Yesterday President Bush signed into law a bipartisan agreement providing supplemental funding for 2008. Most of the funding went toward operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, but Congress and the President agreed to include over $330 million to fund basic research at several Federal agencies. While the final figures are well below what the President originally proposed for 2008, this is still a win for science.

In May, I incorrectly predicted that this legislation was likely headed for a veto over budget politics. This is one of those cases where I’m glad to be wrong. Last year Congress flat funded several key physical science agencies in fiscal year 2008 (FY08) – namely the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the Department of Energy Office of Science. Recognizing that the previous agreement shorted science funding, Congress and the President agreed to boost some of the agencies:

• $62.5 million for Department of Energy’s Office of Science
• $62.5 million for NASA
• $62.5 million for National Science Foundation
• $150 million for National Institutes of Health

Funding for the National Science Foundation is split 70/30 between education and research programs at the Foundation with $40 million going toward the Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program, which “seeks to encourage talented science, technology, engineering, and mathematics majors and professionals to become K-12 mathematics and science teachers” and the balance presumably split among the research directorates.

Notably the National Institute of Standards and Technology did not receive any supplemental funding, which is disappointing.

Congress and the President did a lot of saber rattling over busting the budget and supporting the troops, but in the end they found a good old-fashioned compromise that at least patches some of the FY08 mess. What is heartening is that both parties thought science was enough of a priority to fund it among the many competing priorities clamoring for supplemental funding. Whether that holds in fiscal year 2009 funding fight is another matter entirely.

Representative Markey recently introduced the 21st Century Communications and Accessibility Act, HR 6320. This bill focuses on amending the Communications Act to ensure that new Internet-enabled telephone and video services and equipment are accessible to and usable by people with disabilities and closes existing gaps in telecommunications laws. These services would include captioning or video description service for streaming video, text support for emergency services and ensuring hearing aid compatibility for internet services. Congressman Markey provides a summary of the bill, in addition to the text of the legislation.

This bill is an interesting complement to the recent ACM Policy Statement on Internet Accessibility, which we released earlier this year. In that statement, we recommended the extension of accessibility standards while minimizing regulation, which appears to be a major goal of this bill. We will watch this bill closely as the year progresses.

Last week the Board of Advisors of the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) met over two days to discuss pending and new business. While this meeting (and most meetings of the EAC and its boards) covered many topics, the items having to do with the Voluntary Voting System Guidelines (VVSG) are worth passing along.

The staff at the National Institute of Standards and Technology was asked to investigate several technical questions related to the VVSG. They are:

Alternatives to Software Independence (SI)
Standards for Ballot-on-Demand systems
Impact of VVSG on vote-by-phone
Consequences of separately testing and certifying election system components
Impact of VVSG on early voting and vote centers
Alternatives to goal level requirements in the VVSG (requirements that state a goal but are not easily testable - if testable at all)

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Update June 24 - Health IT hearing added for June 25

June 24
Hearing:
The Investigations and Oversight Subcommittee of the House Science and Technology Committee will hold a hearing on skilled work and globalization. This is the second in a series of hearings that started in May.
1 p.m., 2318 Rayburn Building

June 25
Hearing:
The Subcommittee on the Constitution of the Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on laptop searches of returning Americans.
9 11 a.m., 226 Dirksen Building

Markup:
The Health Subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee will hold a hearing on the PROTECHT Act, which concerns health information technology.
10 a.m., 2123 Rayburn Building
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Update, June 19
June 18 Senate Commerce Committee hearing postponed

June 17
Hearing:
The Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on protecting intellectual property.
10 a.m., 226 Dirksen Building

Meeting:
The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars holds a briefing on science and technology policy in the next generation. RSVP 202-691-4016.
8:30 a.m., 1300 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW

The Board of Advisors for the Election Assistance Commission will meet (continuing June 18).
10 a.m., Hyatt Regency Capitol Hill, 400 New Jersey Avenue, NW.

