98

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

The Evidence Act

Public Law 115-435, Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act of 2018 (The 

Evidence Act), requires that federal agencies make strategic data assets accessible to the public 

in machine-readable formats and discoverable through a single, government-wide catalog. The 

Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) had previously identified research data as a 

high-value federal asset, and NIST’s efforts to make data public began with research data, as 

discussed below. NIST generates and collects other mission-related data assets that may 

already be publicly available (see, for example, https://www.nist.gov/tpo), but which are not 

currently catalogued for discovery through https://data.gov. These assets will be inventoried 

and, if not already publicly available, will be prioritized by NIST’s Chief Data Officer for 

release.

Public Access to the Results of Federally Funded Research1

NIST developed a Public Access Plan in response to a February 22, 2013 memorandum from 

the Executive Office of the President on increasing access to the results of federally funded 

scientific research. The Plan was approved by the Office of Science and Technology Policy 

(OSTP) and the OMB in December 2014. NIST staff are required to provide public access to 

the results of federally funded research under a set of NIST directives that went into effect in 

1 Certain commercial products are identified here, but such identification is not intended to imply recommendation or 

endorsement by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, nor is it intended to imply that the products are 

necessarily the best available for the purpose.
99

2015. Language requiring provision of public access to scientific research results is included 

in agreements for research supported by NIST through grants, contracts, cooperative 

agreements, or other awards, including research conducted at joint institutes and federally 

funded research and development centers, as they come up for renewal. The plan and public 

comments are available as NISTIR 8084. NIST’s Public Access Policy, which was derived 

from the plan, is available at https://www.nist.gov/open.

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

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

publications authored by NIST staff, leveraging the well-established search, archival, and 

dissemination features of PMC. NIST Technical Series publications are available through the 

Government Publishing Office’s (GPO’s) govinfo. NIST also has a participation agreement 

with CHORUS, facilitating access to published papers.

To allow researchers to make data public, NIST has developed an infrastructure through which 

researchers’ data management plans (DMPs) can be linked to records in NIST’s Enterprise 

Data Inventory (EDI). The EDI allows researchers to upload datasets to a secure repository in 

the cloud, assign digital object identifiers (DOIs), and obtain the necessary review and approval 

prior to release of information to the public. Information about available data is sent through 

the Department to https://data.gov. NIST research data is accessible through links on data.gov

and through a portal on NIST’s website at https://data.nist.gov. Software produced by NIST 

for research purposes is also discoverable through this portal. Software may be located, for 

example, in NIST’s GitHub repository at https://github.com/usnistgov or on the NIST website.

Membership in CrossRef, DataCite, and ORCiD allows NIST to mint DOIs for authors, NIST 

Technical Series publications, and datasets, taking advantage of the evolving ecosystem of 

persistent identifiers that can link funders, authors, and research products.

Recognizing the importance of collaboration for scientific research efforts, NIST’s CIO has 

authorized the use of several collaboration tools for sharing information with internal and 

external colleagues. Via an internal website, staff now have access to lists of tools that are 

available and tools that are in the assessment and authorization process, making the assessment 

and authorization process more transparent.

Improved Access to Archival Materials

NIST, formerly the National Bureau of Standards (NBS), has worked with The Internet Archive

under an arrangement with the Library of Congress to digitize nearly 25,000 technical reports 

the agency has published over the last 100+ years. As the publications are digitized, they are 

made accessible to the public through appropriate sources:

x GPO govinfo, https://www.govinfo.gov/collection/nist
100

x WorldCat, https://www.worldcat.org/

x The Internet Archive, https://archive.org/details/NISTresearchlibrary

x Internet search engines.

Photographs and other materials portraying NBS/NIST history are made available to the public 

through the NIST Digital Archives, https://www.nist.gov/digitalarchives. Information about 

and images of the scientific instruments and other artifacts in the NIST Museum collections 

are also accessible to the public through this site. 

Configurable Data Curation System

The NIST Configurable Data Curation System (CDCS), a platform developed to support the 

Materials Genome Initiative discussed below, provides a means for capturing and transforming 

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 

platform was developed for materials data (Materials Data Curation System, MDCS), but is 

now also deployed as the NIST Materials Resource Registry (NMRR) as well as the 

International Metrology Resource Registry (IMRR), a tool for National Metrology Institutes 

and the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM) to provide federated discovery 

and access to the world’s knowledge about the science of making measurements.

Proactive Disclosure

To the extent feasible and consistent with law, agency mission, resource constraints, U.S. national, 

homeland, and economic security, NIST promotes the availability of results of federally funded 

research in publicly accessible repositories.

