CSTB: Computer Science and Telecommunications Board

July 4, 2009


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Joseph F. Traub, Chair | Jon Eisenberg, Director

The Computer Science and Telecommunications Board is where the nation turns for independent and informed assessments of computing, communications and public policy.

News & Events

May 5, 2009 CSTB member Alfred Spector was elected to the 2009 class of fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

April 29, 2009 CSTB releases Technology, Policy, Law, and Ethics Regarding U.S. Acquisition and Use of Cyberattack Capabilities. For more information please view the report summary or visit the project homepage.

April 28, 2009 CSTB member Jon Kleinberg is the recipient of the 2008 ACM-Infosys Foundation Award in the Computing Sciences.

February 19, 2009 CSTB member Sara Kiesler has been named winner of the 2009 Lifetime Achievement Award from the ACM's Special Interest Group in Computer-Human Interaction.

February 6, 2009 CSTB members William J. Dally (for contributions to the design of high-performance interconnect networks and parallel computer architectures) and Deborah L. Estrin (for pioneering design and application of heterogeneous wireless sensing systems for environmental monitoring) have been elected to the National Academy of Engineering.

January 23, 2009 CSTB releases Assessing the Impacts of Changes in the Information Technology R&D Ecosystem: Retaining Leadership in an Increasingly Global Environment. For more information please visit the project homepage.

January 9, 2009 CSTB releases Computational Technology for Effective Health Care: Immediate Steps and Strategic Directions. For more information please visit the project homepage.

Recent Publications

	Technology, Policy, Law, and Ethics Regarding U.S. Acquisition and Use of Cyberattack Capabilities concludes that although cyberattack capabilities are an important asset for the United States, the current policy and legal framework for their use is ill-formed, undeveloped, and highly uncertain and that U.S. policy should be informed by an open and public national debate on technological, policy, legal, and ethical issues they pose.
	Assessing the Impacts of Changes in the Information Technology R&D Ecosystem: Retaining Leadership in an Increasingly Global Environment examines changes in the IT R&D ecosystem over the past decade and makes recommendations to strengthen the effectiveness and impact of federally funded information technology research; for the U.S. to remain the strongest generator of and magnet for technical talent; to reduce friction that harms the effectiveness of the U.S. IT R&D ecosystem; and to ensure that the U.S. has a communications, computing, and applications infrastructure which enables U.S. IT users and innovators to lead the world.
	Computational Technology for Effective Health Care: Immediate Steps and Strategic Directions finds that current national health care IT deployment efforts will not be sufficient to achieve the vision of 21st century health care, and calls for greater emphasis by computer science and health/biomedical informatics researchers on providing cognitive support for health care providers, patients, and family caregivers.
	Protecting Individual Privacy in the Struggle Against Terrorists: A Framework for Assessment calls for U.S. agencies with counterterrorism programs that collect or "mine" personal data to evaluate the programs' effectiveness, lawfulness, and impacts on privacy, offers a framework agencies can use to evaluate programs, and urges Congress to consider new restrictions on how agencies can use data.
	Preliminary Observations on DoD Software Research Needs and Priorities: A Letter Report responds to a request from the Department of Defense (DoD) for preliminary feedback regarding the Committee on Advancing Software-Intensive Systems Producibility's observations on DoD needs and priorities for software research as well as suggestions for a research agenda that would be executable within the DoD's Science and Technology Framework.
	State Voter Registration Databases: Immediate Actions and Future Improvements (Interim Report) outlines various challenges to the deployment of state voter registration databases, as mandated by the Help America Vote Act of 2002, and describes both short-term and longer-term solutions to these challenges.
	Opportunities for Coordination and Clarity to Advance the National Health Information Agenda: A Brief Assessment of the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (Letter Report) reviews the pace and cohesion of standards activities coordinated by the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) and points to several opportunities to improve coordination and clarity.
	Summary of a Workshop on Software-Intensive Systems and Uncertainty at Scale summarizes the workshop on uncertainty at scale in the context of software-intensive systems producibility, held January 17, 2007, in Washington, D.C., under the auspices of CSTB's Committee on Advancing Software-Intensive Systems Producibility.
	Social Security Administration Electronic Service Provision: A Strategic Assessment examines the SSA’s proposed e-government strategy and provides advice on how the SSA can best deliver services to its user communities in the future.
	Toward a Safer and More Secure Cyberspace examines the vulnerabilities of the Internet and offers a strategy for future research aimed at countering cyber attacks. The report also explores the nature of online threats and some of the reasons why past research for improving cybersecurity has had less impact than anticipated.
	Software for Dependable Systems: Sufficient Evidence? discusses the meaning of dependability in a software and systems context, illustrates how the growing use and complexity of software necessitates a different approach to ensuring dependability, and recommends an evidence-based approach to achieving justifiable confidence in and greater dependability of software.
	Engaging Privacy and Information Technology in a Digital Age examines how threats to privacy are evolving, ongoing information technology trends, and how society can balance the interests of individuals, businesses, and government in ways that promote privacy reasonably and efficiently.