that $300,000 is expended and you achieve the
memberships, then you are able to play in the arena, to seek
the NSF grants and other things. But it is that first level of
connectivity that is the barrier to many. Sometimes it is the
last mile of the phone line that has to bring that potential to
you.
So, just in every case, it is a priority choice to decide
where does that $300,000 investment go, and it is so critical
and we ought to be making it. And yet, across the country, if
we only have that done in 150 places out of 4,000 schools, we
are missing potential and we are leaving faculty, very bright
people, stranded by having simply not the access to it.
Senator Frist. When Dr. Colwell said the NSF is reaching--
when I said what you were going to say--and she said they were
reaching out in other areas, could you put that in perspective
for us?
Dr. Stacy. Well, yes. As a member of the Internet II, the
University of Tennessee Knoxville campus was the recipient, in
1997, of that NSF high-performance connection grant of
$350,000. But you have got to get there first. And one of the
items that I would I guess plead as you bring the revisions to
the bill is that that basic first step of access be provided in
some way. Maybe it is a prorated part of use. Maybe it is a
part of the flagship campus. Maybe it is related to a national
lab nearby. We sit 80 or 90 miles from Oak Ridge, 100 miles
from Knoxville, and it is as much as if it were 1,000 miles.
Senator Frist. The other programs that she mentioned, do
you take advantage of any of those that Dr. Colwell mentioned?
Dr. Stacy. And it is that first level of access. If you do
not get the connectivity, you are shut out of any of them. So
it is such a first step for us that it is a big part.
Senator Frist. Mr. Tolbert, first, thanks for your
testimony. Your examples in there and your medical examples are
very useful to me. Because a lot of people, both I am sure in
your business, though you are consulting with people who
already understand what they need or you help them understand
what they need, but when you talk about the Next Generation
Internet, it is very helpful to have very specific examples,
whether it is medical images, comparing it to what comes
through the telephone line or your other examples in terms of
imaging and T-1 connections and what they do from MRI's.
I am fascinated and would ask you to elaborate on your
comment right at the end of your presentation about how Federal
investment can homogenize and help in some way sort out a
mishmash, diverse environment, and give some discipline in
terms of standards that can then be promulgated out to the
private sector. Could you comment on that and the role of
government vis-a-vis an environment of competing technologies?
Each of them, I am sure, want to develop their own standards.
Mr. Tolbert. I think it is a very important aspect of what
you are trying to do. And I think that, as you know, the
industry sort of creates new ideas and new value in the
Internet economy. And it is not so much in evolutionary steps,
it is explosive steps. And it is very difficult to sort of get
ahead of that activity and provide some guidance. And a lot of
the explosive steps that are successful and that sort of take
tend to have sort of direct economic value. And that is what
drives them.
And I think that what that often leads to, however, is,
one, competing standards, or technologies that address sort of
80 percent of the problem or, in some cases, 20 percent of the
problem, with 80 percent of the economic gain. And so I guess
my feeling about the role of Federal investment and the ability
to select how grants are made and what activities are supported
is the ability to sort of help steer the explosion of these new
technologies so that we do not develop multiple competing
technologies, we do not ignore the last mile and rural regions,
for example, where, again, the economic model simply does not
support what most companies would invest on their own.
So, again, it is not only helping fill in the gaps where
the private sector would not address technology, but it is also
making sure that most of the explosions are in a consistent
direction and with some vision that is useful in the broader
sense. I think that a lot of companies are driven by relatively
short-term vision and returns as opposed to something that we
need to do today that will affect us substantially in 5 or 10
years. And I think that by directing investments you can effect
that direction.
Senator Frist. Thank you.
Dr. Stacy, what about recruitment? Since we are on this
huge or rapidly climbing curve in terms of Internet technology
that we hope to make even more rapid in terms of its ascent.
When you talk to faculty and students--and again, I was
reminded when the young students were in here earlier today--
when you are recruiting faculty and students, how important is
the access to high-speed networks like NGI, Abilene, in your
ability to recruit?
Dr. Stacy. Your instincts are exactly right on. When that
digital divide separates that faculty member who has been at
the research 1, the doctoral program, has utilized the greatest
sophistication of combinatorics, when that computational
sophistication is not available at the next place, how does
that person continue his or her research?
So it sets up, again, the divide, of that very best faculty
member whom you want has had that experience. And to move to
another institution lacking it is just very tough on that
faculty member. It has implications to the curriculum. It has
implications then to the faculty. It does set up that have and
have-not.
Senator Frist. Dr. Meredith, let me sort of keep with that
theme of faculty, faculty recruitment. And considering that
your state must struggle to meet the connection costs to permit
these cutting-edge advanced technologies, do you find that the
system in Alabama has adequate faculty to aggressively compete
for grants, the grants that are out there--faculty and let us
take it down to graduate students, as well?
Dr. Meredith. We are in a constant struggle to stay in that
battle. We require at our three research universities that they
generate a significant portion of their operating expenses in
income. And we have been very successful at that, I would say,
very competitive, at all three institutions.
But in order to have those kinds of faculty members who can
generate those kinds of dollars that also keep the rest of the
institution going, we have got to have the technology support
for them. And bringing in the Gigapop into our three
institutions has been an enormous boon to us in order to keep
the faculty members we have.
They now have access to--I would love to take you for an
hour through the kinds of things that are going on now in our
institutions--optical electronics, with advanced microchips,
just on and on. The new advances of medicine, with biomaterials
engineering, with implants, and so forth. They are able to be
in concert with their colleagues, in collaboration with their
colleagues, all over the country. And they can do that from our
institutions now. They do not have to move now and go somewhere
else.
