Most of the press releases charting the kerfuffle over releasing this report mention the difference between the 12 page summary and the 200 page report.

The report available on the website is all of 46 pages. It seems like it’s just the Executive Summary, but I’ve got nothing to compare it to.

“You have to keep in mind that a) this was a product of the [DOC] Technology Administration, which as comments to your blog point out is not much more than a handful of staff, and that b) the Department actually has several bureaus (NOAA, NIST, ESA) that apply much more rigor to reports than what is essentially a policy/advocacy shop, so perhaps a better explanation could be that once the draft report was subjected to broader and more rigorous review, it was determined to essentially be an assemblage of anecdotal [stuff]; not worthy of publication by a Department that puts out a variety of economic statistics and vigorous economic and scientific reports. Like most everything in Washington, this then got blown out of proportion.”

And

“You float one idea that this may have been sat on so as not to confuse messaging on competitiveness, but this repor; far predated the Gathering Storm and the launch of the President’s American Competitiveness Initiative.”

And

A suggestion that the report may have been motivated by 2004 congressional electoral politics related to a member or members that might have stood to gain from it.

And

A suggestion that this report has been caught up in the political tide and made far more of than it deserves, by both parties (Rs at the start, Ds at the end).

Thanks for the clarifications!

An executive order in November 2001 enlarged the cloak of secrecy over presidential records; the administration has greatly increased the number of secret documents (in spite of a report led by Daniel Moynihan in the 1990’s that there were already far too many documents kept secret). The VP’s energy policy of 2001 was developed in secrecy, secrecy that was defended all the way to the Supreme Court. Aggressive editing of science reports at NASA also comes to mind.

And yet the administration reserves the right to declassify any information ad hoc, including names of CIA operatives.

And to the question of public understanding stocks and flows that you discussed in your post of 8-3-06, how educational is the administration’s recent statement that the deficit is lower than expected?

“Section 502 would eliminate the Technology Administration and the Undersecretary of Commerce for Technology at the Department of Commerce, allowing the NIST Director to report directly to the Secretary. The FY 2007 budget request proposed funding the Technology Administration at $1.5 million. At this level, there is little likelihood that a robust program of analysis and advocacy would remain. The Committee believes that these resources could be more effectively used on other technology-related priorities.”

So there are two explicit reasons – making the NIST Director a direct report to the Commerce Secretary and finishing the killing of the TA the administration, the appropriators and/or authorizers started. Not having any Hill experience, I’m not well suited to read between the lines here. Perhaps Kevin V. or others could shed some light here.

For example, enrollments in IT majors have been declining, in part because of a perception that all the jobs are migrating overseas. When the Association for Computing Machinery (disclaimer, my current employer) released its report on outsourcing in IT, it demonstrated many of the same conclusions as the TA report. The organization then used that data to help support increased enrollment in IT fields (graduate and undergraduate).

For what it’s worth, the Technology Administration is a casualty of the American Competitiveness and Innovation Act – it will be eliminated if the bill is signed into law.