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Daily
Briefing
February
13, 2004
Budget cuts curtail NIST
cybersecurity work, other programs
By
Teri Rucker, National Journal's Technology Daily
The
National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) will have to curtail its
work on cybersecurity, terminate all its work with a
law designed to improve the elections process and go to month-to-month funding
for manufacturing programs because of its $22 million budget cut in fiscal
2004, according to the agency's acting chief of staff.
"Labs
are really impacted by the most recent appropriation," NIST's
Mat Heyman said.
The
list of cuts is long, but cybersecurity efforts will
be reduced "substantially," he said, noting that NIST researchers do
a lot of work to ensure that control systems that manage power plants,
water-supply systems and utilities are safe from cyber attack.
"You
would think that would be something we wouldn't want to cut back," Heyman said.
The
$22 million shortfall also took a toll on NIST's
other information technology work, such as helping other agencies with their IT
issues. And it will cause the agency to issue fewer grants to universities and
nonprofit groups that do research on microelectronics, material science and
fire protection, among other things, he noted.
"We
have terminated all our activities under the Help America Vote Act for lack of
funding," Heyman said. Under that law, NIST had
a prominent role in helping state and local election officials implement new
voting systems. The law was implemented to improve the voting system after the
recount confusion in the 2000 presidential election.
Changes
also will have to be made to the way the Manufacturing Extension Partnership
(MEP) is run, he said. Congress allocated less than $39 million for the program
in fiscal 2004, down from the nearly $107 million it received in fiscal 2003.
To
compensate for that two-thirds cut, the MEP headquarters staff will be cut in
half and cease to produce new materials and tools to help manufacturers, Heyman said. The MEP centers around the country, which
receive one-third of their funding from NIST, also will be put on
month-to-month renewals rather than annual renewals.
The
Commerce Department proposed reopening the contracts for the manufacturing
centers to competition, a function that will have to be performed by the
reduced headquarters staff.
The
House Science Committee is concerned about the cuts and is looking for ways to
mitigate them.
"We
have to reverse the bad decisions on NIST that this Congress ratified in the
omnibus spending bill and move forward," committee Chairman Sherwood
Boehlert, R-N.Y., said at a hearing on the budget this week. "I'd like to
see the Advanced Technology Program [ATP] and the Manufacturing Extension
Program ... be part of that moving forward."
There
is some good news in the $422 million budget request for NIST, which would be
$85 million more than the fiscal 2004 allocation, but Rep. Vernon Ehlers, R-Mich., noted that the amount should be considered a bare
minimum.
And
that proposed budget increases might not be all it seems, one House source
said. No money would be allocated to close ATP, a cost estimated at $35 million.
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