June 18
Hearing:
The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee will hold a hearing on protecting personal information.
10 a.m., 342 Dirksen Building

June 19
Meeting:
The Election Assistance Commission will hold a public meeting.
1 p.m., 1225 New York Avenue NW, Suite 150.

Update June 10 - Judiciary Subcommittee hearing now scheduled for 10 a.m.

Afternoon hearing added for June 11

June 10
Hearing:
The Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security, and International Law of the House Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on electronic employment verification.
9 10 a.m., 2141 Rayburn Building

June 11
Meeting:
The Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee of the Department of Homeland Security will meet.
9 a.m., Hilton Arlington Hotel, 950 North Stafford Street, Arlington, Virginia

Hearing:
The Consumer Affairs, Insurance and Automotive Safety Subommittee of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee will hold a hearing on spyware.
3 p.m., 253 Russell Building

Last week we started a series of posts highlighting our high-level comments on the the Election Assistance Commission’s Voluntary Voting System Guidelines (VVSG). Our first post focused on the important new concept – Software Independence. Today’s post focuses on a related new concept – the Innovation Class.

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June 4
Hearing:
The Health Subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee will hold a hearing on draft health information technology.
10 a.m., 2123 Rayburn Building

Three weeks ago, USACM filed detailed comments with the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) on its draft of the Voluntary Voting System Guidelines. (Quick Review: These are proposed Federal standards for voting equipment, which are voluntary in nature but some states require manufacturers follow them.) Realizing that many people will not be able to read through our filing, we are excerpting portions of our high-level comments on some of key concepts in the EAC’s draft.

Arguably the most important change from previous standards is that all machines must be “software independent” to be in conformance with the standards. The VVSG defines this concept as follows:

This can be translated as the voting system has to have some system that allows for verification and/or auditing of an election result without relying on the voting machine’s software. USACM strongly supports this requirement and urges the EAC to retain it in the final document:

The concept of software independence may be one of the most controversial proposals in the new standards and is sure to come under fire. How the EAC decides to proceed with it may determine how voting systems will look for the foreseeable future.

Some events highlight the political silliness often infecting Washington better than others. The current fight over the supplemental war funding bill for this fiscal year is one of those occasions. The Washington Times aptly summed up the silliness when it ran the line: “House Passes War Supplemental Without War Funding.” The issue at hand is the high-stakes budget fight between Congress and the President on providing supplemental funding this year for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and, once again, research funding is caught somewhere in the middle.

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May 21
Hearing:
The House Education and Labor Committee will hold a hearing on the recently released National Mathematics Report
10 a.m., 2175 Rayburn Building

May 22
Hearing:
The Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight of the House Science and Technology Committee will hold a hearing on globalization of technology.
10 a.m., 2318 Rayburn Building

We wanted to point out two Issue Briefs available from USACM. The Issue Briefs are intended as short distillations of established USACM policy on various issues. More detailed explanations of USACM positions on these issues can be found in the relevant issue area of our website.

The two new Issue Briefs are on Electronic Employment Verification Systems and REAL ID. We will make additional Issue Briefs available online as they are developed.

CONTENTS

[1] Newsletter Highlights
[2] USACM Chair Testifies on Electronic Employment Verification
[3] USACM Applauds New Voting System Standards
[4] USACM Cautions Against Filtering
[5] Emergency E-Voting Legislation Goes Down In House
[6] Advanced Placement Computer Science Exams Change
[7] National Academies Releases Interim Report on Voter Registration
Databases
[8] About USACM
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We mentioned this last week, but are just getting to posting about the hearing on the blog.

On May 6, Eugene H. Spafford, chair of USACM, testified before the Social Security Subcommittee of the House Ways and Means Committee on electronic employment verification systems (EEVS). USACM has testified before on this issue, with Dr. Peter Neumann speaking to the same subcommittee on the same topic last June. Citing several potential problems, some already evident, in a pilot system (E-Verify) operated by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) to electronically check on employee work eligibility. Dr. Spafford urged Congress to include sufficient safeguards to ensure that both employers and employees are adequately protected from technical failures and abuses of the system.