NIST has begun an initiative to make NIST directives of significant public interest available on 

our website.

Privacy

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

privacy program is described at https://www.nist.gov/privacy, and Privacy Impact Assessments 

are available at http://www.osec.doc.gov/opog/privacy/NIST-pias.html.

Whistleblower Protection

The NIST follows departmental guidance from the Office of Inspector General. 

Websites
101

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

implemented Drupal, an open-source CMS, in which 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 240,000 

subscribers who receive information on approximately 108 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. 

NIST has created sites on YouTube (more than 15,000 subscribers, more than 3 million video 

views), Facebook (more than 72,000 followers), Twitter (more than 59,600 followers), LinkedIn 

(more than 48,700 followers), and Instagram (more than 2,300 followers). 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.

Open Innovation Methods 

NIST uses prizes and challenges to stimulate engagement to solve ambitious problems in support 

of the NIST mission. Many long-standing NIST programs have created challenges by leveraging 

NIST authorities (e.g., the NIST Organic Act and Federal Information Security Management Act) 

to bring people together to advance research by providing an evaluation infrastructure; others have 

a winner who receives public recognition. Examples of recent and ongoing challenges include: 

Global City Teams Challenge

NIST Transactive Energy Challenge

Text Retrieval Conference (TREC).

NIST prize competitions, involving the award of cash prizes to winners under Prize Competition 

Authority (15 U.S.C. 3719, as amended), are managed through NIST’s Program Coordination 

Office. Prize competitions are announced on challenge.gov and program websites. Prize 

competitions completed or in progress include:

2017 Reusable Abstractions of Manufacturing Processes (RAMP) Challenge

2018 Reusable Abstractions of Manufacturing Processes (RAMP) Challenge

Agile Robotics for Industrial Automation Competition (ARIAC)

Federal Impact Assessment Challenge

NIST the Future of Public Safety Technology 100K Video Series Challenge
102

NIST Virtual Public Safety Test Environment Challenge

PerfLoc: Performance Evaluation of Smartphone Indoor Localization Apps

The Unmanned Aerial Systems Flight and Payload Challenge

Virtual Reality Heads-Up-Display Navigation Challenge

The Unlinkable Data Challenge - Advancing Methods in Differential Privacy

Differential Privacy Synthetic Data Challenge

Expanding the SIM Card Use for Public Safety Challenge

Haptic Interfaces for Public Safety Challenge

Tech to Protect Challenge

First Responder UAS Endurance Challenge

Automated Streams Analysis for Public Safety (ASAPS) Prize Challenge

CHARIoT Challenge – Advancing First Responder Communications

Access to Scientific Data and Publications

NIST provides public access to scientific data through https://data.gov as well as a data portal on 

NIST’s website, https://data.nist.gov. Publications are available within 12 months of publication 

through the National Institutes of Health’s PubMed Central at 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/funder/nist/ and through the Government Publishing Office’s 

govinfo at https://www.govinfo.gov/collection/nist.

Open Source Software

Most programming code written at NIST is developed as part of our research programs and is 

developed to address specific and unique mission-related research problems. NIST openly shares

this software through public Github repositories for potential re-use by our stakeholders, including 

other researchers, and so that our research processes are fully open and transparent. NIST’s Open 

Source Code directive is available from https://www.nist.gov/open.

Spending Information
103

NIST spending information is available at https://www.nist.gov/about-nist/ourorganization/budget-planning and is embedded in Department of Commerce information on 

USAspending.gov.

Transparency

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

media. Information from and about NIST is available on analytics.usa.gov, cfda.gov, 

challenge.gov, data.gov, grants.gov, ITdashboard.gov, labs.data.gov/dashboard, usa.gov, 

USAspending.gov as well as on the NIST website and social media, and in news releases, 

publications, and reports. In some cases, NIST information is embedded in Department of 

Commerce information.

NIST follows 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 peer-reviewed 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

mentoring and in-person training of NIST employees. 

NIST provides a dedicated referral service for phone and email public inquiries 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 service concerns they may have. The NIST 

website “Contact Us” page includes several different ways for the public to obtain help with many 

different types of inquiries. The Public Affairs Office strives to answer general NIST inquiries 

within 48 hours.

Public Notice

The 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’s 

records management directives are clear and concise, conveying records management 

requirements and responsibilities to all NIST staff.

Freedom of Information Act Requests
104

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. 

Congressional Requests

NIST follows Department of Commerce guidance from the Office of Legislative and 

Intergovernmental Affairs. 

