National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)

NIST, founded in 1901, is a non-regulatory federal agency within the Department of Commerce. 

NIST's mission is to promote U.S. innovation and industrial competitiveness by advancing 

measurement science, standards, and technology in ways that enhance economic security and 

improve our quality of life.

Open Data

NIST Public Access Plan

In response to the Memorandum from the Executive Office of the President for the Heads of 

Executive Departments and Agencies: Increasing Access to the Results of Federally Funded 

Scientific Research, dated February 22, 2013, NIST developed a NIST Public Access Plan, 

which was approved by OSTP and OMB in December 2014. The plan described NIST efforts 

to make freely available to the public, in publicly accessible repositories, all peer-reviewed 

scholarly publications and associated data arising from unclassified research and programs 

funded wholly or in part by NIST. Within the constraints of its mission and funding, NIST will 

also promote the deposit of scientific data arising from unclassified research and programs, 

funded wholly or in part by NIST, free of charge unless an exception exists, in publicly 

accessible databases. The plan and public comments are available as NISTIR 8084 

[http://dx.doi.org/10.6028/NIST.IR.8084]. NIST’s Public Access Policy, which was derived 

from the plan, became effective on June 26, 2015 and is available at http://www.nist.gov/open.

Improved Access to Publications and Archival Materials

NIST has partnered with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to use the existing PubMed 

Central (PMC) repository system to provide public access to full-text peer-reviewed scholarly 

publications and associated data for NIST, leveraging the well-established search, archival, 

and dissemination features of PMC. NIST plans to acquire a web-based manuscript submission 

and peer-review workflow solution that enables geographically dispersed stakeholders, 

including both NIST employees and non-NIST collaborators, to electronically submit, edit, 

and search bibliographic information and view progress-tracking information during internal 

review. 
NIST is also working with the Internet Archive, under an arrangement with the Library of 

Congress, to digitize the hundreds of technical reports it has published over more than 100 

years, with the goal that the entire legacy collection of NBS/NIST technical series publications 

will be available to the public through the Government Printing Office’s Federal Digital 

System. Some of these technical publications were targeted to very specific audiences, but 

many are about topics of interest to a broader audience. 

NIST staff members are also enhancing the NIST Digital Archives by adding information 

about and images of artifacts in the NIST Museum collections and photographs portraying 

NBS/NIST history. NIST staff members are tracking the number of web hits on and the number 

of citations of those reports and papers to make a measurement-based determination of the 

effectiveness of this strategy to increase the impact of NIST research.

Improved Access to Research Data

NIST’s plan for providing public access to scientific research data consists of three 

components: data management plans (DMPs), an Enterprise Data Inventory (EDI), and a data 

repository providing a public access infrastructure. Generation of data management plans has 

begun, providing documentation of plans for storage, archival, and accessibility for NIST’s 

multiple types of data. The EDI is a catalog of the datasets with a user-friendly front end to 

enable NIST scientists to easily enter metadata about their datasets and an export capability to 

facilitate feeding that metadata into data.gov. The NIST Data Repository will make it easier 

for NIST staff to make their research data publicly accessible. 

To enhance its ability to store, exchange, and disseminate its research data to external 

stakeholders and the public as well as to share it between NIST technical staff and their 

immediate collaborators, NIST is making foundational improvements to its data management 

infrastructure. There are four prongs to this initiative: 

- Analyze data management practices across NIST organizational units, document 

procedures, and build out flexible and extensible tools to support data management plans 

and the Enterprise Data Inventory; 

- Create a robust data management framework for data of all working levels by extending 

cloud-based storage and network connectivity, and deploying easy-to-use interfaces for the 

management of NIST data; 

- Pilot development of a NIST public access data portal with improved interfaces, with 

particular focus on supporting Standard Reference Data; 

- Accelerate the identification, assessment, authorization, and deployment process for 

widely used software tools that support data exchange and research collaboration.
Privacy

NIST follows departmental guidance from the Office of Privacy and Open Government. 

Whistleblower Protection

NIST follows departmental guidance from the Office of Inspector General. 

Websites

Several years ago, as part of an effort to expand dissemination of its research results, NIST 

implemented a content management system (CMS), which included access to an improved 

database of research papers authored or co-authored by NIST researchers. Content is “tagged” by 

topic, enabling the public to subscribe to receive new information posted on the website on specific 

topics of interest such as nanotechnology or energy-related research. Currently, there are more 

than 140,000 subscribers who receive information on approximately 160 different topics. The 

NIST website also includes several blogs that allow members of the public to comment or ask 

questions about posted articles and the CMS includes icons to easily share content from the NIST 

site with social media websites (more than 4,200 “shares” in the last 6 months of FY2015). 