I have a great E-mail here from one of our leading
astronomy professors, who is in collaboration with some folks
in Arizona. What he can do now downloading at our institution
from a telescope in Arizona is unbelievable. He is just
ecstatic in his E-mail, that he is now competitive. He can
collaborate with people anywhere in the country and around the
world and maintain his research and stay in Alabama and get
that done. It is just essential.
Senator Frist. Dr. Stacy, the University of Tennessee's
participation in the MIR Net project would provide Next
Generation Internet services to Russian scientists and
educators. Could you tell me a little more about that?
Dr. Stacy. That is a collaboration, as both countries,
scientists in both places, are looking at that next generation.
I think it meets the U.S.'s ambition of having collaborative
scientific endeavors. We live in this global village, and we
are finding a great deal of bright colleagues there with whom
to work. It is a part of an effort that says that intellect is
not bound up at some national border.
Senator Frist. Are there other international collaborative
projects going on that you are participating in?
Dr. Stacy. I do not know of others similar to MIR net.
Senator Frist. Dr. Meredith.
Dr. Meredith. We have a number. And one of the things we
have found so interesting lately is the collaboration now that
is going on across borders, and as we look at research articles
coming out, no longer are there one or two people on so many of
those articles. Now there are six or seven or eight or 10
people, and they are located all over the world. And they
collaborate now because they have the ability to move their
research back and forth and come to some wonderful discoveries
together.
Senator Frist. In my own field of medicine, before coming
to the U.S. Senate, it was very early on, but--now it seems
like ancient history, based on all the discussions and the
speed with which things have moved--but it was fascinating in
terms of scientific cooperation across borders, which, in 1993
it was almost unheard of. In 1994, when we first began to
understand the Internet, it changed and even advanced pediatric
heart transplantation and basic immunology. And of course now
it is the rule.
Mr. Tolbert, do you feel that the pace of NGI research--we
talked a little bit about funding and this doubling curve, but
in terms of the research itself, the substance of the research,
the pace, the advance, is it able to meet what you perceive are
the private sector's needs or demands in a timely fashion?
Mr. Tolbert. If I were to consider concepts to
commercialize the application of technology, I would say that
it is not able to keep up with demand. I think that it takes
quite a bit of activity to get a concept to the point where it
is sliding down the price slope. And that is when it becomes
commercially viable, or viable for consumption. And that
typically takes a tremendous amount of time. I think that it is
happening today with NGI technologies.
At the same time, I would say that in some specific areas
there have been great strides. And certainly what is in place
now and the connections that these two gentlemen benefit from
are a great example of the fact that some of the technologies
are there now and can be deployed and made useful.
But, again, I think my overall comment would be that there
is not enough going on and not enough urgency to make it
commercially viable to keep up with demand. I think that, in
general, demand is always just slightly ahead of what is
available to support it.
Senator Frist. You talked in your testimony about the cost
and you threw a figure out. And since I may use that figure I
want you to help me with it. The cost of migrating the Nation's
pervasive Internet technology to a new generation of
technologies is not small, not trivial, as you said. And you
had the figure of $100 billion in there. Before I go and use
it, I want you to tell me where that estimate roughly comes
from.
Mr. Tolbert. If I am not mistaken, and I will verify this
after I leave, that it is from a Department of Commerce study.
Senator Frist. And the types of activities that this
deployment would involve are what?
Mr. Tolbert. If you think of it in terms of infrastructure,
certainly there is equipment and software that simply needs to
be deployed. There is also physical connections that need to be
made between huge high-speed hubs for the new infrastructure.
But there is also organizational planning on the part of
individual consumers.
There is a very specific transition of technology. There is
sort of an evolution from one technology to the other and, at
some point, probably coexistence of multiple protocols like IP
version 4 and IP version 6. And all of that takes a great deal
of planning. It is something that is probably done incremental.
And out of that came this estimate.
There is a very important issue, I think. When you think
back, again, 60 days, on the huge investment that was made in
Y2K inoculation, the investment was made, billions of dollars,
basically to be able to stay in business on January 2nd the way
you were 2 days before. And there was not, in most cases, a
substantial return on that investment, other than the fact that
it certainly stirred up a lot of economic activity.
In this case, this is $100 billion to purchase substantial
new capability. So it is not just doing it because we are
tapped out and we have run out of bandwidth. It is actually
making an investment, but getting a quantifiable return for
large organizations. So it is important to note that it is a
staggering number but, at the same time, there is direct,
tangible, measurable benefit coming out of that investment.
And, again, if I am not correct on the source, I will
contact your office.
Senator Frist. Fine, that would be helpful.
I will close with this, and I appreciate everybody's
patience. It is fascinating for me, and I do want to make sure
we are moving in the right direction and that we learn from
each round as we go through. So the oversight function part of
what we are talking about today is very important to help give
us direction.
One last question, Mr. Tolbert, and it goes back to the
international component. Our leadership in the United states,
the industrial revolution, the parallel that you made, right
now where we are versus other nations, is commerce slowed down
or impeded? Obviously when you get to imaging, medical imaging,
broadband transmission of data, more video, it is going to be
slowed down. International transmission of data now, is it
slowed down because our infrastructure is more advanced than
other countries?
Mr. Tolbert. I think that in certainly some industries it
has. Ironically, in some countries that have made very specific
investments in high-speed infrastructure, telemedicine is more
advanced, or, not necessarily more advanced, but more pervasive
and put to use more commonly.
