contributed articles

Doi: 10.1145/1646353.1646373

The National Academy of Sciences recommends
what the U.S. government should do to help
maintain American IT leadership.

BY eRic BenhAmou, Jon eisenBeRG, AnD RAnDY h. KAtz Assessing the changing u.s. it R&D ecosystem

THE U.S. nATIOnAl Academy of Sciences was established by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863 to provide unbiased assessment of scientific and technology policy issues facing the U.S. government ( http://www.nas.edu). In 2006, the Academy’s Computer Science and Telecommunication Board, under the sponsorship of the U.S. National Science Foundation, established a committee of experts in the fields of IT research (Randy Katz, ed Lazowska, Raj Reddy), venture investment (eric Benhamou, David Nagel, Arati Prabhakar), economics of innovation and globalization (Andrew Hargadon, Martin Kenney, Steven Klepper), and labor and work-force issues (Stephen Barley, Lucy Sanders) to assess the effects of changes in the U.S. IT R&D ecosystem ( http://sites.nationalacademies.org/CSTB/index. htm). The committee took as its charter to examine

the period from 1995 to the present, a time of rapid expansion and contraction of the field in response to the Internet boom, a precipitous stock-mar-ket collapse, increased competition through globalization of the industry, and an economy-disrupting terrorist attack and subsequent aftershocks to the economy, the full implications of which have yet to be understood.

While the committee’s study focused on global developments and their implications, particularly for the U.S., the report, which was issued in February 2009, is of interest to researchers and policymakers in all of the world’s IT-intensive economies, as the globalization of the industry accelerates with the rise of India and China as major centers.

Here, we summarize the report’s ob-
servations, findings, and recommen-
dations ( http://www.nap.edu/catalog.
php?record_id=12174), covering sev-
eral main themes:
IT’s central role in the developed ˲
world;

The committee’s assessments of ˲
the IT R&D ecosystem, with inevitable
U.S.-centric view, calling for increased
and balanced investment in IT research
by the U.S. government, with support-
ing investment in education and out-
reach to develop a high-skills/infor-
mation-technology-aware work force,
a commitment to reduce the “friction”
the IT industry faces in the U.S. econ-
omy (such as in its highly litigious in-
tellectual property system and regula-
tory regimes whose compliance unduly
burdens small companies significantly
more than larger ones) and expanded
commitment to develop a leading-edge
U.S. IT infrastructure; and
The American Recovery and Rein- ˲
vestment Act of 2009 and the actions
taken by the Obama administration
directly relevant to the recommenda-
tions of the committee.

it impact

Advances in IT and its applications represent a signal success for U.S. scientific, engineering, business, and