NIST is migrating its central web pages from a proprietary CMS to Drupal, an open source CMS. 

The new website will allow greater flexibility in the functionality of NIST internal and external 

web pages. It will also be hosted in the cloud, which will improve NIST’s ability to meet current 

and future needs.

Social Media

NIST has created sites on YouTube (more than 5,400 subscribers, more than 1 million video 

views), Facebook (more than 43,000 “likes”), Twitter (more than 27,000 “followers”), 

LinkedIn (almost 19,000 followers) and Flickr (more than 1,400 images with nearly 880,000 

views). To ensure that as many people as possible benefit from NIST’s work, news of major 

research results posted on the NIST website is routinely announced through these additional 

social media sites.

Transparency

NIST strives to be consistently open and transparent in its interactions with the public and news 

media. 

The Institute implements the Department of Commerce Public Communications Policy, which 

includes explicit approval for research staff to talk with the news media and the public directly –

without prior permission from the Public Affairs Office – about the results of their taxpayer funded 

research. 
NIST Public Affairs Office regularly offers communications training to its research staff, including 

describing this portion of the policy, to ensure that they are committed to broadly disseminating 

NIST results to a wide variety of audiences. Plain language training is available online and through 

regularly scheduled in-person courses on campus. 

The Union of Concerned Scientists, a non-profit dedicated to encouraging transparency in 

scientific communication, surveyed NIST technical staff and found that NIST scientists “are aware 

of free speech protections in the official policy and report a comparatively high degree of 

openness.” 

NIST provides a dedicated phone and email public inquiries referral service during all business 

hours to ensure that any member of the public may request assistance in locating specialized 

technical reports or experts or in resolving customer services concerns they may have. The Public 

Inquiries email is available in the footer of most NIST web pages to facilitate easy access to this 

service. 

NIST’s policy on scientific integrity is also easily accessed on its homepage. 

Public Notice

NIST follows departmental guidance from the Office of Public Affairs. 

Records Management

NIST manages its records in accordance with NARA and Department of Commerce regulations, 

ensuring that records are economically and effectively created to meet business needs, kept long 

enough to protect rights and assure accountability, and preserved and available for future 

generations. Records are retained in accordance with NARA-approved records schedules. NIST 

is updating its records management directives and data management infrastructure to be clear and 

concise, conveying records management requirements and responsibilities to all NIST staff.

Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Requests

NIST responds to Freedom of Information Act requests in accordance with Department of 

Commerce regulations and Department of Justice guidance. NIST emphasizes the importance of 

transparency of its operations and regularly performs discretionary releases of documents and 

information that could qualify for exemption from release, but for which there is no foreseeable 

harm. The NIST FOIA Office works collaboratively with NIST Operating Units to obtain

information in response to requests in a timely manner and to encourage proactive disclosure of 

information. 

Proactive Disclosure

In November 2013, NIST initiated a review of its cryptographic standards development process in 

response to concerns about the integrity of NIST cryptographic standards and guidelines. As a 
critical component of this review, the NIST Director charged the NIST Visiting Committee on 

Advanced Technology (VCAT) to form a Committee of Visitors (CoV) to serve as technical 

experts to assess NIST cryptographic standards and guidelines development process and if 

necessary provide findings on how it could be improved. NIST made publicly available all 

materials provided to the panel by posting the content on the VCAT website. NIST also held open 

discussions with multiple stakeholders for awareness and input. 

Congressional Requests

NIST follows departmental guidance from the Office of Legislative and Intergovernmental 

Affairs. 

Declassification

NIST follows departmental guidance from the Office of the Secretary.

Participation

NIST has a rich history of participation in numerous standards development efforts, dating back 

to the beginning of the 20th century when the National Bureau of Standards (which became NIST 

in 1988) was founded. Currently, over 450 NIST staff members participate in over 120 standards 

development organizations on both a national and international scale. 

To increase citizen involvement in the development of standards to address new technological 

challenges, NIST has reached out into the community to convene workshops at key locations 

around the country, organize diverse stakeholders, and establish consensus‐developing 

organizations. This strategy has broadened participation and organized communities to take action 

in a prioritized, timely manner. It has been used successfully for developing standards frameworks 

for the smart grid sector and critical infrastructure cybersecurity. The strategy is currently being 

used to develop a community-centric resilience framework and to bring a uniform structure to the 

previously ad hoc development of forensic standards and guidelines.

