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FY2017 NITRD Program Component Areas (PCAs)

For general information about NITRD PCAs, see the NITRD PCA main page. For more information than is on this page about the FY2017 NITRD PCAs, see the FY2017 NITRD Supplement to the President’s Budget.

FY2017 Changes to the NITRD PCAs

Below are the NITRD program component areas (PCAs) used in the NITRD Program Supplement to the President’s Budget – FY2017. The FY2017 NITRD PCAs differ as follows from pre-FY2017 PCAs:

  • The FY2016 HEC R&D PCA has been updated and renamed to EHCS in FY2017
  • The FY2016 HEC I&A PCA has been updated and renamed to HCSIA in FY2017
  • IM aspects of the FY2016 HCI&IM PCA were moved to the new LSDMA PCA in FY2017
  • Robotics aspects of the FY2016 HCI&IM and HCSS PCAs were moved to the new RIS PCA in FY2017

FY2017 Supplement IWG-to-PCA Mapping

For each annual NITRD Supplement, Agencies “map” their NITRD Program activities coordinated by Interagency Working Groups (IWGs) into Supplement sections and budgets organized by PCAs. Predominant FY2017 mapping by agencies: Graphic | Text.

FY2017 NITRD PCA List

FY2017 NITRD PCA Definitions

CSIA – Cyber Security and Information Assurance

CSIA focuses on research and development to detect, prevent, resist, respond to, and recover from actions that compromise or threaten to compromise the availability, integrity, or confidentiality of computer- and network-based systems. These systems provide the IT foundation in every sector of the economy, including critical infrastructures such as power grids, financial systems, and air-traffic-control networks. These systems also support national defense, homeland security, and other Federal missions. Broad areas of emphasis include Internet and network security; security of information and computer-based systems; approaches to achieving hardware and software security; testing and assessment of computer-based systems security; reconstitution of computer-based systems and data; and resilience against cyber-attacks on computer-based systems that monitor, protect, and control critical infrastructure.
↑ PCA List

EHCS – Enabling R&D for High-Capability Computing Systems

Research and development to enable advancements in high-capability computing systems, spanning the hardware, software, architecture, system performance, computational algorithms, data analytics, development tools, and software methods for extreme data- and compute-intensive workloads; and developing fundamentally new approaches to high-capability computing systems.
↑ PCA List

HCSIA – High-Capability Computing Systems Infrastructure and Applications

High-capability computing systems (HCS) and associated application software, communications, storage, data management, and HCS infrastructure to meet agency mission needs.
↑ PCA List

HCSS – High Confidence Software and Systems

HCSS R&D supports development of scientific foundations and innovative and enabling software and hardware technologies for the engineering, verification and validation, assurance, standardization, and certification of complex, networked, distributed computing systems and cyber-physical (IT-enabled) systems (CPS). The goal is to enable seamless, fully synergistic integration of computational intelligence, communication, control, sensing, actuation, and adaptation with physical devices and information processes to routinely realize high-confidence, optimally performing systems that are essential for effectively operating life-, safety-, security-, and mission-critical applications. These systems must be capable of interacting correctly, safely, and securely with humans and the physical world in changing environments and unforeseen conditions. In many cases, they must be certifiably dependable. The vision is to realize dependable systems that are precise and highly efficient; respond quickly; work in dangerous or inaccessible environments; provide large-scale, distributed coordination; augment human capabilities; and enhance societal quality of life. New science and technology are needed to build these systems with computing, communication, information, and control pervasively embedded at all levels, thus enabling entirely new generations of engineering designs that can enhance U.S. competitiveness across economic and industrial sectors.
↑ PCA List

HCI&IM – Human Computer Interaction and Information Management

Human computer interaction, collaboration, and communication technologies and information management to expand human capabilities, enabled through research on visualization, collaborative systems, multimodal system engagements, and advancements in understanding human cognition, including perception, intuition, learning, cognitive load, and problem solving for human-in-the-loop systems.
↑ PCA List

LSDMA – Large-Scale Data Management and Analysis

Large-scale data management and analysis to develop the ability to analyze and extract knowledge and insight from large, diverse, and disparate sources of data, including structures for data capture, curation, management, and access.
↑ PCA List

LSN – Large Scale Networking

LSN focuses on coordinating Federal agency networking R&D in leading-edge networking technologies, services, and enhanced performance. This includes programs in fundamental networking research and architectures, future Internet architectures, wireless networks, software-defined networks, heterogeneous multimedia networks, testbeds, and end-to-end performance and performance measurement. Program coordination also spans network security, privacy, and identity management; dynamic inter-domain networking; public service networks; the science and engineering of complex networks; network infrastructures for advanced discovery environments; network-enabling technology; networking education, training, and outreach; and cyberinfrastructure for scientific and applications R&D.
↑ PCA List

RIS – Robotics and Intelligent Systems

Robotics and intelligent systems to advance physical and computational agents that complement, augment, enhance, or emulate human physical capabilities or human intelligence. This includes robotics hardware and software design, application, and practical use; machine perception; intelligent cognition, adaptation, and learning; mobility and manipulation; human-robot interaction; distributed and networked robotics; increasingly autonomous systems; and related applications.
↑ PCA List

SDP – Software Design and Productivity

The SDP R&D agenda spans the science and the technology of software creation and sustainment (e.g., development methods and environments, Verification and Validation (V&V) technologies, component technologies, languages, and tools) and software project management in diverse domains. R&D will advance software engineering concepts, methods, techniques, and tools that result in more usable, dependable, cost-effective, evolvable, and sustainable software-intensive systems. The domains cut across information technology, industrial production, evolving areas such as the Internet, and highly complex, interconnected software-intensive systems. The core SDP R&D activities are software productivity, software cost, responsiveness to change, and sustainment. The success of these activities can have a major beneficial effect on high-confidence systems because such systems are critically dependent upon the quality of the software and on the many companies producing software-reliant products.
↑ PCA List

SEW – Social, Economic, and Workforce Implications of IT and IT Workforce Development

Research activities funded under the SEW PCA focus on the co-evolution of IT and social, economic, and workforce systems, including interactions between people and IT and among people developing and using IT in groups, organizations, and larger social networks. Collaborative science concerns are addressed including understanding and improving the effectiveness of teams and enhancing geographically distributed, interdisciplinary R&D to engage societal concerns, such as competitiveness, security, economic development, and wellbeing. Workforce concerns are addressed by leveraging interagency efforts to improve education outcomes through the use of learning technologies that anticipate the educational needs of individuals and society. SEW also supports efforts to speed the transfer of R&D results to the policymaker, practitioner, and IT user communities in all sectors.
↑ PCA List