Feature Slides

About the Subcommittee on Networking and Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD Subcommittee)

The Subcommittee on Networking and Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD) of the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) and its Committee on Technology serves as the internal deliberative organization of the NSTC for NITRD policy, program, and budget guidance and direction for the Executive Branch.

The NITRD Subcommittee coordinates the planning, budgeting, implementation, and reviews of networking and IT R&D across the NITRD members to help assure continued U.S. leadership in networking and IT, satisfy the needs of the Federal government for advanced IT capabilities, and accelerate development and deployment of new technologies. The Subcommittee interacts with Congress, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), other Federal agencies, academia, and industry on behalf of the NITRD Program. Subcommittee members include representatives from each of the member agencies and from OMB, OSTP, and the National Coordination Office for NITRD (NCO/NITRD).

The scope of the activities and research areas under the aegis of the NITRD Subcommittee continuously evolves as rapidly shifting information technologies generate new R&D challenges in applying advanced capabilities to address national needs. For example, NITRD has established four Senior Steering Groups (SSGs) whose senior-level agency representatives are developing national strategies to: improve U.S. cybersecurity; advance IT applications in health care; enable fuller human uses of today’s vast quantities of digital data; and maximize the potential of the wireless spectrum.

NITRD research activities also take place in eight Program Component Areas (PCAs). The work of each PCA is guided by an Interagency Working Group (IWG) or a Coordinating Group (CG) of agency program managers. These groups, which report to the NITRD Subcommittee, meet monthly to coordinate planning and activities such as collaborative workshops, joint research efforts, and development of strategic R&D plans.

The NCO/NITRD provides program and financial management services, technical and subject matter expertise in facilitation, strategic planning, technical writing, networking and IT services, and administrative staff support for the NITRD Subcommittee and the IWGs, CGs, SSGs, Teams, and other NITRD subgroups. The functions performed by the NCO/NITRD are authorized under the High-Performance Computing Act of 1991 (P.L. 102-194), the Next Generation Research Act of 1998 (105-305), and the America COMPETES Act of 2007 (P.L. 110-69). The cost of operating the NCO/NITRD is shared by the NITRD member agencies in proportion to their NITRD budgets. The NCO/NITRD also supports the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), under Executive Order 13539. The National Science Foundation (NSF) serves as the host agency for the NCO/NITRD.

NITRD’s diverse R&D areas, groups, and interests include:

• High End Computing Infrastructure and Applications (HEC I&A) - R&D to enable broad access by the Nation’s research communities to advanced high performance computer systems, applications software and data management tools, and keep the United States at the forefront of 21st century science, engineering, and technology.
• High End Computing Research and Development (HEC R&D) - R&D for hardware, software and system architectures to enable the effective use of high performance computer systems to meet growing Federal agency mission needs, and to address many of society's most complex challenges in science, engineering, breakthrough innovation, economic growth and national security.
• Cyber Security and Information Assurance (CSIA) - R&D to protect IT systems and to increase their resiliency against threats that could compromise their availability, integrity, confidentiality, or trustworthiness.
  
  • Cyber Security R&D SSG – Provide overall leadership for cyber security research and development coordination to address the need for streamlined decision processes and dynamic responsiveness to changing research and budget priorities.
• Human Computer Interaction and Information Management (HCI&IM) - R&D to expand human capabilities and knowledge through information use and management by computer systems and humans working with information technologies.
  
• Big Data SSG – Formed to identify current Federal big data R&D activities, offer opportunities for coordination, and consider a potential national initiative in this area.
• Large Scale Networking (LSN) - R&D to extend the state of the art in networking architectures, technologies, services, security, applications, and enhanced performance.
  • The Joint Engineering Team (JET) - Coordinates connectivity and transparency of networks supporting Federal science programs, research on network services of common interest to Federal networks, and international cooperation on networking.
  • The Middleware And Grid Infrastructure Coordination (MAGIC) - Coordinates the development of common, transparent services to support grid computing, cloud services, and middleware in support of Federal scientific research programs.
• High Confidence Software and Systems (HCSS) - R&D to effectively engineer high-confidence cyber-physical systems —smart systems that have cyber technologies, both hardware and software, deeply embedded in and interacting with physical components, sensing and changing the state of the real world— that assure high levels of reliability, safety, security, and usability. Examples of cyber-physical systems include smart transportation systems, smart medical devices and technologies, smart buildings, next-generation air transportation systems, and the Smart Grid.
• Software Design and Productivity (SDP) - R&D to advance software engineering concepts, methods, techniques, and tools that result in more usable, dependable, cost-effective, evolvable, and sustainable software-intensive systems. The R&D agenda spans both the science and the technology of software creation, sustainment, and software project management in diverse domains.
• Social, Economic, and Workforce Implications of IT and IT Workforce Development (SEW) - R&D to advance the co-evolution of IT and social, economic, and workforce systems including interactions between people and IT and among people developing and using IT in groups, organizations, and larger social networks; address workforce concerns by leveraging interagency efforts to improve education outcomes through the use of learning technologies; and develop innovative IT applications in education and training.
  
• Health IT R&D SSG - R&D to extend IT capabilities that support the development of health information infrastructure and data exchange while ensuring privacy and security; accelerate the transformation from data-to-knowledge-to-decision for improved health outcomes; advance the use of sensors, robotics, and mobile technologies for health and healthcare; and empower patients with technologies to manage health and wellbeing.
  
  • Health Information Technology Innovation and Development Environments (HITIDE) – R&D to advance application innovations for interoperable health IT systems by leveraging agencies’ testbed environments.
• Wireless Spectrum Research and Development (WSRD) SSG - R&D to explore innovative spectrum-sharing technologies, including those that are secure and resilient.
• Faster Administration of Science and Technology Education and Research (FASTER) Community of Practice (CoP) - Established to improve the communication and coordination among Federal science agency CIOs and their respective technology specialists.