Smart Grid Interoperability Panel

In 2009, NIST initiated the Smart Grid Interoperability Panel (SGIP) as a vehicle for NIST to 

solicit input and cooperation from private and public sector stakeholders in developing the 

smart grid interoperability standards framework. With NIST encouragement, the SGIP was 

transitioned to a non-profit private-public partnership organization in 2013, supported by 

industry stakeholder funding and funding provided through a cooperative agreement with 

NIST. The SGIP does not develop standards directly, but rather it provides an open process for 

stakeholders, including NIST, to coordinate and accelerate standards development and 

harmonization and to advance the interoperability of smart grid devices and systems.
Green Button Initiative

NIST provides leadership to the standards development work in the White House-inspired and 

industry-led Green Button Initiative, which enables consumers to obtain and share their own 

energy usage information in a standardized electronic format. Working closely with the SGIP, 

industry and other federal agencies, NIST has led the development of the technology 

foundation for Green Button, including standards, testing, developer tools and technical 

support for implementers, including many utilities. NIST has also encouraged the formation of 

the new Green Button Alliance, a non-profit organization dedicated to advancing Green Button 

and supporting Green Button testing and certification. Based on significant nationwide 

voluntary adoption by utilities, and with support by NIST, over 100 million U.S. consumers 

(and over 8 million Canadian consumers) now have Green Button data access to help them 

better understand and manage their energy usage. 

Materials Genome Initiative

The Materials Genome Initiative (MGI), launched by President Obama in 2011, is a multiagency initiative designed to create a new era of policy, resources, and infrastructure that 

support U.S. institutions in the discovery, manufacture, and deployment of advanced materials 

twice as fast, at a fraction of the cost. The discovery and optimization of new materials for 

innovative products is a time-consuming and laborious process, and computational design of 

materials has begun to emerge as a powerful new tool for materials discovery and optimization. 

However, major efforts in both theory and experiment are needed to provide the data that 

underlies successful modeling. Given NIST expertise in the integration, curation, and 

provisioning of critically evaluated data and models, NIST has assumed a leadership role 

within the MGI, establishing essential data exchange protocols and the means to ensure the 

quality of materials data and models. These efforts will yield the new methods, metrologies, 

and capabilities necessary for accelerated materials development. NIST is working with 

stakeholders in industry, academia, and government to develop the standards, tools, and 

techniques enabling acquisition, representation, and discovery of materials data; 

interoperability of computer simulations of materials phenomena across multiple length and 

time scales; and the quality assessment of materials data, models, and simulations.

Framework for Improving Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity

Starting in 2013, NIST has worked with stakeholders to develop a voluntary framework –

based on existing standards, guidelines, and practices – for reducing cyber risks to critical 

infrastructure. The first version of the Framework for Improving Critical Infrastructure 

Cybersecurity was released on February 12, 2014. Since then, NIST has collected user 

feedback and experience through a Request for Information and a public workshop. NIST also 

facilitated working sessions on specific technical areas that will be used to enhance the 

Framework in the future. 
National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace

Since 2011, NIST has led implementation of the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in 

Cyberspace (NSTIC). This global initiative aims to improve the privacy, security, and 

convenience of online transactions through a collaborative effort between the private sector, 

the public sector, advocacy groups, and other non-profit organizations. NSTIC implementation 

has three primary stakeholder engagement approaches: 1) Modeled after the SGIP, NIST 

initiated the private sector led Identity Ecosystem Steering Group, a multi-stakeholder vehicle 

for the development of the Identity Ecosystem Framework (IDEF) – the policy, standards, and 

accreditation processes for Identity Ecosystem participants. The first version of the IDEF was 

released in 2015. 2) Over the past four years, NIST has facilitated adoption of NSTIC-aligned 

identity solutions by funding 16 private sector pilots and two pilots with states through 

cooperative agreements. As of December 31, 2015, the Pilots Program has convened more than 

150 organizations to work together in advancing NSTIC-aligned solutions. The pilots have 

impacted over 3.8 million individuals, with advances occurring across 11 sectors – including 

the development of 10 multi-factor authentication solutions. 3) NIST advances standards and 

guidance by working with stakeholders to advance the measurability of identity and 

authentication solutions to further risk-based decision-making and support the evolution of an 

efficient marketplace for identity solutions. 

Privacy Risk Management Framework

NIST also has initiated development of a privacy risk management framework to support 

improved privacy engineering in the design of information systems. NIST is developing a 

NIST Interagency Report on privacy engineering objectives and a model to enable 

identification of privacy risk and improved responses. NIST held two public workshops, with 

attendance from industry, government and academia, in FY2014 to inform the development of 

this report, and presented the draft concepts through a live webcast with an interactive question 

and answer period. Comments received were posted publicly.