At the same time, there is sort of a natural evolution to
Internet maturity, where it starts with kind of Internet
publishing and graduates to commerce and competitive advantage.
And I think that in that sense we hold the lead by a
substantial margin. And this is according to a recent study by
IDC. That will be impeded, though.
If you agree that three times the number of current users
will be online in three years and, at the same time, they are
going to be online for longer periods of time, using
applications that are much thirstier and can use substantially
more bandwidth, you will end up hitting some barriers in that
continued leadership. And I think that that is where I see the
investment needed today to start moving in that direction
rather than to waiting until we start to see those choke
points.
Senator Frist. Thank you.
To all three of our witnesses and the witnesses of the
first panel, I want to thank you. Your expertise and your
analysis are tremendously helpful as we go through and try to
better understand the true nature of the current Internet's
limitations. Your recommendations are tremendously helpful as
we improve legislation that has previously been before this
committee and as we look at other legislation.
I look forward to continuing the dialog that we have begun
and continued today. And I look forward, again, in hearing,
either next year or 12 months from now, what we can learn,
should have learned, from our discussions today as we go
forward. Again, thank you very much.
With that, we stand adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 4:30 p.m., the hearing was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
Prepared Statement of Hon. John B. Breaux,
U.S. Senator from Louisiana
Chairman Frist, I want to thank you for kicking off the Science
Subcommittee's agenda by examining the future of the Internet,
specifically the Next Generation Internet (NGI) and Large Scale
Networking programs. This is an appropriate topic--advances in
technology are strongly linked to economic growth. Our dominant high
technology industries are currently responsible for one-third of our
economic output and half of our economic growth. Federal Reserve
Chairman Alan Greenspan stated last year that an unexpected leap in
technology is primarily responsible for the nation's ``phenomenal''
economic performance.
The folks who make and program the computers aren't the only ones
sharing in this economic growth. The Internet its world wide web are
giving us new ways to communicate--and do business--electronically.
Our nation has made great strides using the current Internet, and
we can all just imagine what advances we could make with a higher-
bandwidth, more reliable Next Generation Internet. We could have the
network capacity to monitor and integrate information from thousands of
sensors to improve our responses to floods, hurricane, or other natural
disasters. This research could make robotics a part of our daily lives
and staying in touch everywhere with wireless, high-speed connections
regardless of where we live or work.
But as we look to the technological advances which could
revolutionize information technology, we must also remember that not
all Americans are sharing in the current high-tech prosperity. The
current Internet is not available to a disproportionate number of low
income and minority Americans and of Americans living in rural areas.
As the NGI program continues, we should make sure that the structure of
our future networking infrastructure does not build in more problems,
like higher cost of access for rural users. I look forward to
addressing these concerns today.
Dr. Lane, I am sure that you will rightly point out that the Next
Generation Internet and Large Scale Networking are only a small part of
the Federal investment in information technology research and
development (R&D). While expanding the capacity and reliability of the
Internet is an important piece, it is only one piece of a broader
information technology R&D agenda. I look forward to working with you
to address that broader agenda as well.
I would like to congratulate the Administration for the level of
R&D investment spelled out in the FY 2001 budget. While I am sure that
many of us would have prioritized spending by each agency differently,
the overall increase of $2.5 billion or 6% over the FY 2000 level for
civilian R&D is in line with this subcommittee's commitment to doubling
civilian R&D over the next ten to twelve years.
Finally, welcome to all of our witnesses from government, industry
and academia. You can all give us a different perspective on the
current NGI program and what investments are needed to build an
Internet of the future that is available to and affordable for every
American.
______
Prepared Statement of Hon. Ernest F. Hollings,
U.S. Senator from South Carolina
Chairman Frist, thank you for holding this hearing today on the
Next Generation Internet (NGI) program and the NGI 2000 Act, S. 2046,
which Senators Rockefeller, Breaux, Roberts, and I joined you in
introducing in February. This bill is a straight-forward and basic
authorization of funding for the Next Generation Internet (NGI) and is
based on the Administration's NGI policy.
Everyone acknowledges that the current Internet is a huge
commercial success and consequently is becoming a victim of its own
success. With more and more subscribers, the Web is getting more and
more crowded, and the response time is growing slower and slower.
The NGI program is focused on advancing the current speed and
usability of the Internet and university research capabilities while
assisting federal agencies in their missions using these resources. The
NGI can provide the critical research into the necessary technology to
get the U.S. to the next phase and to maintain U.S. dominance in this
field.
When we created NGI in 1998, we laid out a bold set of expectations
for the first three years of the program. Plainly and simply, we set an
action plan to overhaul the Internet's infrastructure. Three years
later, this hearing should help us learn what the program has achieved,
where it should go, and what our future investments in networking
infrastructure should be.
With all of the hoopla about the so-called ``digital economy'' and
ads for dot-com companies on every billboard, it's easy to forget the
folks who the Internet has passed by. Members of this Committee have
tried to bring the current Internet to minority, low-income, and rural
communities. We must ensure that as we look to the Next Generation
Internet, that high-speed technology is available to these communities.
Senator Frist, your bill makes a good start by setting aside some
research funding for solving rural problems and to be spent at small or
minority-serving colleges. The bill also would ask the National Academy
of Sciences to address the contribution that the network infrastructure
makes to the digital divide--the gap between those with access to
information technology and those without access.
Again, thank you for holding this hearing. We have a wonderful
lineup of witnesses, and I look forward to examining further these
issues through their fine testimony.
