House Passes Networking Information Technology R&D

(Washington, DC) - Today, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 5312.

H.R. 5312 – the Networking and Information Technology Research and Development Modernization Act of 2016 – (Passed by a vote of 385 to 7 under suspension of the rules)

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. In addition, 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 (D-TX) said, “NIT has transformed every industry sector, increasing efficiency and productivity while creating higher-skilled, better-paying jobs. NIT made possible the decoding of the human genome, and has led to myriad improvements in medical diagnostics and treatments. Over these past 25 years, networking and information technologies have created opportunities across all aspects of our lives that were previously unimaginable.

“With those opportunities, NIT has also created new challenges for our individual and collective safety and security, and for our privacy.

“Our critical infrastructure, our banks, our commercial enterprises, and our own personal wallets and identities are vulnerable to criminals and state actors alike. Our privacy is being compromised daily, whether we are public figures or private citizens. We cannot go back to a world before NIT, nor should we. However, while investing in advancements in NIT and its many applications, we must also invest in protecting our security and privacy.

“The Networking and Information Technology R&D Program, or NITRD, which grew out of the original 1991 High Performance Computing Act, does just that.”

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