Organization for Scientific Area Committees

In 2014, NIST collaborated with the Department of Justice and the forensic science community 

to create the Organization for Scientific Area Committees (OSAC), established to coordinate 

development of standards and guidelines for forensic science. OSAC has named 402 new 

members to 23 subcommittees on forensic disciplines such as firearms and toolmarks and facial 

identification, and is bringing a uniform structure to what was previously an ad hoc system, 

with the goal of improving the quality and consistency of forensic science in the United States.

Community Resilience Planning Guide

NIST is leading the development of a community-centric Community Resilience Planning 

Guide for Buildings and Infrastructure Systems, or Guide, which will establish the overall 

performance goals; assess existing standards, codes, and practices; and identify gaps that must 
be addressed in order to bolster community resilience. In 2014 and 2015, NIST convened a 

series of Community Resilience Workshops around the country to engage a broad network of 

stakeholders with multidisciplinary expertise to help develop the Guide, with a focus on the 

role that buildings and infrastructure lifelines play in ensuring community resilience. NIST 

convened 5 workshops across the country to engage stakeholders in the development of the 

Guide. Following a public comment period kicked off in April 2015, the first version of the 

Guide was released on October 29, 2015, and may be updated periodically as new best 

practices and research results become available and as communities gain experience using the 

guide and recommend improvements.

Big Data Public Working Group

Big Data is another important area in which NIST is leading public participation in standards 

development. Although there is broad agreement about the remarkable potential of "Big Data" 

to spark innovation, fuel commerce, and drive progress, the rate at which data volumes, speeds, 

and complexity are growing is outpacing scientific and technological advances in data 

analytics, management, transport, and more. NIST is leading the NIST Big Data Public 

Working Group (NBD-PWG) to develop consensus definitions, taxonomies, reference 

architectures, and technology roadmaps to accelerate the deployment of robust Big Data 

solutions. The NBD-PWG, open to the public with active membership from industry, 

academia, and government, has five subgroups that have developed Phase 1 of a Big Data 

Interoperability Framework that will define and describe high-level reference architectural 

components. The seven volumes representing Stage 1 of the NIST Big Data Interoperability 

Framework V1.0 are available at http://bigdatawg.nist.gov/V1_output_docs.php. In stage 2, 

we will explore preliminary interfaces between these components with the goals to aggregate 

low-level interactions into high-level general interfaces and produce a set of white papers to 

demonstrate how the reference architecture can be used; in stage 3, we will validate the 

reference architecture by building Big Data general applications through the general interfaces.

Standards Education

Standards provide industries and innovators with a common language that facilitates trade, 

simplifies transactions and enables people to work together toward greater common goals that 

cut across disciplines and borders. NIST supports the development of standards by identifying 

areas where they are needed, convening stakeholders and providing technical and scientific 

guidance and expertise to help stakeholder groups reach a consensus. In 2015, NIST awarded 

seven grants totaling more than $490,000 to universities in five states to advance standards 

education. Under the Standards Services Curricula Development Cooperative Agreement 

Program, recipients will work with NIST to integrate instruction related to standards and 

standardization into undergraduate and graduate curriculum at U.S. colleges and universities. 

Grants in 2015 were awarded to Carnegie Mellon (Pittsburgh, PA), Jackson State (Jackson, 

MS), Michigan State (East Lansing, MI), University of Hartford (West Hartford, CT), 

University of Houston (Houston, TX), and the University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, PA).
Collaboration

To help accomplish its mission, NIST seeks out high-quality partnerships, collaborations, and 

other interactions with U.S. companies, universities, and agencies at the federal, state, and local 

levels. Each year, NIST hosts about 2,700 associates and facility users who collaborate with its 

scientists. NIST works with over 1,300 manufacturing specialists around the country to help small 

and mid-size manufacturers improve and grow. NIST has several designated user facilities 

available for both proprietary and non-proprietary research. Access to these facilities is generally 

provided on a first-come, first-served cost-reimbursable basis. In addition, NIST jointly operates 

research organizations explicitly established to promote the kind of cross-disciplinary 

collaborations that accelerate research results. NIST hosts as many as 100 conferences, workshops, 

symposia, and other meetings annually. Most are co-sponsored with other federal agencies, 

academic institutions, professional societies, or industry groups. 

National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence

NIST also recently established the National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence (NCCoE). 

