Congress Backs Billions for Tech R&D Though Enactment Uncertain

Robert Atkinson, president of the Information Technology Innovation Foundation (ITIF) said soon after the NSF directorate was proposed there was "pushback." The scientific community, he noted "resisted the idea that government would be asking them to do work related to a critical national mission, and to hold them accountable for ensuring that their work helped accomplish that mission."

While ITIF supports the provisions in USICA which create the new NSF technology directorate, Atkinson told the E-Commerce Times that "an even more effective approach would be to establish such a directorate as a free-standing agency."