SSTI Digest

Only 13 percent of midsize manufacturers reported that the growth of the Internet has had "a great deal of" or "some" impact on their companies over the past two years, according to a survey conducted for Grant Thornton LLP. However, the manufacturers expect that to change in the next two years. The survey found that 50 percent of the manufacturers expected the growth of the Internet to have "a great deal of" or "some" impact on their companies.

The percentage of manufacturers with sites on the World Wide Web has increased significantly in the past year. In October 1996, 25 percent reported that they had a site, while in November 1995, only 14 percent had a site. Most significantly, 59 percent indicated that they either would have or planned to have a site by the end of 1997.

Last Thursday, the Clinton Administration released its detailed budget proposal for FY98. The requested 2% rise in research and development funding reflects the constraints facing discretionary spending programs: the call to balance the budget while costs for entitlement programs and debt service are growing.

The FY98 budget proposal, which totals $1.69 trillion, calls for increasing spending on R&D to roughly $75.5 billion, up $1.6 billion from FY97.

The following is an overview of the Clinton Administration's proposed spending for programs of interest to the science and technology community.

Department of Commerce

An agreement between the White House and the National Governors' Association (NGA) to establish a new mechanism, the U.S. Innovation Partnership, for coordinating federal and state technology efforts was announced by Vice President Gore and NGA's Lead Governors on Technology John G. Rowland, (R-CT), and Parris N. Glendening, (D-MD), earlier this week.

"Building on the work of the State-Federal Technology Partnership Task Force led by former Governors Richard Celeste and Richard Thornburgh, I am committed to working with our nation's governors to establish a U.S. Innovation Partnership. This partnership will

A State-Federal Technology Executive (SFTE) to serve in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) is being sought. The SFTE, sponsored by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), is a one year old initiative designed to encourage broad-scale science and technology cooperation between the states and the federal government. The SFTE will have responsibility for facilitating state-federal collaborative efforts via the newly formed United States Innovation Partnership (consisting of the National Governors' Association, OSTP and the Dept. of Commerce).

With the announcement of a new partnership between the states and the White House on science and technology issues, the position could have significant impact in shaping the partnership.

The National Center for Research Resources (NCRR) of the National Institutes of Health is seeking input as it updates its 1994 strategic plan, NCRR: A Catalyst for Discovery.

The plan is designed to anticipate, meet, and set priorities for the biomedical research community's critical resource and technology needs. The center is requesting comments to help it identify barriers to research progress and define future needs for shared research resources and technologies.

Specific questions NCRR is interested in receiving input on include:

Calls for an end to "corporate welfare" increased this week with an unusual coalition unveiling a list of targeted programs and nine senators calling for a commission to review federal subsidies to companies.

A coalition of liberal and conservative organizations has agreed to a list of twelve federal programs, including three technology-related programs, that should be terminated or modified because they are "corporate welfare."

Members of the Stop Corporate Welfare Coalition include the National Taxpayers Union, Friends of the Earth, and Ralph Nader's Public Citizen. The Coalition has worked with Rep. John Kasich (R-OH), chairman of the House Budget Committee, to identify target programs.

The final appropriation for federal science and technology (FS&T) for FY 1997 is $43.4 billion, a slight increase (0.7 percent) over the FY 1996 appropriation, according to a new report by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS).

The budget is 5.0 percent less than it was in FY 1994, and would be 9.7 percent less than in FY 1994 if the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) was not included. Overall, only two of ten major science and technology agencies and departments, the National Science Foundation and HHS, have more FS&T funding in FY 1997 than they had in FY 1994.

NAS considers that "part of the federal R&D budget that is devoted each year to expanding fundamental knowledge and creating new technologies" as the FS&T budget. It does not include, for example, the part of federal R&D devoted to the production engineering, testing and evaluation, and upgrading of large weapons and related systems.

Women and minorities continue to take fewer high-level mathematics and science courses in high school; earn fewer bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees in science and engineering (S&E); and remain less likely to be employed in S&E jobs than white males.

Those are the conclusions of a new government report, Women, Minorities and Persons With Disabilities in Science and Engineering 1996. The National Science Foundation (NSF) report reveals progress as well as signs of continued underrepresentation. Among the report's findings:

The new Guide to NIST, a one-stop information resource on the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), is now available. The 164-page volume describes hundreds of different research projects, grants, industry outreach programs, services and facilities. The publication updates a 1993 edition. Requests for the guide can be faxed to 301/926-1630. An electronic version will be available online later this year on the NIST home page at http://www.nist.gov