A strategic plan for the future exists Though much is done, much remains to do. The National Science and Technology Council's Committee on Information and Communications, chaired by Anita Jones, who has just testified, last spring produced a Strategic Implementation Plan. The Computing Research Association strongly endorses the CIC Strategic Planning effort and the directions that it has identified. I serve on the 6-person Technical Advisory Board for Microsoft. Over the past five years, Microsoft discovered that in order to create new markets it needed new technologies in areas such as data compression, encryption, networking, 3D computer graphics, operating systems, statistical decision theory, and so forth.
Universities look to the future.
It's important to emphasize that the university research carried out under the HPCC program avoids picking winners and losers. We believe that the authorization should be flexible in its approach, focused on fundamental research in a broad range of strategic areas and allowing adaptation as new research targets of opportunity appear. The research areas described in the CIC Strategic Plan provide an excellent framework. I understand the extraordinary constraints under which this Subcommittee is working. The Federal investment in information technology research, though, has been incredibly small compared to the payoff.