Dr. Spafford identified three major concerns regarding E-Verify: the accuracy and timeliness of system results; the security and privacy protection afforded to information kept in the system; and the technical feasibility of multiple approaches to creating such a system. He added that these concerns are also applicable to related programs such as the REAL ID Act, which established standards for state-issued driver’s licenses, and US-VISIT, a U.S. immigration and border management system.
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May 14
Hearing:
The Elections Subcommittee of the Committee on House Administration will hold a hearing on election contingency plans.
2 p.m., 1310 Longworth Building

We are doing a bit of catchup as we are behind on posting to the blog. On Monday USACM filed detailed comments with the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) on the draft 2007 Federal Voluntary Voting System Guidelines. Calling the standards a welcome step forward, USACM supported several important concepts in the draft – including software independence – and noted the improved accessibility and usability provisions.

So what are the Voluntary Voting System Guidelines? Some background might be useful to start.

The Help America Vote Act (HAVA) created the Technical Guidelines Development Committee (TGDC), staffed by NIST and chaired by its Director, to recommend Federal voting system standards to the EAC. These standards are used as the basis for certifying voting systems. While voluntary, many states have mandated vendors follow them.

Since HAVA was enacted the TGDC released the 2005 Voluntary Voting System Guidelines, which were an incremental update of the 2002 Federal Election Commission standards. The 2007 draft is a sweeping and fundamental change from the 2005 standards, incorporating several new important concepts such as software independence, innovation class, and open-ended vulnerability testing. Many of these concepts have been the subject of intense debate for the past year and were the focus of USACM’s comments.

The TGDC submitted the standards to the EAC last year, and the EAC has the power to modify, reject and/or adopt the standards. Monday was the end of the public comment period on the standards, and USACM commented on numerous parts of the draft. Below is a press release highlighting the major points and we encourage you to read the complete draft of our comments.

The EAC now has to process the reportedly 2000+ comments it received on the draft standards. In doing so, the EAC could adopt the TGDC draft as is, make changes, or reject the entire document. The first and the third scenarios seem unlikely, so we can expect the EAC to makes changes, but what they will be and in what time frame is anybody’s guess. Stay tuned to our blog for more coverage.

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USACM Chair Dr. Eugene Spafford will testify tomorrow before the Social Security Subcommittee of the House Ways and Means Committee. His testimony is part of a hearing on Electronic Employment Verification Systems (EEVS). The hearing is scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. on May 6, in B-318 of the Rayburn House Office Building.

This will be the second time USACM has presented testimony on EEVS, following Dr. Peter Neumann’s testimony from a hearing in June 2007.

The hearing is, in part, responding to recent legislation to expand the E-Verify program, an electronic system of employment verification used on a relatively small scale. USACM has some specific concerns about large database systems, including the proposed expansion of E-Verify. Those concerns are summarized in an Issue Brief we prepared last year on the topic.

We will have more after the hearing tomorrow, including a link to Dr. Spafford’s testimony.

May 6
Hearing:
The Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet of the House Energy and Commerce Committee will hold a hearing on the Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2008, HR 5353.
9:30 a.m., 2322 Rayburn Building

The Social Security Subcommittee of the House Ways and Means Committee will hold a hearing on electronic employment verification systems and their impact on the Social Security Administration. USACM Chair Eugene Spafford will testify at this hearing.
10 a.m., B-318 Rayburn Building

April 29
Hearing:
The Subcommittee on Oversight of Government Management, the Federal Workforce and the District of Columbia of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee will hold a hearing on REAL ID and the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative.
9:30 a.m., 342 Dirksen Building

April 22
Hearing:
The Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee will hold a hearing on “The Future of the Internet.”
10 a.m., 253 Russell Building