Declassification

NIST follows Department of Commerce guidance from the Office of the Secretary.

Participation

NIST has a rich history of connecting our technological advances to the American economy 

through interactions with stakeholders and the public, some of which are described in an annual 

report on technology transfer. Technology transfer plays an important role in the Department of 

Commerce’s mission to promote job creation, economic growth, sustainable development, and 

improved standards of living for all Americans. NIST works in partnership with academia, 

businesses, state and local governments, other federal agencies, and communities to promote 

innovation and improve the nation’s overall competitiveness in the global economy. 

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

challenges, NIST has reached out to stakeholder communities to convene workshops at key 

locations around the country, organize diverse stakeholder groups, and establish consensusဨ

developing organizations. This strategy has been used successfully for developing standards 

frameworks for the smart grid sector, critical infrastructure cybersecurity, disaster resilience, and 

forensic standards. 

Framework for Improving Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity

Starting in 2013, NIST 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 Requests for Information and public workshops. NIST also 

facilitated working sessions on specific technical areas that have been used to enhance the 
105

Framework. On April 16, 2018, NIST published the final Version 1.1 of the Framework for 

Improving Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity (Framework). Among other refinements and 

enhancements, the document provides a more comprehensive treatment of identity 

management and additional description of how to manage supply chain cybersecurity. 

Additional details about Version 1.1 are available in the NIST Fact Sheet.

Privacy Engineering

The NIST Privacy Engineering Program (PEP) supports the development of trustworthy 

information systems by applying measurement science and system engineering principles to 

the creation of frameworks, risk models, guidance, tools, and standards that protect privacy 

and, by extension, civil liberties. In January 2017, the PEP reached a major milestone in 

advancing the development of privacy engineering and risk management processes with the 

finalization of NISTIR 8062, An Introduction to Privacy Engineering and Risk Management 

in Federal Systems. NISTIR 8062 introduces the concept of applying systems engineering 

practices to privacy and provides a new model for conducting privacy risk assessments on 

federal systems. To develop NISTIR 8062 and understand the activities and concepts required 

for effective privacy engineering, the PEP sought the perspectives and experiences of privacy 

experts across a variety of sectors in an open and transparent process, including hosting 

workshops, soliciting public comments, and engaging stakeholders in outreach activities in a 

broad range of settings.

To help organizations meet the challenge of designing, operating, and using technologies in 

ways that are mindful of diverse privacy needs in an increasingly connected and complex 

environment NIST led a public-private partnership to develop a Privacy Framework. The 

Framework was the result of a robust, transparent, consensus-based collaboration with private 

and public sector stakeholders that began in September 2018. To develop this tool, NIST 

released iterative drafts of the Framework and collected feedback through three (3) public 

workshops, a request for information, a request for comment, five (5) webinars, and many 

direct interactions with stakeholders. NIST published Version 1.0 of the Privacy Framework 

on January 16, 2020. 

The NIST Privacy Framework was rolled out at a public event at the Center for Strategic and 

International Studies on February 19, 2020. The Privacy Framework is a voluntary tool 

intended to help organizations identify and manage privacy risk to build innovative products 

and services while protecting individuals’ privacy. The Privacy Framework approach to 

privacy risk is to consider privacy events as potential problems individuals could experience 

arising from system, product, or service operations with data, whether in digital or non-digital 

form, through a complete lifecycle from data collection through disposal.

Artificial Intelligence (AI)
106

NIST has been working with the AI community to identify the technical requirements needed 

to cultivate trust that AI systems are accurate and reliable, safe and secure, explainable, and 

free from bias. This is important to build trust in AI technologies and to promote the adoption 

of new AI technologies.

The Plan for Federal Engagement in AI Technical Standards that NIST released in August 

2019 (drafted pursuant to the EO on Maintaining American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence) is 

the product of significant input from other federal agencies and the public. The plan 

recommends that the federal government “commit to deeper, consistent, long-term 

engagement” in activities to help the United States speed the pace of reliable, robust, and 

trustworthy AI technology development. NIST received comments from more than 40 

organizations in industry, academia, and government on a draft plan released July 2, 2019.

The report lists existing IT standards applicable to AI, and ongoing activities regarding AI 

standards and related tools. The plan recommends that the federal government bolster AI 

standards-related knowledge, leadership, and coordination among agencies that develop or 

use AI; promote focused research on the trustworthiness of AI systems; support and expand 

public-private partnerships; and engage with international parties.