______
Prepared Statement of Douglas Van Houweling, President and CEO,
University Corporation for Advanced Internet Development
Advances in information technology, critical to the continued
success of science and education in our Nation, depend upon active
Federal support and investment. The introduction of the Next Generation
Internet (NGI) 2000 Act, S. 2046 is a welcome step to continue and
expand Federal networking research authorized by the NGI Act of 1998. I
commend Mr. Frist and Mr. Rockefeller and members of the Senate for
their leadership.
Internet2TM now engages more than 174 universities, over
10 corporations and 30 other research organizations in the effort to
advance the state of Internet applications and technology. Internet2
collaborates closely with industry and government in advancing research
in information technology, providing a living laboratory for building
and deploying advanced networks, services and applications. In
particular, Internet2 is working to enable applications such as
telemedicine, digital libraries and virtual laboratories that are not
possible with the technology underlying today's Internet. Internet2 is
not a single network, but rather joins member network application and
engineering development efforts together with many advanced campus,
regional and national networks.
The university-led Internet2 and the federally-led Next Generation
Internet (NGI) are complementary, but separate, initiatives
successfully working together in many areas. For example, a number of
Internet2 members have participated in the National Science
Foundation's (NSF) merit-based High Performance Connections program.
The backbone networks supporting Internet2 universities work
together with the NGI testbed networks to provide a seamless high-
performance networking environment for researchers located on both
university campuses and in government laboratories. The NSF's very high
performance Backbone Network Service (vBNS) developed by the NSF and
MCI Worldcom serves as one of the two (along with the Abilene network
run by Internet2 members) national backbone networks used by Internet2
members. Internet2 engineers are engaged in regular coordination with
NGI agencies through the Joint Engineering Team.
Universities are a principal source of both the demand for advanced
networking technologies and the talent needed to implement them.
Universities' research and education missions increasingly require
collaboration among people and resources located at campuses throughout
the country, in ways not possible using today's Internet. The NGI
supported testbeds fill a critical role--they are very large-scale
Internet environments in which cooperative research, testing and
development can be carried out. The environment provided by the ESNet,
NREN, DREN, vBNS and Abilene networks provides a crucial link between
the laboratory and the information technology industry. Without this
link, many promising basic research results would go untested and
undeployed as the commercial marketplace focuses on short-term results
and solutions.
Participation in Internet2 is based on a commitment by members to
the goals of establishing high-performance connectivity among one
another and developing and deployment of advanced network applications
and technologies on their own campuses. Membership in Internet2 is open
to any institution ready to provide the resources to realize these
goals, and over 170 universities have joined since Internet2 began in
October 1996. Collectively Internet2 universities have committed over
$70 million per year in new investment on their own campuses to meet
the goals of the Internet2 project. While the large-scale nationwide
backbone networks are a crucial link between member institutions, the
real challenge is getting high-performance networks not just to the
edge of the campus but to each desktop on campus. This ``end-to-end''
focus on high-performance networking by Internet2 members requires
substantial commitment of resources by each member--largely to be spent
on their own campuses.
A primary goal of Internet2 is to ensure the broad dissemination of
advanced networking capabilities. Understanding that participation in
Internet2 is not something every institution will undertake, Internet2
member universities have developed a structure to enable non-members to
collaborate with them on important advanced Internet research and
education applications. For example, a number of Internet2 universities
have ongoing collaborations with K-12 schools and will be able to
collaborate with them on projects over their own regional high-
performance networks as well as over the nationwide Abilene network. We
expect this collaboration to lead to exciting new partnerships with
other educational institutions, museums, libraries and small start-up
companies among others.
We applaud the reauthorization of the NGI and note that this is but
a part of a larger IT initiative that we believe also deserves
Congressional support. The larger, balanced portfolio in information
technology research and development brings to bear Federal support for
Education and Training, IT Research Centers and Hardware Acquisition in
addition to supporting Network research and development. These other
programs we believe are necessary to maintaining the partnership that
has created the US multibillion dollar industry.
This NGI authorization legislation is needed to renew the
partnership between academe, industry and government. Internet2 will
continue to work to develop and diffuse new technology needed by all
network users, helping to ensure continued US leadership in computer
and communications in the world economy.
______
Response to Written Questions by Hon. Bill Frist to Donald A.B.
Lindberg
Question. For your agency's participation in the NGI program, would
you offer some perspective on how and how much health care costs may be
decreased as a result of advanced networking research? Also, would you
also address the impact of improved quality of service and
effectiveness of service?
Answer. The cost of healthcare may or may not decrease as a result
of advanced networking research. This would be dependent on the cost of
the technology that advanced networking was replacing and on the future
cost of what today is considered advanced networking. But the quality
and timeliness of healthcare will improve through the appropriate use
of advanced networking capability. For example, a person comes to a
family doctor with a skin rash and the physician is unable to make a
diagnosis. The patient is referred to a dermatologist. There is a delay
until the patient can be seen by the dermatologist and treatment is
started. And the patient has to take off from work to go to two
appointments. If the family doctor can obtain a consultation from a
dermatologist through advanced networking technology, treatment can be
started immediately and the patient has to go to one appointment. This
is clearly better and more timely healthcare, but the costs are
dependent on how one does the cost accounting.
The issues of quality of service and effectiveness of service both
refer to the reliability and predictability of a network. Without these
qualities, a network is unusable for healthcare.
Question. The ``lessons learned'' from any endeavor are important.
You mentioned in your written report that in your last phase of NGI
support for fiscal 2001, a set of ``lessons learned'' will be
developed. Would you please describe your planned activities to make
these ``lessons learned'' available to others?
