View Full Text: FY2021-NITRD-Supplement.pdf
Information technology (IT) and its enabling computing, networking, and software technologies have radically transformed human society across the globe over the course of just two generations. American innovators, companies, and government led this transformation. As global competition for leadership in high-performance computing (HPC) began to escalate in the 1980s, U.S. legislators saw the imperative to proactively guide research and development (R&D) of HPC and other IT innovations. In the High-Performance Computing Act of 1991, Congress launched what is now called the Networking and Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD) Program; Congress most recently reauthorized the NITRD Program in the American Innovation and Competitiveness Act of 2017. The Program’s mandate is to coordinate Federal R&D to identify, develop, and transition into use the secure, advanced IT, HPC, networking, and software capabilities needed by the Federal Government, and to foster public-private partnerships that provide world-leading IT capabilities to the Nation. In support of its role in the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC), the NITRD Subcommittee leads the Federal efforts to coordinate high-impact R&D to meet the Nation’s soaring needs in information technologies for the future. It also seeks to build, support, and leverage a diverse, highly skilled American IT workforce and to cultivate vibrant R&D alliances with American academic, private-sector, and nonprofit entities, and with international like-minded bodies. The NITRD Program currently coordinates the IT R&D and technology-transfer activities of 23 Federal member agencies and some 50 other participating agencies.
NITRD Supplement to the President’s FY2021 Budget is a supplement to the President’s FY2021 Budget Request to Congress. This document reports actual investments for FY2019, estimated investments for FY2020, and requested funding levels for FY2021 by agency and Program Component Area (PCA) for all NITRD R&D programs. It also reports specific agency investments for artificial intelligence and advanced wireless communications. Following Congressional mandate, the Supplement also describes key R&D programs and coordination activities planned for FY2021 by the Federal agencies participating in the NITRD Program. An appendix to the Supplement, the FY2021 Federal Cybersecurity R&D Strategic Plan Implementation Roadmap, lists existing and proposed Federal R&D projects and programs that address the Nation’s critical cybersecurity challenges; it is available at https://www.nitrd.gov/pubs/FY2021-Cybersecurity-RD-Roadmap.pdf.