Organization for Scientific Area Committees

The Organization of Scientific Committees for Forensic Science (OSAC) is an initiative by the 

National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) 

focused on strengthening forensic science in the United States. OSAC provides technical 

leadership to facilitate the development and promulgation of consensus-based documentary 

standards and guidelines for forensic science that are fit-for-purpose and based on sound 

scientific principles. OSAC is uniquely qualified to undertake this mission because of the deep 

and varied expertise of its members. OSAC consists of more than 560 members and 260 

affiliates representing key stakeholder groups, including practitioners, laboratory managers, 

academic researchers, metrologists, statisticians, human factors experts, accreditation and 

standards development experts, attorneys, and judges. This diverse group represents federal, 

state, and local agencies, academic institutions, and private sector entities from all 50 states 

and more than a dozen nations. 

OSAC continues to make steady progress toward its goal of achieving technically sound, 

consensus-based standards and guidelines. OSAC committees are working on hundreds of 

discipline-specific and interdisciplinary forensic science standards projects, have posted 

hundreds of discipline-specific baseline documents to the OSAC website, and have recently 

identified 92 research and development needs.

Community Resilience Planning Guide
107

NIST’s Community Resilience Planning Guide for Buildings and Infrastructure Systems

provides a practical and flexible approach to help all communities improve their resilience by 

setting priorities and allocating resources to manage risks for their prevailing hazards. Using 

the Guide can help communities to integrate consistent resilience goals into their 

comprehensive, economic development, zoning, mitigation, and other local planning 

activities that impact buildings, public utilities, and other infrastructure systems. The Guide 

was released in late 2015 and is being supplemented by Guide Briefs with more information 

on supporting methods and best practices. 

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, and transport. 

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 (5) subgroups that have 

developed the NIST Big Data Interoperability Framework (NBDIF). The goal is to create 

vendor-neutral, technology- and infrastructure-agnostic systems to enable data scientists to 

perform analytics processing for their given data sources without worrying about the 

underlying computing environment. The NBDIF has been released in three (3) versions, which 

correspond to the three (3) stages of the NBD-PWG work with respect to the NIST Big Data 

Reference Architecture (NBDRA). In Stage 1, we identified the high-level NBDRA key 

components (seven (7) volumes were published on September 16, 2015). In Stage 2, NIST

created the general interfaces between the NBDRA components and enhanced Version 1 

content (two (2) new volumes added). For Stage 3, the aim was to validate the NBDRA by 

building Big Data general applications through the general interfaces. The final version of the 

nine (9) -volume NBDIF was published in October 2019 by more than 80 contributors from 

more than 70 organizations. 

NBD-PWG is exploring the level of interest from industry, government, and academia in 

extending the NBDIF for packaging scalable analytics as services to meet the challenges of so 

much information. These services would be reusable, deployable, and operational for Big Data, 

High-Performance Computing, and AI machine learning (ML) and deep learning (DL) 

applications, regardless of the underlying computing environment. 

All NBDIF documents are available at https://bigdatawg.nist.gov/.
108

Education

NIST has several partnerships and programs related to science, technology, engineering, and 

mathematics (STEM) education and workforce and business development. NIST welcomes 

postdoctoral associates identified through a competitive program administered by the National 

Research Council as well as students participating in the Graduate Student Measurement 

Science and Engineering Fellowship Program, the Summer Undergraduate Research 

Fellowship (SURF) Program, and the Summer High School Internship Program (SHIP). 

Additionally, the Professional Research Experience Program (PREP) provides lab experience 

to undergraduate, graduate, and post-graduate students, and the NIST Summer Institute for 

Middle School Science Teachers provides instruction in cutting-edge research that is 

coordinated with a middle school curriculum.

Under the Standards Services Curricula Development Cooperative Agreement Program,

recipients work with NIST to integrate instruction related to standards and standardization into 

undergraduate and graduate curriculums at U.S. colleges and universities. 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. 

Metrics

Performance related to open government is evaluated through quarterly metrics reported to the 

Department of Commerce on usage of websites; “posts,” “views,” and “tweets” on social 

media; and blog posts. FOIAs that have been closed are reported. Metrics are collected for 

numbers of purchases of calibration services, Standard Reference Data, and Standard 

Reference Materials, and customer satisfaction is evaluated via surveys and customer contacts. 

The numbers of research papers, data, and code published by NIST staff are reported, as are 

the numbers of Cooperative Research and Development Agreements (CRADAs), patents, 

licenses, and research associates, participants, and postdocs. This information is included in 

NIST’s annual report to OMB on technology transfer, required by 15 USC 3710(f) and 

available on line at https://www.nist.gov/tpo/department-commerce.

