WHY FOCUS ON INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY?

National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2000. Making IT Better: Expanding
Information Technology Research to Meet Society's Needs. Washington, DC: The National Academies
Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/9829.

Introduction

“May your wildest dreams come true” is an old adage brought to mind by the phenomenal advances in
computing and communications technology and their deployment in a widening array of business,
government, commercial, and social applications. The underlying industrial base for computing and
communications— the information technology (IT) industries—has grown rapidly, creating jobs,
improving the standard of living, and fueling the nation's transition to an information economy. Since
1992, firms that produce computers, semiconductors, software, and communications equipment and
provide computing and communications services have contributed one-third of the nation's economic
growth, and in 1998 they employed 5.2 million workers at wages 85 percent higher than the private-
sector average (U.S. Department of Commerce, 2000). Companies throughout the economy are using IT
to compete in global markets, and IT promises to transform the way people work, play, live, and learn.
The nation's dependence on the vitality of the technology base for IT was underscored in the late 1990s
by such voices as the chairman of the Federal Reserve, the director of the National Science Foundation,
and the President of the United States. This technology base and tomorrow's information economy
depend, in turn, on continued research on IT.

The role of research in driving innovation and social transformations is often difficult to see. The
seemingly endless introduction of new goods and services by entrepreneurs and established
corporations obscures the fundamental science and engineering bases underlying innovation. It

National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2000. Making IT Better: Expanding
Information Technology Research to Meet Society's Needs. Washington, DC: The National Academies
Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/9829.

also creates the appearance of a self-sustaining process. If businesses are growing and new products are
proliferating, why should national leaders be concerned about IT research? This question remains
central to contemporary political debate about federal budgets for IT research, despite recent increases
in funding. The difficulty of explaining and justifying federal IT research spending influenced the
evolution and eventual transformation of the first large federal IT research initiative, the High
Performance Computing and Communications Initiative (HPCCI);1 it enlarged the scope of the
President's Information Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC) and the associated federal proposals
for new and larger research programs, notably the 1999 Information Technology for the Twenty-First
Century (IT2) initiative, and shaped the reports that came out of them;2 and it continues to color the
annual budget debates about the level and distribution of IT research funds.

An enduring lack of understanding of the nature of both IT research and industrial innovation in IT
makes debates about federal programs in this area unusually contentious. Experts from industry and
academia, individually and as participants in groups such as Computer Science and Telecommunications
Board (CSTB) committees, PITAC, and professional organizations, have asserted publicly that both
government and industry are underinvesting in IT research—especially fundamental research. Calls for
increased funding have met with skepticism from those who are critical of the rationale for increased
funding, uncertain about the nature of IT research (which is apparently less comprehensible than, for
example, classical scientific research) and who question why it should be expensive (a concern that
reflects a limited understanding of software research). Unless these criticisms and questions can be
answered, technological progress may be stymied by a lack of needed research funding.

The nation's increasing reliance on IT demands a reexamination of the IT research base. Both the
substance of the research and how it is carried out are at issue. As for substance, the potential is
mounting for problems to arise and for opportunities to be lost as a result of deficiencies in the
technologies already being distributed quickly and widely into the economy. Society is becoming
dependent on information systems that are fragile, and companies striving to be competitive in the
short term sacrifice opportunities for IT innovations that depend on sustained or less-constrained
exploration, raising questions about long-term prospects. Research is needed to address a host of new
problems—many arising as a consequence of interactions among a large and growing number of
individual components—as well as long-standing problems that are becoming more prominent and,
once a technology is in use, more difficult to manage.

Procedurally, the situation challenges the confederation of govern-

National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2000. Making IT Better: Expanding
Information Technology Research to Meet Society's Needs. Washington, DC: The National Academies
Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/9829.