NIST Structure and Authorities, Its Role in Technical Standards, and Federal Coordination on Technical Standards
Date: Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Time: 10:00 AM
Location: 2318 Rayburn House Office Building
Opening Statement By Chairman Bart Gordon
Today’s hearing is about the role of NIST in supporting innovation in the 21st century. As the only federal technical agency with a constitutional mandate—measurement—and also the oldest federal technical agency with a statutory charter, NIST has proved its worth to taxpayer investment for more than one hundred years. And as technologies have evolved, so has NIST. From developing thread standards for fire hoses, to the measurement of electricity, and now to digitizing fingerprints, the list continues to grow.
However, the current lab structure dates from 1988, and the technologies of today are much more multidisciplinary and integrated in scope and function. Dr. Patrick Gallagher has announced his intent to restructure NIST to reflect the trends of the past twenty years and to accommodate the trends to the next twenty. Subcommittee Chairman Wu and I are in complete agreement that the NIST structure needs to better reflect the needs of the private sector communities it serves and we intend to make this a component of the America COMPETES legislation.
NIST also has an important role beyond measurement: from its creation, the word “standards” has always been a key element of both its name and function.
As technologies have changed since 1903, so have standards issues. Until the eighties, standards were considered to be purely a domestic issue. With the growth of international trade and international corporations in new technology sectors, this began to change. Our understanding of the importance of international impact of standards has accelerated over the past twenty years with the globalization of technology innovation. Today technical standards are a key part of the innovation puzzle.
The focus of today’s hearing is to ask what NIST’s role should be in coordinating federal government standards policy development. I want to make it clear that this committee has no interest in telling private sector standards developers how to do their jobs. This committee has always been Congress’s strongest proponent of the public-private sector partnership that defines the U.S. standards development system. Today’s hearing is addressing issues that we hope will streamline federal government’s participation in the private-sector-led standards system.
I would like to thank our witnesses for taking the time from their busy schedules to appear before the subcommittee today.
Witnesses
Panel
1 - The Honorable Patrick Gallagher
Director National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)
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2 - Dr. James Serum
President Scitek Ventures, LLC (Past Chair, NIST Visiting Committee on Advanced Technology) Scitek Ventures, LLC (Past Chair, NIST Visiting Committee on Advance
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3 - Mr. Craig Shank
General Manager Interoperability at Microsoft Interoperability at Microsoft
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5 - Mr. Andrew Updegrove
Partner Gesmer Updegrove, LLP Gesmer Updegrove, LLP
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4 - Mr. Philip Wennblom
Director of Standards Intel Corporation Intel Corporation
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6 - Dr. Vinton G. Cerf
VP and Chief Internet Evangelist, Google Chairman, Visiting Committee on Advanced Technology (VCAT), NIST Chairman, Visiting Committee on Advanced Technology (V
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