Collaborations

To meet its mission in the face of rapidly evolving priority areas and a widening stakeholder base, 

NIST is increasingly partnering with academic, industrial, and governmental institutions. National 

priorities require the united efforts of diverse participants, and NIST has the unique convening 

power and technical independence to bring those participants together. Each year, NIST hosts 

about 2,700 associates and facility users who collaborate with its scientists. NIST works with over 
109

1,300 manufacturing specialists around the country to help small and medium-sized manufacturers 

improve and grow. NIST has two user facilities available for both proprietary and non-proprietary 

research. Access to these facilities is generally provided on a first-come, first-served costreimbursable basis. Through a Partnership Intermediary Agreement, NIST and the Maryland 

Technology Development Corporation (TEDCO) work with researchers to turn promising NIST 

technologies and know-how into high-tech businesses.

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. Many are co-sponsored with 

other federal agencies, academic institutions, professional societies, or industry groups. 

Public Safety Communications Research

Since 2002, NIST’s Public Safety Communications Research program (PSCR) has worked to 

drive innovation and advance public safety communication technologies through cutting-edge 

research and development. PSCR works directly with public safety stakeholders and 

extramural researchers to address public safety’s urgent need to access the same broadband 

communications and state-of-the-art technologies that consumers on commercial networks 

now expect. In February 2012, the enactment of the Middle Class Tax Relief and Job Creation 

Act marked an unparalleled push toward next-generation technologies for public safety. The 

legislation contained landmark provisions for the development and build out of the Nationwide 

Public Safety Broadband Network (NPSBN), a dedicated, interoperable network for 

emergency responders. The Public Safety Trust Fund (PSTF) was established to support the 

design and implementation of the Network. The Act charged NIST with utilizing up to $300 

million of PSTF allocations to establish an R&D program to support the development and 

deployment of NPSBN. PSCR established the Innovation Accelerator Program to drive R&D 

and transform public safety communications capabilities. PSCR relies on its collaboration 

with public safety practitioners, fire, police, and EMS, industry, academia, and local, state, and 

federal agencies to guide R&D initiatives. PSCR works to continuously engage these 

communities and regularly communicate R&D progress and results through outreach events, 

conferences, reports, and an online newsletter.

In 2013, PSCR initiated an R&D planning process to determine which technology investments 

were of highest priority to first responders. Over the course of three (3) days, 150 public safety 

stakeholders convened to discuss new technology capabilities, feasibility, uniqueness, cost of 

investment, cost of ownership, and impact. The result was technology roadmaps, which 

informed the research/technology areas PSCR would pursue; these areas became the research 

portfolios which comprise PSCR’s division structure. To further socialize and validate the 

R&D Roadmaps with stakeholders, PSCR held Summits; these events and the resulting reports 

have informed PSCR research initiatives and provided crucial traceability back to public safety 

requirements and industry analysis.
110

National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence

NIST’s National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence (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, 

manufacturing, public safety, 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, internet of things, data integrity, and secure 

email.

National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education

Employers are struggling to find workers who have cybersecurity-related skills. The National 

Initiative for Cybersecurity Education (NICE) is a partnership between government, academia, 

and the private sector focused on cybersecurity education, training, and workforce 

development.

On November 13, 2017, the First Annual National Cybersecurity Career Awareness Week

began with a kick-off event at the National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence. The event 

featured experts who spoke about how the cybersecurity community can effectively reach and 

encourage more students to consider a future career in cybersecurity, how career development 

strategies can be utilized for college graduates seeking to land their first cybersecurity 

positions, and how current workers can transition into this exciting field. The National 

Cybersecurity Career Awareness Week Cybersecurity Challenge was also launched to ignite 

interest in cybersecurity careers by enabling participants to test drive cybersecurity careers 

with a free online cybersecurity career exploration platform.

NICE, Burning Glass Technologies, and the Computing Technology Industry Association have 

developed an interactive map, CyberSeek. Cybersecurity talent gaps exist across the country.

Closing these gaps requires detailed knowledge of the cybersecurity workforce in each region.

CyberSeek is an interactive heat map that provides a snapshot of supply and demand data for 

cybersecurity jobs at the state and metropolitan area levels, and career pathways for 

cybersecurity positions. CyberSeek can be used by students, educators, career counselors, and 

employers looking to identify or develop skills needed in cybersecurity careers.
111

Centers of Excellence

NIST has also created Centers of Excellence to provide an interdisciplinary environment where 

researchers from NIST, academia, and industry 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 multi-sector 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 focuses on tools to 

support community disaster resilience. The center works on developing integrated, systemsbased computational models to assess community infrastructure resilience and guide 

community-level resilience investment decisions. The center also provides 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 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 (4)

universities led by Iowa State University, the Forensic Science Center of Excellence evaluates

and solidifies the statistical foundation for fingerprint, firearm, toolmark, and other pattern 

evidence analyses, and for multimedia evidence analyses. The center also develops and 

implements 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.

