Committee Marks Up NITRD Reauthorization
(Washington, DC) – Today, the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology held a markup of the Networking and Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD) Modernization Act. The bill was negotiated in a bipartisan manner and passed the Committee by a bipartisan voice vote.
The NITRD Program grew out of the High-Performance Computing (HPC) Act of 1991. The HPC Act established a framework for interagency coordination, management, and review of the Program (which was later renamed NITRD), and included specific agency guidance and authorizations for a number of the member agencies. The HPC Act of 1991 has been amended twice, in 1998, and again in the America COMPETES Act of 2007, but neither update was comprehensive. The House has passed comprehensive and bipartisan NITRD reauthorization legislation every Congress since 2009, but the Senate has never taken it up.
Ranking Member Eddie Bernice Johnson’s (D-TX) said in her opening statement:
“The Networking and Information Technology Research and Development Program is a 25-year old program that supports the full range of research and development to grow the foundations of scientific understanding and accelerate the development of advanced information technologies, including high-end computing systems and applications.
“The Program also advances NIT to accelerate discovery in many other areas of science and engineering, from astronomy to biomedical research. Importantly, the NITRD program also addresses the cross-cutting issues of cybersecurity and privacy. Opportunities also bring challenges, of course, and the federal government must continue to be a leader in all aspects of NIT research.
“The legislation we are marking up today, the Networking and Information Technology R&D Modernization Act, represents the first comprehensive update of the 1991 Act that created NITRD. As such, the bill modernizes the terminology used throughout the underlying law. It expands the purposes to capture important areas of NIT research that have emerged in recent years. In addition, it encourages large-scale interdisciplinary and cross-agency collaborations in “grand challenge” areas of R&D.
“On the management and oversight front, the bill requires a 5-year strategic plan, updates reporting requirements to strengthen oversight, and codifies the National Coordination Office and its important functions.
“This legislation was vetted with NITRD Program staff, agencies, and external stakeholders. We incorporated much of this feedback to generate an even better bill.”
To view Ranking Member Johnson’s full statement, click here.
To view amendments to the bill, click here.
A bipartisan Manager’s amendment and an amendment offered by Ranking Member of the Research and Technology Subcommittee, Daniel Lipinski (D-IL), to incorporate large-scale IT into communities both passed by voice vote.
Ranking Member Johnson said in her statement on the Manager’s amendment:
“I appreciate the Majority’s willingness to work with us in a bipartisan manner to revise some of the language in the underlying bill. The manager’s amendment reflects some of these negotiations. In addition, some of these changes also reflect feedback we have received from outside stakeholders.
“The amendment also makes changes to portions of the bill which deal with attracting women and underrepresented groups to the networking and information technology fields. As most people who have served on this Committee with me know, this is a very important issue for me. I strongly believe that if we want to succeed against increasing global competition in these high tech fields, we must utilize our full population. We cannot leave unaddressed the low participation by women, minorities, and persons with disabilities in certain STEM fields. I thank the Chairman and his staff for working with us on this issue.
“I also appreciate the willingness of the Majority to work with us on compromise language which addresses the EPA’s role in the NITRD program. I think we were able to address the Majority’s concerns in a way that doesn’t compromise EPA’s ability to use advanced computing in their work.
“This manager’s amendment improves the bill, and I support it.”
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