Making IT Better Expanding Information Technology Research to Meet Society's Needs (2000) / Chapter Skim
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Expanding the Scale and Scope of Information Technology Research
Expanding the Scale and Scope of Information Technology Research
Pages 195-214
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From page 195... ...
The payoff from investments in IT research initiatives launched a half a century ago have become manifest: IT has moved from the laboratory to the office, store, and home and has been incorporated into personal belongings of all types. It is also transforming countless aspects of business, government, and social interaction from education to health care to commerce, and as the potential of IT grows, so, too, do users' expectations for it.
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From page 196... ...
At the same time, it goes beyond previous appeals by arguing that the metamorphosis of IT from distinct devices (both hardware and software) into complex, largescale societal infrastructure calls for a shift in the emphases of IT research, which in turn requires different approaches to the organization and conduct of IT research.
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From page 197... ...
Recommendation 1. The federal government should continue to boost funding levels for fundamental information technology research, commensurate with the growing range of research challenges.
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From page 198... ...
in its own laboratories and in universities, intense competitive pressures and the need to generate positive returns for investors force companies to direct more of their R&D funding to projects with more certain results and more obvious applicability to market needs. The potential social return on investments in research is enormous, but these investments will not be made without the government's lead.
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From page 199... ...
Strong federal leadership of the sort that DARPA and to a lesser, but growing, extent NSF have demonstrated in the past could bring about a more comprehensive approach. The development of the fundamental Internet technology provides a model: effective program management led a dispersed group of researchers to work on separate projects toward a shared goal.
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From page 200... ...
· Support both theoretical and experimental work; · Provide small, medium-size, and large awards to support individual investigator research, small teams of researchers, and larger collaborative efforts; · Pursue a range of approaches to large-scale systems problems, such as improved software design methodologies, system architecture, reusable code, and biological and economic models; · Attempt to address the full scope of large-scale systems issues, including scalability, heterogeneity, trustworthiness, flexibility, and predictability;3 and · Provide academic researchers some form of access to large-scale Access to large-scale systems could be provided in any of the several forms: researchers could team with organizations that deploy or operate such infrastructures; they could create separate experimental testbeds that would allow them to develop, demonstrate, and test new techniques without worrying about interfering with operational systems; or existing systems (such as portions of the Internet) could be better instrumented to provide researchers with the kinds of data they need for analysis.
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From page 201... ...
One approach for engaging a diverse set of agencies in an IT research effort would be to build a vigorous program within NSF to understand the Internet and make it more robust. This effort could build on ongoing activities, such as the Next Generation Internet program, which involves several federal agencies, including DARPA, NSF, NASA, DOE, and NIH (via the National Library of Medicine)
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From page 202... ...
The NSF's Computing and Social Sciences program and Digital Government program are important steps in the right direction, and they could serve as models or launching points for more expansive efforts if they prove successful in the long term, but at present, they are limited in size and scope. Broader programmatic support is needed, along with the attendant nurturing of a research community.
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From page 203... ...
Research programs motivated by social applications must engage end users and system integrators in order to better understand the problems that people and organizations are confronting with IT systems and the range of potential solutions and to gain the inspiration for research. It may be unrealistic to expect end users and systems integrators to actually conduct research, at least initially, but they should at least participate on advisory boards or otherwise contribute actively to the research process.
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From page 204... ...
In the committee's judgment, these organizations are the best qualified to ensure that the research maintains a focus on long-term, fundamental results rather than devolving into applied research and development and targeting the needs of specific end users. Early experience with the Digital Government program demonstrates that what end users perceive as research is often seen by the IT research community as development.
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From page 205... ...
Such data are currently gathered for the NSF by the Census Bureau, but they are highly inconsistent from one year to the next, owing largely to frequent reclassifications of companies into, out of, and among the industry sectors most closely allied with IT.7 Significant improvements could probably made without increasing the cost of data collection by simply aggregating the data in a more consistent way from one year to the next. Admittedly, the dynamic nature of the IT industry and waves of mergers and acquisitions among major players can make company classification difficult, yet existing procedures for classification appear to give priority to accurate reporting for a given year rather than across years.
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From page 206... ...
They will also be the primary institutions for educating the next generation of researchers, developers, and users of large-scale systems and social applications. Research is closely tied to education, forming part of the educational process of graduate and some undergraduate students and generating additional knowledge that cannot be conveyed through more conventional course work.
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From page 207... ...
Other universities have found ways to establish tenure committees and review processes that more accurately assess interdisciplinary research, even if that research takes place within a traditional academic department. Computer science departments or university administrators could also promulgate policies stating that research in interdisciplinary or applicationsoriented areas will be given full consideration in the promotion and tenure process.~° Any one of these approaches or a combination of themcould be appropriate.
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From page 208... ...
. University administrators should work with such companies to establish trial internship programs that could be expanded if they prove successful.
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From page 209... ...
The trend away from large grants to university research labs and toward smaller grants to individual investigators has further limited the ability of senior faculty to support innovative work by junior faculty. The expanded research programs outlined above on large-scale IT systems and social applications of IT could address part of this problem by making additional funding available, but the leadership of senior faculty members will also be important in legitimizing new research areas.
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From page 210... ...
End users should consider other activities, such as supporting university research that is applicable to their needs, serving on the advisory boards of IT research groups in universities and industry, supporting internships for students in IT-related academic programs, and forming external research groups that monitor work in the IT research community and serve as liaisons between companies and IT researchers. This process needs to be viewed as a long-term, evolutionary one that can grow into more active participation in research over time.
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From page 211... ...
Or they could fund joint research with end users in universities or industry, as Microsoft Corporation is doing in its educational venture with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) .~2 Another approach is to increase company contacts with, and support for, university researchers by allocating more resources for students and faculty to spend time in industrial facilities and for industrial researchers to visit university laboratories.
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From page 212... ...
1999. Information Technology Research: Investing in Our Future.
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From page 213... ...
5. The Digital Libraries Initiative is a multiagency initiative that, in its second phase, will pursue research related to the development of the next generation of digital libraries, both to advance the use and usability of globally distributed, networked information resources and to encourage existing and new communities to focus on innovative applications areas.
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