Materials Genome Initiative

The Materials Genome Initiative (MGI) is a multi-agency initiative designed to create new 

policy, resources, and infrastructure to support U.S. institutions in the effort to discover, 

manufacture, and deploy advanced materials twice as fast, at a fraction of the cost. It can take 

20 or more years to move a material after initial discovery to market because the discovery and 

optimization of new materials for innovative products is a time-consuming and laborious 

process, but computational design of materials has emerged as a powerful new tool for 

materials discovery and optimization. Major efforts in both theory and experiment are needed 

to provide the data that underlies successful modeling. Given its 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 
112

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

metrologies, and capabilities necessary for accelerated materials development. 

Quantum Economic Development Consortium (QED-C)

The Quantum Economic Development Consortium (QED-C) aims to expand U.S. leadership 

in global quantum research and development and the emerging quantum industry in computing, 

communications, and sensing. Quantum technologies take advantage of the unusual rules that 

govern the behavior of the fundamental building blocks of matter, including electrons, protons, 

neutrons, and photons. With funding from both the government and private-sector member 

organizations, the QED-C will determine workforce needs essential to the development of 

quantum technologies; provide efficient public-private sector coordination; identify 

technology solutions for filling gaps in research or infrastructure; highlight use cases and grand 

challenges to accelerate development efforts; and foster sharing of intellectual property, 

efficient supply chains, technology forecasting, and quantum literacy.

Partnership Facilities

In addition to the Centers of Excellence above, NIST collaborates in partnership facilities with 

academic institutions and other federal agencies.

Brookhaven National Laboratory

Brookhaven National Laboratory is a multipurpose research institution located on Long Island, 

New York. In partnership with Brookhaven, NIST develops and disseminates synchrotron 

measurement science and technology needed by U.S. industry to measure nanoscale electronic, 

chemical, and spatial structure of advanced materials.

Hollings Marine Laboratory

The Hollings Marine Laboratory (HML) is a joint research facility among NOAA’s National 

Ocean Service, the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources, the College of 

Charleston, the Medical University of South Carolina, and NIST, with a mission to provide 

science and biotechnology applications to sustain, protect, and restore coastal ecosystems, with 

emphasis on links between environmental conditions and the health of marine organisms and 

humans.

Institute for Bioscience and Biotechnology Research

The Institute for Bioscience and Biotechnology Research (IBBR) exists to foster integrated, 

cross-disciplinary team approaches to scientific discovery, translational development and 

education, and to create commercialization relationships and initiatives that serve the 
113

expanding economic base of biosciences and technology in the state of Maryland and across 

the country.

Joint Center for Quantum Information and Computer Science

The Quantum Information and Computer Science (QuICS) is a partnership between the 

University of Maryland and NIST to advance research and education in quantum computer 

science and quantum information theory.

Joint Initiative for Metrology in Biology

The Joint Initiative for Metrology in Biology (JIMB) was established in 2014 as a joint 

initiative between Stanford and NIST, providing standards-based research and innovation in 

biometrology. JIMB is now operated by SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in partnership 

with NIST. JIMB's mission is to motivate standards-based measurement innovation to 

facilitate translation of basic science and technology development breakthroughs in genomics 

and synthetic biology

Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics

The Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics (JILA) is a joint physics institute of the 

University of Colorado at Boulder and NIST. (The institute was previously known as the Joint 

Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics, but its current research now spans a wide range of 

physics topic areas).

Joint Quantum Institute

The Joint Quantum Institute (JQI) is a joint institute of the University of Maryland, NIST, and 

the Laboratory for Physical Sciences.

National Advanced Spectrum and Communications Test Network

The National Advanced Spectrum and Communications Test Network (NASTCN) is a

partnership amongst NTIA NOAA, the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National 

Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the Department of Defense, and is 

organizing a national network of federal, academic, and commercial test facilities that will 

provide the testing, modeling, and analyses needed to develop and deploy spectrum-sharing 

facilities.