The NCCoE brings together experts from industry, government, and academia to develop and 

effectively transfer practical cybersecurity standards, technologies, and best practices to the 

nation’s business sectors. By accelerating dissemination and use of standards, best practices, 

and integrated tools and technologies for protecting information technology assets and 

processes, the NCCoE fosters trust in U.S. business sectors and improvements to the overall 

security of the economy. The NCCoE supports implementation of existing cybersecurity 

guidelines and frameworks, serves as a technical resource for both public and private sectors, 

and contributes to the development of cybersecurity practices and practitioners.

Today, the NCCoE has programs working with the health care, energy, financial services, 

transportation and retail sectors. In addition, the center is addressing challenges that cut across 

sectors, including mobile device security, software asset management, cloud security, identity 

management, and secure email. 

Centers of Excellence

NIST is also in the process of creating Centers of Excellence to provide an interdisciplinary 

environment where researchers from NIST, academia, and industry will collaborate on 

emerging areas of basic and applied research and innovations in measurement science. The 

first of these centers, the Center for Hierarchical Materials Design (CHiMaD), was established 

in 2013 to accelerate materials discovery and development; provide opportunities to transition 

new breakthroughs in advanced materials to industry; convene multidisciplinary and multisector communities for in-depth discussions; and provide training opportunities for scientists 

and engineers in materials metrology. 

Two Centers of Excellence were established in 2015 after selection through a merit-based 

competition. The Center for Risk-Based Community Resilience Planning will focus on tools 
to support community disaster resilience. The center will work on developing integrated, 

systems-based computational models to assess community infrastructure resilience and guide 

community-level resilience investment decisions. The center will provide a scientific basis for 

developing resilience metrics and decision-making tools and for evaluating cascading effects 

that arise in interconnected physical and social infrastructures. 

The third center, the Center for Statistics and Applications in Forensic Evidence, was 

announced in May of 2015. This center supports NIST’s efforts to advance the utility of 

probabilistic methods to enhance forensic analysis. Working with NIST researchers and 

partners from four universities led by Iowa State University, the Forensic Science Center of 

Excellence will evaluate and solidify the statistical foundation for fingerprint, firearm, 

toolmark, and other pattern evidence analyses, and for multimedia evidence analyses. The 

center will also develop and implement an education and training program to ensure that 

judges, lawyers, and forensic science investigators can effectively decipher the results of 

statistical analysis on pattern and digital evidence.

Advanced Manufacturing National Program Office

NIST provides leadership and coordination across all federal agencies with program in 

advanced manufacturing by leading the interagency Advanced Manufacturing National 

Program Office (AMNPO), hosted by NIST. In particular the AMNPO is charged with 

enabling industry-led, private-public partnerships focused on manufacturing innovation to 

enhance technology transfer in U.S. manufacturing industries. With participation from all 

federal agencies involved in U.S. manufacturing, the AMNPO is establishing the National 

Network for Manufacturing Innovation (NNMI), a network of linked Institutes for 

manufacturing innovation with common goals but unique concentrations, which will create a 

manufacturing research infrastructure for U.S. industry and academia to solve industryrelevant problems, as well as provide work force training needed in manufacturing. To date, 

these Institutes have been stood up by the mission agencies DoE and DoD, but it is proposed 

that DOC, USDA, and other agencies soon fund institutes. In FY 2016 NIST intends to hold 

an open-topic competition to fund up to two institutes that will join the others in the network. 

NIST will manage a competitive proposal and review process to select and fund Institutes 

funded by DOC that bring together industry, academia, and government partners to collaborate 

and co-invest in manufacturing innovation. 

NIST is responsible for convening all Institutes within the NNMI for sharing of best practices 

and providing support infrastructure.

Technology Transfer

NIST works to disseminate its research results as broadly as possible. In October 2014, NIST 

and NOAA co-sponsored a Technology and Entrepreneurship Showcase to bring together 

innovative technologies, licensable inventions, research and engineering facilities, small 
business support resources at the Federal and state levels, and sources of funding—all under 

one roof, and all available for networking. Excluding presenters, over 60 individuals attended. 

NIST plans to continue this series in 2015, working in conjunction with the Commonwealth of 

Virginia. NIST also plans to host two “listening sessions” in Maryland to hear from the local 

communities about how federal labs can contribute to economic development. Technology 

Transfer partnership activities across Commerce are described in an annual report available at 

http://www.nist.gov/tpo/publications/doc-annual-reports-techtransfer.cfm.

Lab to Market

NIST plays a prominent role in fulfilling requirements of the Lab to Market Cross Agency 

Priority (CAP) Goal, one of 15 goals established as part of the President’s Management 

Agenda and stemming from the Presidential Memorandum on Technology Transfer of 2011. 