Answer. NLM plans to hold an open conference at which our contract
award recipients will give scientific papers dealing with their
``lessons learned''. The presenters will be required to deliver to the
NLM written papers dealing with these ``lessons learned''. These papers
will be published by the NLM on the Web as well as in CD-ROM format.
NLM will also try to place for publication in the appropriate
scientific journals as many of these papers as possible.
Question. What do you believe are the current technological
obstacles in advanced networking that limit the imaginations of your
scientists? Does the National Library of Medicine's budget request for
fiscal year 2001 reflect these long-term goals?
Answer. The inability of the current internet to guarantee quality
of service and to provide a means for collaborative research certainly
limits its scientific usage. NLM's FY-2001 budget reflects these long
term goals.
______
Response to Written Questions by Hon. Bill Frist to Dr. Rita Colwell
Federal Funding of Basic Research
Question 1. In your written statement you address the growing trend
in the private sector of only funding applied research with ``maximum
short-term payoffs''. Therefore, you suggest, it is the federal
government's responsibility to invest in long-term basic research. Are
there any types of basic research which you believe the federal
government should not fund?
Answer. The National Science Foundation's approach to investments
in science, engineering, and technology is guided by several
fundamental principles. Few, if any, types of basic research are beyond
the scope of the Federal government. In general, Federal R&D
investments should: (a) sustain and nurture America's world leading
science and technology enterprise, through pursuit of specific agency
missions and through stewardship of critical research fields and
scientific facilities; (b) strengthen science, mathematics, and
engineering education; ensure their broad availability; and contribute
to preparing the next generation of scientists and engineers; (c) focus
on activities that require a Federal presence to attain national goals,
including national security, environmental quality, economic growth and
prosperity, and human health and well being; and/or (d) promote
international cooperation in science and technology that would
strengthen the advance of science, engineering, and technology. These
principles apply to all Federal R&D investments.
Digital Divide
Question 2. Would you please describe NSF's ongoing research
designed to overcome the digital divide and how it complements the work
that the Department of Commerce is doing in this area?
Answer. Many NSF activities directly, or as part of other
activities, address broadening access to information technologies.
Research activities that address the digital divide include:
NSF supports research on assistive technology that will
allow fuller use of computing and communications technology by the
visually or hearing impaired, those with mobility or dexterity problems
and the elderly. NSF expects to provide $6.85 million for these
activities in FY 2000 and has requested an increase to $12.0 million in
FY 2001.
In FY 1999 and 2000, NSF supported workshops to define
the research agenda for understanding why women and minorities are
under-represented in IT educational tracks and IT careers. Beginning in
FY 2000, NSF will make research awards to understand the causes and
provide a solid foundation for remediation to address under-
representation.
NSF's Next Generation Internet (NGI) program provides
connectivity to high performance networks to a wide variety of research
universities. Over 170 connections, including 40 to universities in
ESPCoR states, provide demonstration projects of the capability and
potential for high-performance networking. These provide researchers
access to state-of-the-art network facilities to support their research
as well as partnerships with other sites.
NSF is also active in many activities addressing the Science,
Mathematics, Engineering and Technology education and workforce sectors
that develop the knowledge and skills necessary to use information
technology. Activities include:
Broadening access to the Internet. In addition to the
ESPCoR connections cited above, there are exemplary projects to develop
networks for rural populations. The Urban Systemic Initiative and Rural
Systemic Initiative programs have also funded projects in many areas
that provide Internet access, as well as training to students, teachers
and parents.
Minority institutions: A recent $6.0 million award to
EDUCAUSE will help minority serving institutions take advantage of the
next generation of information technology and computer networks. The
project will assist educators and students to effectively use
databases, supercomputer centers, virtual reality and tele-
collaboration facilities and other resources for teaching, learning and
research.
Advanced Technology Education (ATE): The ATE program
provides students with laboratory experiences to prepare for careers in
high technology fields. For example, the Northwest Center for Emerging
Technologies at Bellevue Community College in Washington works with
community groups to recruit non-traditional populations into
information technology studies and careers. They have worked with
hundreds of students from inner city schools, displaced workers, women,
minorities and the disabled in programs to prepare their students for
IT careers.
The Department of Commerce has numerous programs that address the
digital divide issue. The NSF programs, which are more focused on
science and technology research and on the specific needs of the
science and technology education and workforce sectors, complement the
Commerce programs by providing them with the technology that they can
use in their community technology centers, technology transfer to
industry, and in their teacher training programs.
Advanced Networking
Question 3. We have seen an increasing amount of overlapping
activity in the past two years of the President's budget requests
between advanced networking at the Department of Energy and the
National Science Foundation. What does this overlap suggest about the
roles of both agencies?
Answer. While it may seem as though overlap exists between NSF and
the Department of Energy (DOE) in the area of advanced networking, the
activities of the two agencies are well coordinated and complementary.
The activities of NSF, DOE and other agencies active in networking are
coordinated by the multiagency Information Technology R&D Working
group, which is supported by the National Coordination Office (NCO),
and reported annually. The IT R&D Working Group convenes a multiagency
Working Group on Large Scale Networking that coordinates this specific
area. Coordination goals include effective communication among
agencies, avoiding duplication of efforts and expenditures, leveraging
the research and accomplishments of agencies, and promoting cooperative
programs where appropriate.