Advanced Manufacturing National Program Office

NIST provides leadership and coordination across federal agencies with programs in advanced 

manufacturing – including the Departments of Agriculture, Defense, Commerce, Education, 

Energy, Health and Human Services, and Labor, NASA, and NSF – by leading the interagency 
114

Advanced Manufacturing National Program Office (AMNPO). The AMNPO oversees the 

planning, management, and coordination of Manufacturing USA®, which brings together 

public and private investments to improve the competitiveness and productivity of U.S. 

manufacturing through a robust network of manufacturing innovation institutes. Each of the 

14 Manufacturing USA institutes is a public-private partnership focusing on a specific, 

promising advanced manufacturing technology area. 

The institutes advance domestic manufacturing innovation by creating the infrastructure 

needed to allow domestic industry and academia to work together to solve industry-relevant 

manufacturing problems in research and development, technology transition, workforce 

training, and education. Manufacturing USA has garnered significant attention in the 

manufacturing sector; two-thirds of the 1900 member organizations are manufacturers and 

70% of those are small and medium sized enterprises. Members also include Fortune 50 U.S. 

manufacturers and top-ranked research and engineering universities. 

The AMNPO provides information to the public about Manufacturing USA through a variety 

of means – especially through the website, www.ManufacturingUSA.com. The website 

includes news about the institutes, media exposure, announcements of upcoming events,

information about program funding opportunities, videos, an archive of reports and policy 

papers, and guidance about how to engage with the institutes. The AMNPO also releases an 

annual report on the program’s performance and a triennial strategic plan. The AMNPO 

maintains Twitter and LinkedIn accounts to communicate advanced manufacturing news and 

successes about Manufacturing USA to the public. Additionally, the AMNPO maintains the 

Manufacturing.gov website, which contains links to information about U.S. government 

programs that support advanced manufacturing. 

NIST Technology Transfer

NIST regularly works with multiple other organizations through Cooperative Research and 

Development Agreements. These agreements allow NIST to work directly with other parties 

through a public-private partnership to achieve specific scientific outcomes. In addition, NIST 

patents and licenses new technologies developed in our laboratories. NIST regularly organizes 

technology showcase events 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 (1) roof. NIST also hosts “listening sessions” to 

hear from local communities about how federal labs can contribute to economic development.

Information on NIST technologies available for licensing is on data.gov in a machine-readable 

format for other parties to use.

NIST regularly conducts economic assessments on the results of our research programs. NIST 

economic reports and assessments are available on the NIST website at 

https://www.nist.gov/tpo/reports-and-publications. Technology Transfer partnership activities 
115

across Commerce are described in an annual report. A selection of NIST activities with 

impacts in industry is provided at https://www.nist.gov/industry-impacts.

Interagency Technology Transfer

NIST has an interagency leadership role in technology transfer as delegated by the Secretary 

of Commerce. NIST has worked with other agencies to place information on all federal 

laboratory technologies available for licensing and information on available research facilities 

and equipment on data.gov in a machine-readable format for other parties to use.

As part of NIST’s leadership role, a Return on Investment (ROI) Initiative was begun in FY18 

and concluded with the publication of a NIST Green Paper in FY19. Working collaboratively 

with other agencies, NIST received and analyzed information from the private sector, 

universities, and other partners to identify critically needed improvements to federal 

technology transfer efforts. Some findings are now in the process of being implemented 

through the National Science and Technology Council's Lab-to-Market subcommittee, and 

milestones are reported publicly through performance.gov. Our goal is to streamline and 

accelerate the transfer of technology from federal laboratories to promote U.S. economic 

growth and national security through innovative products and services, and new businesses 

and industries.

Small Business Innovation Research

Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) is a highly competitive federal grant program that 

opens opportunities and encourages U.S. owned and controlled small- and mid-sized 

businesses to engage in Research and Development (R&D) with commercialization potential.

Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP)

The MEP Program is a unique, public-private partnership that delivers comprehensive, proven 

solutions to U.S. manufacturers, fueling growth and advancing U.S. manufacturing. The MEP 

Centers in all 50 states and Puerto Rico, which are part of the MEP National NetworkTM, work 

with U.S. manufacturers to develop new products and adopt new technologies. MEP National 

Network services can track with the maturity of a technology as well as help strengthen the 

business side of a company and can play a pivotal role in helping manufacturers move from 

concept to market through services in areas such as product design, manufacturing engineering, 

product concept testing, quality control/management, supplier scouting, and certification. The 

MEP Program serves as a bridge to other organizations and federal research labs that share a 

passion for enhancing the manufacturing community. From MEP’s inception through 

FY 2018, the MEP Program has worked with 102,443 manufacturers, leading to $127.3 billion 

in sales and $20.5 billion in cost savings, and it has helped create and retain more than 
116

1,107,346 jobs. Note: MEP has been proposed for elimination in the FY 2021 President’s

Budget.

