On January 6, 2017, President Obama signed the American Innovation and Competitiveness Act, incorporating a number of bills and the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act. That the bill made it to the President’s desk was a surprise to many, and was saved by 11th hour negotiations in the Senate, securing bi-partisan support in both chambers.
Historically, COMPETES acts were notable for their strong bi-partisan support and lack of controversy, but this most recent legislation drew fire over two points of contention.
First, the House version of the bill was criticized for directing NSF to certify that the projects it funded were in the national interest, as defined by seven criteria such as increasing economic competitiveness, national defense, STEM workforce development or enhancing partnerships between academia and industry. Scientists feared that this requirement would result in skewing funding to applied research with the potential for nearer-term pay-off. The final compromise version of the bill reinforces the standing intellectual merit and broader impacts criteria for evaluating grant proposals, but directs NSF to “apply a broader impacts review criterion to identify and demonstrate project support” of the seven goals.
The second bone of contention was the House bill’s authorization of funding levels for specific NSF directorates, rather than providing only a top-line funding authorization for the agency. This was viewed as an attempt by the House to prioritize certain disciplines, and deemphasize others such as social sciences by reducing their authorized funding levels below previous years’ funding. The final version of the bill was passed with no funding authorizations.
In addition to tweaking some Federal STEM education programs, the Act:
- NSF: Strongly endorses an expansion of the I-Corps initiative, including Federal agency financial support for researchers they fund to participate in I-Corps. In addition, NSF is to fund grants to help support prototype or proof-of-concept development for those ineligible for SBIR or Small Business Technology Transfer programs due to the early stage of their innovations. The Act also directs NSF to use some grant funding to accelerate commercialization of NSF-sponsored research and technologies with market potential, including support for proof-of-concept work and prototype development.
- NIST: Strengthens cyber security research at NIST, and reauthorizes the Hollings Manufacturing Extension Centers (MEP), emphasizing the transfer of NIST manufacturing technologies and research. NIST is to establish competitive awards to MEP centers for projects to solve new or emerging manufacturing problems.
- Federal High-Performance Computing: Reinforces the broader Federal high performance computing research agenda including research on cyber-physical systems, human-computer interactions, visualization, big data, cyber security including human facets of cyber threats and privacy protection. Federal agencies involved in this research are to develop strategic plans that specify program objectives, schedules for achieving objectives and metrics to assess programs, as well as how R&D results will be transferred to new technologies and applications.
- Reducing Paperwork: A new interagency working group will focus on reducing administrative burdens on federally funded researchers, including developing a simplified, uniform grant format to be used by all Federal science agencies.
- Crowdsourcing: Authorizes Federal agencies to use crowdsourcing and citizen science to conduct science projects. While the 2010 COMPETES Act granted Federal agencies authority to use incentive prizes and challenges, and many have issued such “challenges,” this new Act provides direct, explicit authority to use crowdsourcing and citizen science in a broader framework, for example, for formulating research questions, creating project designs, collecting data, conducting scientific experiments, and developing technologies and applications.