The Office of Management and Budget August 12 updated its guidance on research and development priorities for the 2006 budget.  A five page memo for heads of executive agencies identifies six interagency priorities to receive “special focus”:  (1) homeland security R&D (2) networking and information technology R&D (3) The National Nanotechnology Initiative (4) discover-oriented physical science priorities (5) biology of complex systems and (6) climate, water and hydrogen R&D.

Under the homeland security categories the guidance says “winning the war on terror and securing the homeland” will be top priorities.  Research areas include enhancing prevention, detection and treatment of nuclear, chemical and biological threats;  ensure continued state-of-the-art capability to test and evaluate medical countermeasures; biosurveillance network integrating human, animal, plant and environmental surveillance and laboratory networks; shortfalls in development of new drugs and vaccines against foreign animal disease threats; and pursuing social and behavioral studies to anticipate and counter threats to national security.  In addition, agencies should continue to invest in technologies to enable decontamination following biological, chemical and radiological incidents, detection and protection against high explosives, development of secure infrastructures, advanced techniques for threat and vulnerability analyses.

In the networking and IT fields high priority will be given to high-end computing (supercomputing) and cyber-infrastructure R&D due to their potential for greatest progress to a broad range of scientific and technological applications.  The guidance says agency plans in high-end computing should be consistent with the report of the High-End Computing Revitalization Task Force.  Cyber-infrastructure R&D encompasses research on hardware and software tools aimed at strengthening the connections between new and existing computers, scientific instruments, researchers and facilities.  

Agencies are told to produce (1) clear and concise definitions of program activities (2) an inventory of programs in the baseline budget (3) agency tradeoffs that will provide resources to help produce cross-agency programs greater than individual activities and (4) an interagency implementation plan.  Agencies must “vigorously” evaluate existing programs and where possible consider them for modification, redirection, reduction or termination in keeping with national priorities.  While agencies may propose high priority activities they must identify potential offsets by elimination or reductions in low priority programs.  Go to  "http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/memoranda/index.html "  for a copy of the memo.

{TAG_FORM_TITLE}