NSF funding for advanced networking includes two components:
Advanced Networking Infrastructure (ANI) and Advanced Networking
Research (ANR). ANI supports the university-based research community
across the spectrum of science and engineering research areas through
the vBNS (very high speed Backbone Network Service) which connects over
170 universities, including 40 in ESPCoR states. Research enabled on
these networks includes tele-immersion, data mining, visualization of
scientific and engineering data and calculations, and multimedia. ANR
focuses on the fundamental research needed to expand the capabilities
of communications networks; problems addressed include handling greater
volumes of data, increased number of users, more complex protocols, new
service types, and flexibility demands of mobile, nomadic and fixed
environments.
DOE networking activities also include infrastructure and research
components with an emphasis on linking heterogeneous (university-
laboratory) networks and moving uniquely large (millions of gigabyte)
data sets. DOE'S ESnet connects the Department's geographically
distributed laboratories and provides access for university-based
researchers to Office of Science facilities, such as synchrotron light
sources, neutron sources, particle accelerators and supercomputers,
through an interface with NSF's vBNS. DOE operates facilities that
produce characteristically massive data sets for use by researchers at
both national labs and universities. DOE networking research focuses on
advanced protocols and operating system services for very high speed
transfers and information surety to enable distributed, data intensive
computing as well as the software framework (``middleware'') required
to support large-scale collaborative efforts among its laboratory and
university researchers.
Broadband Last Mile Problem
Question 4. You stated that the ``Broadband Last Mile Problem''
remains a difficult dilemma.
a. What is NSF doing to solve this problem? Is similar research
being conducted at other agencies?
Answer. The ``Broadband Last Mile Problem,'' involves the high cost
of ``last mile'' broadband Internet connections to end users, and in
some geographical areas, the total lack of such services. The solution
to this problem has a number of different dimensions, including some
that require new technology and others, such as deregulation and
promotion of competition, which are beyond NSF's scope.
NSF-supported research in broadband networking and communications
has resulted in important technology transfer to the private sector,
such as the Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) service, which is now being
utilized by telephone companies to implement broadband Internet
connections to the home. Current NSF and Defense Advanced Research
Projects Agency efforts include research into wireless broadband
networking and communications. It is anticipated that such research
will lead to technical solutions for broadband Internet access in
locations that are ``hard to wire'' and will promote the expansion of
the competitive market for broadband Internet services.
b. In my own home State of Tennessee, Bell South invests more than
$350 million for modernization and expansion of its Tennessee
infrastructure every year. This includes widespread deployment of fiber
optic lines and digital switching at every exchange. Is this a
``problem'' that the federal government should fix? Should we leave
this issue for the private sector?
Answer. NSF's role in solving the ``Broadband Last Mile Problem''
is to fund research that may result in new technologies that the
private sector can develop into solutions, It is clear that the
solution will come from interactions between the public and private
sectors.
NSF has a long history of partnering with the private sector to
create and support leading-edge information infrastructures (like the
NSFNET and the Next Generation Internet) for the academic community.
Further, fundamental research across disciplines has provided an
important testing ground for new, cutting edge networking technologies
developed by industry. This has created an environment in which new
products and services can be tested by the private sector before the
introduction of new products and services into the retail market.
ESPCoR Involvement
Question 5. Dr. Colwell, can you comment on a growing interest on
the part of non-ESPCoR states to become involved with the ESPCoR
program as implied by Dr. Meredith's written testimony for the next
panel?
Answer. NSF's ESPCoR program assists states that have historically
received lesser amounts of federal R&D funding to improve the quality
of science, mathematics and engineering research that is conducted at
their colleges and universities. Three non-ESPCoR states have expressed
interest in joining the ESPCoR program in order to improve their
academic R&D competitiveness. While NSF is not seeking to add
additional states to the ESPCoR program at this time, NSF's ESPCoR
staff is working with representatives from these states to determine if
their participation in the ESPCoR program is mutually beneficial and
appropriate.
Research Transfer to Industry
Question 6. You mentioned in your written statement that there is a
clear pattern of NSF-supported students bringing key insights to
private industry. Can you discuss this pattern in greater detail?
Answer. Two studies of NSF support have explored the impacts of
funding for graduate students on projects with a significant
engineering component. A two phase study conducted by SRI International
(full reports can be found at http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/1999/nsf98154/
nsf98154.htm and at http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/1997/nsf9756/nsf9756.htm)
examined the roles of federal research support in the development of
six technologies: Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), Reaction Injection
Molding (RIM), the Internet, Computer Aided Design for Electronic
Circuits (CAD/EC), Optical Fiber for Telecommunications, and Cellular
Telephony. The SRI report concluded:
In our case studies of six engineering innovations, it is
therefore not surprising to find that NSF emerges consistently
as a major, often the major, source of support for education
and training of the Ph.D. scientists and engineers who went on
to make major contributions to each innovation.
Among the six activities that NSF funds, it is this support of
education and training that emerges most consistently across
all our cases as a significant influence on the evolution of
engineering innovation. In some cases (e.g., MRI, optical
fiber) key contributors were supported in graduate school on
assistantships paid by NSF grants or graduate fellowships; in
other cases (e.g., cellular phone, CAD/EC) NSF-supported
research grants trained engineers and scientists who were parts
of industry teams tackling the technical problems that blocked
an innovation's advance; in still others (e.g., CAD/EC) NSF-
trained engineers became the entrepreneurs who created new
firms and markets.
A third report assessing the benefits and outcomes of the NSF's
Engineering Research Centers (ERG) program examined the performance in
career jobs of students who had been supported in their graduate
studies in center programs. The study (available at http://www.nsf.gov/
cgi-bin/getpub?nsf9840) found that ERG graduates were significantly
stronger in many job performance areas including: overall preparedness,
contributions to technical work, depth of technical understanding,
ability to work in interdisciplinary teams, breadth of technical
understanding, and ability to apply knowledge and use technology. ERG
graduates had more impact in activities, such as technology transfer
and teamwork, that were emphasized in the ERG program.