As part of this effort, in FY2015 NIST initiated a pilot NIST entrepreneurship program, 

partnering with the Minority Business Development Agency (MBDA) to integrate minority 

business development into the Lab to Market process, working with other agencies to develop 

policies and tools to bring investors and capital to the technology commercialization process, 

holding workshops with universities on extramural commercialization, and conducting 

economic studies to evaluate impact in identified priority areas. Also as part of the Lab to 

Market Team, NIST has placed all of its technology data and facility use data on data.gov in a 

machine-readable format for other parties to use.

Challenges

Global City Teams Challenge

The NIST is partnering with other federal agencies and the private sector to sponsor a 

year-long Global City Teams Challenge to help communities around the world work 

together to address issues ranging from air quality to traffic management to emergency 

services coordination. GCTC identifies standards and measurements to guide technology 

innovators in creating solutions that can work anywhere and lay the groundwork for a 

future of smarter cities. NIST is inviting communities and innovators to create teams that 

will foster the spread of “smart cities” that take advantage of networked technologies to 

better manage resources and improve quality of life. Voluntary participants will work 

collaboratively to build, deploy, and test transformative Internet of Things/Cyber-Physical 

Systems applications within communities across the U.S. This new challenge will 

leverage the success of the previous GCTC round, which took place from September 2014 

through June 2015 and brought together more than 200 companies, universities and other 

organizations with more than 40 cities worldwide to form teams that developed and 

applied smart city technologies. That challenge demonstrated that these technologies have 

the potential to create jobs and business opportunities and provide socioeconomic 

benefits. For GCTC 2016, a mid-course Tech Jam will be held March 2016 in 

Washington, leading to the capstone event in June in Austin, Texas where city teams will 
demonstrate smart solutions that provide measurable benefits to residents such as reducing

traffic congestion, lowering energy costs, enabling ageing in place, and more.

Transactive Energy Challenge

Transactive Energy (TE) refers to techniques for managing the generation, consumption, 

or flow of electric power within the electric power system through the use of economic or 

market-based constructs while considering grid reliability constraints. As the electric grid 

transforms to integrate more wind and solar energy and to give customers more choice 

and control in their use of energy, the concept of transactive energy is expected to play a 

key role. Members of NIST’s Smart Grid Team have been working closely with the 

Department of Energy to understand TE’s potential and to support utilities, technology 

developers, and policy makers. The TE Challenge brings researchers and companies with 

simulation tools together with utilities, product developers, and other grid stakeholders to 

create and demonstrate modeling and simulation platforms while applying transactive 

energy approaches to real grid problems.

Head Health Challenge III

NIST joined with the National Football League (NFL), GE, and Under Armour to launch 

Head Health Challenge III, an open innovation competition to support the discovery, 

design, and development of advanced materials that better absorb or dissipate impact 

energy. NIST will work to refine measurement approaches, convene the research and 

industry communities to assess the state of performance testing for impact energy 

absorbing/dispersing materials and identify gaps in these measurements. The ultimate goal 

will be to develop standard testing methods for these materials systems over the next 

several years. These new materials have the potential to improve the performance of 

protective gear and equipment for athletes, members of the military, and others. Head 

Health Challenge III was part of the $60 million Head Health Initiative, a multiyear 

collaboration between GE and the NFL launched in March 2013. Entries were judged by 

leading experts in the field of materials science who selected five winners to receive a 

$250,000 award each to advance their work in developing technologies that can help 

prevent mild traumatic brain injury. One grand prize winner will be selected from the five 

and will receive an additional $500,000 to further develop their innovation. The five 

winners were announced in December 2015; the grand prize winner will be announced in 

January 2017.

Nutrient Sensor Challenge

Nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus are essential for plant growth but high nutrient 

concentrations in our waterways can be harmful to ecosystems and to human health. 

Federal and State agencies, researchers, utilities, and watershed managers across the 

United States measure these concentrations to gain a better understanding of nutrient 
levels and how nutrients move through the environment—empowering both scientific 

research and more-informed watershed management decisions. Better sensors can also 

help Federal and State agencies, communities, and the private sector better track progress 

of their nutrient control programs and the significant investments they have made to 

reduce nutrient pollution. The EPA, NOAA, USGS, and NIST in conjunction with the 

Alliance for Coastal Technologies ran the Nutrient Sensor Challenge for development of 

sensors that are affordable, accurate, and reliable. Applications were due in December 

2015, after which verification testing will begin. Winners will be announced in December 

2016.

NIST Open Government Initiatives

The table below shows a list of initiatives for NIST.

