ORB Visualization
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National
Knowledge Project
3/15/2004 2:01 PM
Communication from
(identifier removed so as to reflect a general principle rather than to reflect on an individual)
Dr. Prueitt,
I served for more than a decade as the Resource Sponsor for Naval Science and Technology, with the responsibility of establishing requirements for, assessing the technical quality of and justifying to Congress the need for more than $2B/year, including all of ONR's funding.
Federal funding support for any major S&T initiative requires far more than recognition of a problem or need, but includes crafting of the program response within the constraints of the two-year federal budget process required by Congress.
The appropriation process requires the President's Budget, containing all federal agency requests, to be submitted in January for Congressional approval for the following fiscal year (beginning in October). All federal agencies completed their FY-05 budgets many months ago and are currently planning their FY-06 programs. In fact, the initial lock for most FY-06 federal agency budgets is next month. To began any new effort in FY-05 from this point requires either a dollar-for-dollar funding offset from a program currently in the President's Budget or an FY-05 Congressional plus-up. Given success, the earliest FY-05 plus-up dollars will begin to flow in March or April of 2005.
The Institute for Defense and Homeland Security began full operation as a business, academia and government consortium in July 2003, far too late to be a part of the baseline DOD or DHS FY-05 planning. Our mission is to serve as a bridge between technology and user communities for transition of technology. Although it is not our intent to become a primary funding source for our membership, IDHS has submitted three specific FY-05 Advanced Concept Technology Demonstration proposals (specific technology demonstrations for cellular phone infrastructure, robotics and wildlife syndromic surveillance).
Even if successful, funding would be unlikely to be received in this calendar year.
We are funded currently by Virginia's Center for Innovative Technology, which has no additional funds in FY-04 and may face significant FY-05 funding reductions by the General Assembly.
Given that all major S&T initiatives require broad problem recognition, they require in equal amounts the cultivation of a sponsor base, multi-year crafting of a program plan and budget, long-term Congressional support and persistence. Without each of these in place, even the best initiatives fail. While IDHS and CIT can advise and facilitate, neither has the availability of near term dollars.
Executive Director, IDHS