April 23
The Subcommittee on Information Policy, Census and National Archives of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee will hold a hearing on the Electronic Communications Preservation Act, HR 5811.
2 p.m., 2154 Rayburn Building

HR 5036, a bill that would provide resources for jurisdictions to purchase paper-based voting systems for the 2008 elections, was voted down in the House on Tuesday. The bill was considered under suspension of the rules, which requires a two-thirds majority to pass. It fell short, 239-178. Bill opponents criticized the cost of the bill and claimed the program is redundant. USACM commented favorably on the legislation in a letter we sent to Rep. Holt earlier this year. With the 2008 elections quickly approaching, it would appear that the window of opportunity for this bill is closing fast. House leadership could reconsider the bill, but early indications are that this will not happen.

Today USACM released a letter (full text below) to Senate and House of Representatives education leaders cautioning against legislation that would promote or require universities to use filters to deal with copyright infringement on their networks. Our position is that filtering technologies are ineffective and costly in the long run because they can be foiled by technology, create new security vulnerabilities, and undermine fair use rights and research on new technologies.

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The Committee on State Voter Registration Databases of the National Research Council released an interim report last week. An ad hoc committee under the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board, and sponsored by the Election Assistance Commission, this committee is charged to identify and address issues and concerns associated with operating statewide voter registration databases.

The committee’s interim report is available online (registration required to read a free PDF file). The report is based on two public workshops and other work of the committee since mid-2007. The report is a compilation of recommended practices for populating and maintaining a statewide voter registration database. The report breaks its recommendations into two groups: those that can happen before the 2008 election, and those that would take more time. The recommended short term changes are:
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Last week the Committee on House Administration marked up HR 5036, the Emergency Assistance for Secure Elections Act of 2008. The bill, introduced by Representative Rush Holt (D-N.J.), would provide reimbursement for jurisdictions that would purchase paper-based voting systems for the 2008 elections. USACM commented on the legislation in a letter we sent to Rep. Holt in February. The legislation is consistent with our previous statements supporting transparent, accurate, and reliable election systems.

The bill was reported favorably out of committee by a voice vote, with amendments. The major changes included allowing retrofits and hand audits to qualify for reimbursement, and the amount of money available for reimbursement and for voting system research was changed to “such sums as necessary.”

It is unclear whether the House will consider the bill, given the short shrift given to Holt’s other voting legislation, HR 811. That bill was also favorably reported out of committee and then held from full consideration by the House due to issues in the Rules Committee.

April 9
Hearing:
The Subcommittee on Government Management, Organization and Procurement of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform will hold a hearing on ID cards and background checks in federal security.
2 p.m., 2247 Rayburn Building

April 10
The Senate Finance Committee will hold a hearing on identity theft. The witnesses are from the IRS or involved in tax-related issues.
10 a.m., 215 Dirksen Building

Today’s Washington Post has an article stating that the College Board, (the body that administers Advanced Placement courses) is doing away with several AP courses – including one computer science course. Reading the article, you’d likely reach the conclusion, as attested by e-mails I’ve seen this morning, that all AP computer science courses are being eliminated. This is not the case. There are two AP computer science courses – AP Computer Science A, and AP Computer Science AB. The college board is eliminating the less popular AB course, not the A course.

The other important issue that the story does not raise is that many thoughtful people from the computing community are working with the College Board to redefine what AP CS means. In fact, this is part of the e-mail the College Board sent out announcing the decision:

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CONTENTS

[1] Newsletter Highlights
[2] USACM Chair Interviewed About Electronic Voting for Chicago Television
[3] Computers, Freedom and Privacy Conference Dates Announced
[4] Rod Beckstrom Appointed Cyber Security Center Director
[5] 08 Tech. Policy Outlook: Electronic Employment Verification Systems
[6] Intellectual Property Bill Moves in Congress
[7] About USACM
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