Table 1 - NIST Initiatives

Operating Unit Project Status

Estimated 

Completion

NIST Improving NIST's Data Management Infrastructure Ongoing/Continuous

Establishing New Centers of Excellence Completed (May 2015)

Engaging Citizens to Develop a Disaster Resilience 

Framework

Completed 

(October 2015)

NIST Reference Data Challenge Completed 

(November 2015)

Improving Access to Publications by NIST Authors Live/Operational

Global Cities Team Challenge 2 In Progress June 2016

Modernization of Standard Reference Data In Progress July 2016

Materials Data Curation System In Progress September 2016

Head Health Challenge III - Advanced Materials for 

Impact Mitigation

In Progress January 2017

• Project – Improving NIST’s Data Management Infrastructure

Some of NIST’s data outputs are highly vetted data products intended explicitly for broad 

dissemination. However, a large fraction of the valuable data that NIST produces is in support 

of scientific, engineering, and other technical work, allowing scientists to demonstrate results 
and draw conclusions that are then published in scholarly journals. The teams producing such 

research data can vary in size from dozens of researchers to individual staff scientists. In some 

cases the data are shared only within small, internal teams of NIST employees, while in other 

cases the data must be shared with collaborators in other government agencies, national labs, 

academia, industry, or foreign institutions. The volumes of data also cover a large range, from 

the scale of terabytes in a single dataset to a few megabytes for one team’s annual output.

In order to enhance NIST’s ability to store, exchange, and disseminate NIST research data with 

external stakeholders and the public as well as between NIST technical staff and their immediate 

collaborators, NIST is making fundamental and foundational improvements to its data 

management infrastructure. There are four areas in this initiative: 1) Analyze data management 

practices across NIST organizational units, document procedures, and build out flexible and 

extensible tools to support Data Management Plans and the Enterprise Data Inventory; 2) Create 

a robust data management framework for data of all working levels by extending cloud-based 

storage and network connectivity, and deploying easy-to-use interfaces for the management of 

NIST data; 3) Pilot development of a NIST public access data portal with improved interfaces,

with particular focus on supporting Standard Reference Data; 4) Accelerate the identification, 

assessment, authorization, and deployment process for widely used software tools that support 

data exchange and research collaboration. 

• Project – Establishing New Centers of Excellence

NIST is creating Centers of Excellence to provide an interdisciplinary environment where 

researchers from NIST, academia, and industry can collaborate on emerging areas of basic and 

applied research and innovations in measurement science. Two Centers of Excellence were 

established in 2015 after selection through a merit-based competition. The Center for RiskBased Community Resilience Planning will focus on tools to support community disaster 

resilience. The center will work on developing integrated, systems-based computational models 

to assess community infrastructure resilience and guide community-level resilience investment 

decisions. The center will provide a scientific basis for developing resilience metrics and 

decision-making tools and for evaluating cascading effects that arise in interconnected physical 

and social infrastructures. The Center for Statistics and Applications in Forensic Evidence will 

support NIST's efforts to strengthen forensic science through the development and delivery of 

improved measurement and analysis technologies and the development of best practices and 

standardized methodologies to improve evidence interpretation and reporting. The Center will 

evaluate and solidify the statistical foundation for fingerprint, firearm, toolmark, and other 

pattern evidence analyses and for multimedia evidence analyses. The center will also develop 

and implement an education and training program to allow investigators, lawyers, and judges 

to understand the results of statistical analyses on pattern and digital evidence. These new 

Centers of Excellence join the National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence and the Center for 

Hierarchical Materials and Design.
• Project – Engaging Citizens to Develop a Disaster Resilience Framework 

Natural and man-made disasters cause an estimated $57B in average annual costs, with large 

single events resulting in losses of $100B or more. Recent events, such as the World Trade 

Center disaster, Hurricane Katrina, and Superstorm Sandy, have highlighted a need for current 

practice to consider the functionality and interdependencies of buildings and infrastructure 

systems and the role they play in restoring the fabric of the community following a hazard 

event. 

To address this problem, NIST is leading the development of a community-centric Disaster 

Resilience Framework, which will assess existing standards, codes, and practices, and identify 

gaps that must be addressed in order to bolster community resilience. In 2014 and 2015, NIST 

convened a series of five Disaster Resilience Workshops around the country to engage a broad 

network of stakeholders with multidisciplinary expertise to help develop the Disaster 

Resilience Framework, with a focus on the role that buildings and infrastructure lifelines play 

in ensuring community resilience. The first version of the Community Resilience Planning 

Guide for Buildings and Infrastructure Systems was released in October 2015.

