What's in a name? As far as IT security, not much

There used to be an organization called the President’s Information Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC), but it was disbanded in June 2005 and a new organization — the President’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology (PCAST) was created — but not much else has changed. This is a source of worry to high-tech industry leaders and to people on the R&D side of IT. The slow start of the new organization, coupled with declining budgetary allocations, indicate what we have noticed for a while now: The Bush administration is losing interest in IT research. There are two worries here: The more immediate one is what all this does to U.S. security; the more long-term worm is what all this does to U.S. competitiveness.

The PCAST council currently has twenty-four members, all of whom served on the previous board. The president’s 30 September 2005 executive order issued allows him to appoint as many as forty-five board members, but none have been appointed. The difference between twenty-four and forty-five may appear small, but people in the know say it is significant. Vinton Cerf, who, with Robert Kahn, designed the architecture for the Internet has been awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor given in the United States (Kahn received the award, too). “PITAC worked very hard to understand and coordinate the federal research program related to information technology,” Cerf says. “I am not privy to the agenda of the sitting PCAST but absent some additional members, it is not clear how deeply the U.S. research programs will be evaluated.”

-read more in this report