NIST Open Government Initiatives

The table below shows a list of initiatives for NIST.

Table 10 - NIST Initiatives

Operating Unit Project Status

Estimated 

Completion

NIST Modernization of Standard Reference Data Ongoing/Continuous

Return on Investment (ROI) Initiative Completed

Improve Website Information Related to Public 

Access 

Completed

Make Directives of Public Interest Available on 

NIST’s Website

In Progress September 2020

TREC-COVID Challenge In Progress TBD

Develop a Portal for NIST-Developed Code In Progress May 2021

Develop a Research Data Management 

Framework (RDaF)

In Progress June 2022

Project – Modernization of Standard Reference Data (SRD) – Ongoing/Continuous

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. NIST is 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. To date, ten of the SRDs have been revamped with improved user interfaces. NIST

also undertook an internal review of the entire SRD portfolio and reclassified and reorganized 

the collection to make clear which datasets fully satisfied the SRD criteria.

Project – Return on Investment (ROI) Initiative – Completed 

Following a Request for Information (RFI) published in the Federal Register and three (3)

public forums, a white paper was published that summarizes public comments and 
117

recommendations. This publication is available free of charge from 

https://doi.org/10.6028/NIST.SP.1234.

Project – Improve Website Information Related to Public Access – Completed 

A webpage at https://www.nist.gov/open directs visitors to content that was initially prescribed 

by OSTP, including NIST’s plans for providing public access to results of our research. In 

addition, it provides information about how to access NIST papers, data, and software, 

performance metrics, licensing and fair use information, and guidance for external recipients 

of NIST funds.

Project – Make Directives of Public Interest Available on NIST’s Website – In Progress

Currently, only the NIST policy and order for providing public access to results of federally 

funded research are publicly available, with the understanding that any directive that may be 

of public interest must be disclosed under the Freedom of Information Act. NIST continues to 

make progress migrating the existing Administrative Manual subchapters to a directives 

system as evidenced by a reduction of 39% since 2018. As work progresses with migration, 

we will make directives available to the public as appropriate.

Project – TREC-COVID Challenge – In Progress

Researchers, clinicians, and policy makers involved with the response to COVID-19 are 

constantly searching for reliable information on the virus and its impact. This presents a unique 

opportunity for the information retrieval (IR) and text processing communities to contribute to 

the response to this pandemic, as well as to study methods for quickly standing up information 

systems for similar future events. The results of the TREC-COVID Challenge will identify 

answers for some of today's questions while building infrastructure to improve tomorrow's 

search systems.

TREC-COVID will follow the TREC model for building IR test collections through 

community evaluations of search systems. The document set to be used in the challenge is 

the COVID-19 Open Research Dataset (CORD-19). This is a collection of biomedical 

literature articles that will be updated weekly. Accordingly, TREC-COVID will consist of a 

series of rounds, with each round using a later version of the document set and a larger set of 

COVID-related topics. Participants in a round will create ranked lists of documents for each 

topic ("runs") and submit their runs to NIST. Based on the collective set of participants' runs, 

NIST will create small sets of documents to be assessed for relevance by human annotators 

with biomedical expertise. The results of the human annotation, known as relevance 

judgments, will then be used to score the submitted runs. After all rounds are complete, the 

final document and topic sets together with the cumulative relevance judgments will comprise 
118

a COVID test collection. The incremental nature of the collection will support research on 

search systems for dynamic environments.

Project – Develop a Portal for NIST-Developed Code – In Progress

The Federal Source Code Policy is designed to support reuse and public access to customdeveloped Federal source code. It requires that source code developed by or for the Federal 

government be made available for sharing and re-use. Most of the code produced by NIST is 

intended for research purposes, and is available via GitHub and in other locations. Using 

repurposed open source code from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, NIST is

currently working to implement the code.nist.gov web portal as a companion site to our data 

portal, https://data.nist.gov. The code portal will export a code.json file for use by code.gov 

and allow users to locate and access NIST’s code products.

Project – Develop a Research Data Management Framework (RDaF) – In Progress

NIST is working with stakeholders to develop a structured approach to data management, 

modeled on the process used to develop NIST’s Cybersecurity Framework, to enable 

organizations to optimize use of their data assets. After a thorough review of current guidance, 

NIST will develop a common language and a basis for coordination across that landscape, 

developing a framework that describes who needs to do what, why, and when in order to make 

their data useful and maximize its value.