• Project – NIST Reference Data Challenge 

NIST launched its first app challenge in 2015, intending to spur the development of new ways 

to use standard reference data (SRD) on mobile devices. SRD are scientific and technical 

databases that cover a broad range of chemical substances and properties and are used in many 

scientific disciplines. Six machine-readable SRD products were available to developers, and 

the challenge garnered 25 entries. Judges rated submissions based on four criteria: the 

potential impact of the app to help students and other technical experts use NIST SRD; 

creativity and innovation; implementation criteria such as user engagement and how well it 

worked; and whether or not the app used at least one NIST dataset. Prizes totaling $45,000 

were awarded to three developers in November 2015; two honorable mentions were also 

awarded.

• Project – Improving Access to Publications by NIST Authors

NIST has partnered with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to utilize the existing PubMed 

Central (PMC) repository system to provide public access to full-text peer-reviewed scholarly 

publications and associated data for NIST, leveraging the well-established search, archival, and 

dissemination features of PMC. NIST staff began depositing papers in 2015. NIST has plans 

to acquire a web-based manuscript submission and peer-review workflow solution that enables 

geographically dispersed stakeholders, including both NIST employees and non-NIST 

collaborators, to electronically submit, edit, and search bibliographical information and view 

progress tracking information during internal review of manuscripts.

NIST is also working with the Internet Archive, under an arrangement with the Library of 

Congress, to digitize the hundreds of technical reports it has published in the last 110 years, 

with the goal that the entire legacy collection of NBS/NIST Technical Series publications will 
be available to the public through the Government Publishing Office’s Federal Digital System. 

Some of these technical publications were targeted to very specific audiences, but many are 

about topics of interest to a broader audience. 

• Project – Global Cities Team Challenge 

The 2016 Global City Teams Challenge (GCTC 2016) brings together communities with shared 

smart city goals and teams them with innovators from industry and academia to apply Internet 

of Things and Big Data concepts in making cities measurably more sustainable, resilient, 

livable, and workable. GCTC identifies standards and measurements to guide technology 

innovators in creating solutions that can work anywhere and lay the groundwork for a future of 

smarter cities. For GCTC 2016, a mid-course Tech Jam will be held March 2016 in 

Washington, leading to the capstone event in June in Austin, Texas where city teams will 

demonstrate smart solutions that reduce traffic congestion, lower energy costs, enable ageing in 

place, and more. GCTC 2016 will include training opportunities for cities interested in using 

Commerce data, including the Census Bureau’s CitySDK. 

• Project – Modernization of Standard Reference Data

For more than 50 years, NIST has been making standard reference databases available for a 

broad range of chemical and physical properties for use in many scientific disciplines including 

biology, chemistry, engineering, forensics, materials science, and physics. Customer 

expectations for a ‘useable’ data product have changed as technology has evolved. Most of 

the 100 databases are currently available as searchable tables. We are modernizing the look 

and feel of these databases and incorporating APIs to make the databases easier to use and to 

allow access to the data through code rather than requiring users to perform multiple manual 

searches. 

• Project – Materials Data Curation System

The Materials Genome Initiative (MGI), launched by President Obama in 2011, aims to 

dramatically increase the speed businesses can discover, develop, and deploy new materials, 

by capitalizing on breakthroughs in materials modeling, theory, and data mining. The MGI 

approach is expected to decrease cost and time-to-market by 50%. The NIST Materials Data 

Curation System (MDCS), an infrastructural platform developed to support the MGI, provides 

a means for capturing and transforming this materials data into a structured format that is 

XML-based and amenable to transformation to other formats so that the data can be shared 

across academia, the government, and industry. The MDCS will be beta-tested in September 

2016.

• Project – Head Health Challenge III – Advanced Materials for Impact Mitigation 

NIST joined with the National Football League (NFL), GE, and Under Armour to launch Head 

Health Challenge III, an open innovation competition to support the discovery, design, and 

development of advanced materials that better absorb or dissipate impact energy. These new 

materials have the potential to improve the performance of protective gear and equipment for 
athletes, members of the military, and others. The challenge was part of the $60 million Head 

Health Initiative, a multiyear collaboration between GE and the NFL launched in March 2013. 

Entries were judged by leading experts in the field of materials science who selected five 

winners to receive a $250,000 award each to advance their work in developing technologies 

that can help prevent mild traumatic brain injury. One grand prize winner will be selected from 

the five and will receive an additional $500,000 to further develop their innovation. The five 

winners were announced in December 2015; the grand prize winner will be announced in 

January 2017.