NSF supported students have also brought insights to industry
through their inventions and ideas. Some notable examples in areas
relevant to NGI and Information Technology are:
Marc Andreesen, while an undergraduate student at the
University of Illinois--Urbana-Champaign working at the NSF funded
National Center for Supercomputer Applications (NCSA), wrote the first
WWW browser, Mosaic. Mosaic demonstrated the power of the browser
concept for the WWW and became the ``killer application'' that
popularized the Internet. Mosaic software was the basis for both
Netscape and Microsoft browsers. Andreesen was one of the founders of
Netscape Corp.
Garth Gibson, while a graduate student at the University
of California at Berkeley, developed error correction and detection for
computer memory systems based on Redundant Arrays of Inexpensive Disks
(RAID systems). The software and specifications form the basis of RAID
1 through RAID 6 standards for these systems and are the basis for
modern storage systems developed by dozens of companies, and now a
multi-billion dollar industry. RAID systems provide high performance
and high reliability systems at lower cost than was possible before its
development. Gibson is now on the faculty of Carnegie Mellon
University.
Srinivas Devadas, while a student at the University of
California at Berkeley found deep connections between sequential logic
optimization and testing and fault tolerant systems. The algorithms
developed in his doctoral research are embedded in CAD tools supplied
by numerous companies that are used to design integrated circuits. He
is now on the faculty of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Brian Pinkerton, a University of Washington graduate
student, used NSF supported equipment to develop the first full text
WWW search engine, Webcrawler. This work is now incorporated into the
Excite search engine and has influenced several other search engines.
These studies and individual cases demonstrate that NSF support of
graduate students is critical to providing the highly trained workforce
with advanced science and engineering skills and the abilities to use
them in organizations at the same time that it supports striking
innovations, such as web-browsers, that inspire entire new industries.
______
Response to Written Questions by Hon. Bill Frist to Dr. Neal Lane
Question 1. Dr. Lane, we have talked about how IT is a driving
economic force in the country, how important speed is to the Internet,
and about the need for continuous federal investment in R&D. Would you
describe for the Committee what the Administration is doing to improve
the technology transfer aspects of the IT research?
Answer: The success of the U.S. IT industry and the benefits that
we derive from IT innovations today are a direct result of past Federal
IT R&D investments and the successful transfer of new technologies
resulting from these investments.
Much of the research funded by Federal agencies is implemented by
researchers at universities and in the commercial sector. Funding
provided to universities helps to educate students and support
university researchers. Students graduate and move into industry,
directly transferring their knowledge to private industry. In numerous
cases, university researchers transfer their experience to start-up
companies to rapidly make new capabilities available to the commercial
sector. There are many success stories for this model of technology
transfer. For example, Netscape began with a software package (Mosaic)
originally written at the University of Illinois by an NSF-funded
student. More recently, the Google search engine company was started by
two Stanford students who took the results of NSF-funded research on
digital libraries and built a commercial service using these ideas.
Federally-funded commercial sector researchers can immediately apply
the developed technology, software, and standards to commercial
applications.
Federal IT programs also support testbeds for the demonstration and
development of technology, software, and standards. Commercial
participation in these testbeds provides immediate technology transfer.
The Internet was developed by DARPA and NSF as a prototype that both
involved industry as well as demonstrated the market potential of
widely available data networking. Federal outreach programs such as
publication of research results, presentations at conferences, and
participation in joint Federal/university industry workshops provide
timely awareness of new IT developments. More recently, the development
of online ``collaboratories'' is helping people cooperate at a
distance, making new results of Federal research available to a wide
variety of people in many locations. Many agencies involve academic,
industry and government scientists in planning activities for research;
these expose industry to the capabilities of other sectors as well as
calling attention to long-term industry needs.
In addition to these highly successful methods for technology
transfer, new venues for technology transfer are being explored. These
include preliminary experiments in open source distribution of software
resulting from government-sponsored research. Industrial research
collaboration is actively encouraged and funded by research agencies
such as DARPA, NASA, and NSF and is a core feature of the NIST mission.
This ensures a reciprocal leverage of research expertise in support of
agency missions, while helping to develop technical standards which can
be implemented by industry in near-term applications. Collaboration
with other key contributing R&D performers--e.g. Federal laboratories
and not-for-profit research institutions--is also important to ensuring
technology transfer. We continue to carefully broaden merit-based
participation in Federally-funded research and stimulate university-
industry partnerships, while emphasizing long-term research agendas.
Question 2. A considerable portion of the federal investment in the
IT domain is long-term research.
(a) Do you believe that private industry's rapid technological
advances will catch or exceed the federal research?
Answer. Industry and the Federal government have complementary
roles in IT R&D. Federally-funded research supports pre-competitive,
long-term research that generates new knowledge and capabilities, the
bank of ideas from which the private sector draws. Private companies
are usually, and increasingly in the last decade, driven to short-term
research for commercial advantage. They do not, as Federally-funded
research does, explore new areas driven only by vision and/or agency
mission needs rather than by understood commercial advantage.
While private research in a particular commercial IT area may be
ahead of Federally-funded research, it is most often the Federally-
funded long term research that produces the ground-breaking IT
achievements when one considers the entire scope of IT research.
Continued complementary investments by industry and government will
help ensure our Nation's leadership in the information technology
breakthroughs that are shaping our future.
