One of the side effects of these exciting times for science policy in Washington is that we don’t get as much time to blog as we need to. Even as late as two years ago, the drumbeat for competitiveness and innovation — the driving themes behind most of the science policy developments over the last year — was significantly softer than it is now…almost inaudible, in fact. That gave us plenty of time to devote to lengthy coverage of just about every development in the space — every news article, every press conference, every mention by a key (or not so key) policymaker.
Well, over the last two years, the pace of developments has quickened dramatically. Nearly every day there’s some mention of innovation policy, or the importance of IT research, or the need to ramp up the federal commitment to the “physical sciences” somewhere. Our queue of potential topics for blog posts has grown considerably. Unfortunately, because we’re also out in the trenches working these developments, we don’t often get the time we need to really delve into the topics as we usually do with our posts.
Rather than let those topics grow stale in a queue that isn’t moving any faster than it ever has, we’ve decided to go a little “Web 2.0″ and start a Computing Research Policy TumbleLog, on which we can post quick links to articles we find noteworthy, or quotes that resonate, or events with think are interesting. There won’t be much (or even any) analysis of the topics on the TumbleLog, just pointers to the original sources. All the meaty stuff — the analysis, the details — will still be here, with a frequency that’s hopefully unchanged.
So, you might want to bookmark the Computing Research Policy TumbleLog if you’re interested in some of the things we’ve found interesting to note, but keep an eye here for our usual content as well.
I’ve also attempted to set up a little widget over there on the left sidebar that shows the most recent topics on the tumblelog, but it doesn’t seem to work very well in Safari on my Mac. So if anyone has a suggestion for a better approach, please let me know! This Web 2.0 stuff is tricky. 
Fixed, I think!
A proclamation from members of U.S. industry and academia (including CRA) calling on Congress to ramp up federal basic research funding, improve student performance in math and science, enable the U.S. to recruit and retain the best talent, and make permanent the R&D tax credit was officially released at a standing room only press event yesterday hosted by House Science and Technology Committee Chairman Bart Gordon (D-TN), with speakers Norm Augustine, Craig Barrett (Chairman of Intel), Harold McGraw III (CEO of McGraw-Hill), Robert Dynes (Pres of UC Berkeley), Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ), Rep. Judy Biggert (R-IL), Rep. Vern Ehlers (R-MI), Rep. Dan Lipinsky (D-IL), and Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN). The proclamation is online and has over 270 endorsements from industry, academic, and professional groups. The proclamation was printed on parchment (an electronic version of the parchment scroll is available here) and delivered to every congressional office.
The Committee put out a press release about the event and an audio webcast is also available.
Directly following the press conference, the Committee held a hearing on two of its innovation bills, H.R. 362 and 363, “10,000 Teachers, 10 Million Minds” Science and Math Scholarship Act and Sowing the Seeds Through Science and Engineering Research Act. Both bills are designed to enact the recommendations of the oft-cited National Academies Rising Above the Gathering Storm report that are under the House S&T Committee’s jurisdiction. The bills are a parallel effort to the Senate’s America COMPETES legislation, which was introduced by the Senate leadership on March 4th and will go straight to the Senate floor.
The written testimony of the witnesses, many of whom spoke at the press conference, and a webcast of the hearing are available online.
Update: (3/12/07, 1:17 pm) — Fixed!
Original Post: Though the blog continues to work, a database issue has rendered the CRA Government Affairs website temporarily unavailable. Apologies to those trying to access the resources we’ve got on those pages, but we hope to have the site restored soon….
From the CCC Blog
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