On Thursday, December 16, 2010, the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) released and discussed its report entitled "Designing a Digital Future: Federally Funded Research and Development in Networking and Information Technology." This congressionally-mandated report assesses the status and direction of the Federal Networking and Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD) Program.

This unofficial website links a broad range of information related to the PCAST report. The official PCAST website is here.

The Report

• Executive summary of the PCAST NITRD report
• Table of Contents of the report
• Full text of the report
• Short paper highlighting key themes of the report
• Unofficial presentation highlighting key points of the report
• Informal and unofficial summary of key points of the report

December 16 report release event

• Agenda
• Press release
• Video archive

Press articles

• "Smarter, Not Faster, Is the Future of Computing Research" - New York Times
• "PCAST: The Role of NIT R&D in National Priorities" - Computing Community Consortium
• "White House Offers Strong Show of Support for PCAST IT R&D Findings" - Computing Research Association
• "PCAST Finds IT R&D Critical to U.S. Competitiveness, Calls for Renewed Federal Investment" - Computing Research News
• "Evaluating Government Funding: Presidential report asserts the value of U.S. government funding and specifies areas needing greater focus" - Communications of the ACM
• "Software Progress Beats Moore's Law" - New York Times
• "Supercomputers Let Up on Speed: With big money and competitiveness at stake, smarter not faster designs may be winners" - Chronicle of Higher Education

Related material

• "Tire Tracks" diagram (the role of research in creating billion dollar industry segments)
  • Original NRC CSTB report
• Library of Congress Symposium (recent computing research breakthroughs)
  • Summaries, slides, videos
• Workforce and education charts
  • Workforce and education section of the report
• "Landmark Contributions by Students in Computer Science"