More basic, yet compelling reasons for sustained Federal funding
for long-term information technology are that these investments
directly support the education and preparation of our young people for
careers in IT research, as well as the training of workers to upgrade
their skills to keep pace with a changing marketplace. Trained people
are not just a by-product, but rather a major product of publicly
supported research. This is why it is imperative that we maintain the
health of our university teaching and research mission. We must retain
research and teaching faculty in order to sustain and increase
production of Master's and Ph.D. students in the IT disciplines. These
skill levels are needed if the U.S. is to keep its innovative edge in
international IT markets, and access to these skills must be broadened
within our society.
(b) Also, how do you incorporate industry's advances into the
federal research efforts?
Answer. Industrial technology is used to support many of the
Federal IT programs. For example, the Next Generation testbeds are
built on the cutting-edge services of commercial telecommunications
providers (MCI, Sprint, AT&T, and QWEST). Private industry supplies
essentially all production computing and networking equipment for these
testbeds, which Federal agencies use to develop new technologies.
Many Federal agencies have advisory committees that include
industrial members to ensure that they take advantage of industrial
progress, as well as understand the needs of the industrial sector. The
President's IT Advisory Committee includes industrial members, who
provide review of and recommendations to the overall IT R&D research
programs.
Federal agencies also include industrial researchers in their
proposal review process, so that the agencies' research reviews reflect
the state of the art in industry. In addition, there is direct
collaboration of Federally-funded university researchers through
various agency programs, such as the NSF awards supplements to CAREER
awards, to match industry and state funding. In areas where industry
researchers have the lead, the Federal agencies have funded those
researchers to foster breakthroughs in key technology areas critical to
Federal agency missions.
Question 3. Would you please explain the new activities established
under last year's Information Technology for the Twenty-First Century
initiative?
Answer. The Information Technology for the Twenty-First Century
(IT2) initiative provides a critically needed augmentation to the base
High Performance Computing and Communications (HPCC) programs to fund
extensions of some ongoing HPCC research agendas and expansions into
new research areas, as recommended by the President's Information
Technology Advisory Committee. The U.S. research community responded to
last year's call for research ideas with a flood of creative proposals,
a demand which far exceeded the supply of new funding in agencies such
as NSF and DOD. As a result, with FY 2000 funding, NSF will start 25
small research centers and five larger centers.
As in previous years, the proposed IT research portfolio is based
on coordinated, interagency investments which leverage expertise across
agencies to give the best returns on those investments, both financial
and technical.
Research activities to be funded include:
Expanding basic research on information technologies with
a strong emphasis on software improvements. It is essential that we
develop software that is dependable, resistant to intrusion, and
inexpensive to build. Entirely new approaches are needed to move from
today's computers to new machines that may link thousands or millions
of individual processors.
Approaches making it easier for people to communicate
their requirements to computers and to understand the information the
new systems make available. This will require entirely new tools for
searching texts, pictures, and large sets of data. Special systems are
needed for people with disabilities.
Entirely new approaches to the design of computers needed
to ensure that computational power continues to increase even when we
begin to approach the limits of how small we can make electronic
components. This will include exploring tools such as quantum computing
or using DNA or other chemicals for processing data.
Understanding the social, political, economic, and
ethical issues raised by the transformations occurring in our economy
and society as a result of IT. This includes attention to the
increasing gaps in access to information tools and infrastructure that
separate Americans along lines of race, gender, income, geography and
physical abilities. Research is essential to understand and respond to
these and other challenges created by an information rich economy.
NSF has released a solicitation for a $36 million
terascale computing system to ensure that the civilian research
community can continue IT innovation through access to vastly more
powerful machines than those available today. An FY2001 request for $45
million will fund a second terascale computing system and initiate
upgrades to maintain state of the art scientific computing facilities
for civilian research.
Question 4. What percentage of the President's request for the IT
initiative is designated for applied research? If Congress decided not
to appropriate funds for IT applied R&D for the next ten years, would
the private sector begin to fund this?
Answer. The traditional terms of ``basic'' or ``applied'' research
are limited in their ability to describe the nature of scientific and
technological research. For this reason it is difficult to determine a
consistent categorization of basic and applied research across
agencies. The President's Information Technology Advisory Committee
urged increased funding for fundamental research, but also recognized
the importance of federal support for applications development,
testbeds, standardization efforts, and procurements of advanced
computer systems. These activities are a vital part of the R&D
portfolio. They enable progress in fundamental research by providing a
means for applying new knowledge and a feedback process resulting in
more effective research efforts and rapid adoption of new technologies.
They also enable efforts requiring the talents of diverse communities
of scientists and engineers.
The industrial members of the President's Information Technology
Advisory Committee were unanimous in their opinion that industry cannot
and will not invest in solving problems of importance to society as a
whole unless such investments make sense from a business perspective.
Given the intense pace of the IT marketplace, firms must devote the
bulk of their R&D resources to shorter-term applied research and
product development with clear commercial application. Nearly all human
and capital resources must be focused on bringing the next product to
market in order for a firm to be successful.
By funding a balanced portfolio of fundamental research,
applications development, testbeds, standardization efforts, and
procurements of advanced computer systems, the Federal government
promotes the long-term health of information technology and demonstrate
new technologies. The collaboration of universities, industry, and
government laboratories allows Federal research to marry long-term
objectives to realworld problems. Funding these activities through a
variety of Federal agencies helps to leverage technical expertise
throughout government and ensure broad-based coverage of many
technological approaches to address a wide range of technical problems.