Statement by DONALD N. LANGENBERG Chancellor, The University of Maryland System Before the Senate Subcommittee on Science, Technology, and Space Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation United States Senate March 5, 1991 Donald N. Langenberg is Chancellor of the University of Maryland System. With a doctorate in physics, Dr. Langenberg has held faculty and administrative positions at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Illinois at Chicago. He served as Acting and Deputy Director of the National Science Foundation. He is currently Chairman of the Board of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and Chairman of the Executive Committee of the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges. He chaired the panel of the NAS/NAE/IOM Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy that authored the 1989 report, Information Technology and the Conduct of Research: The User's View. Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee: Thank you for your invitation to testify on S. 272, the High- Performance Computing Act of 1991. I am Donald Langenberg, Chancellor of the University of Maryland System. My view of the issues addressed by this bill has naturally been shaped by my own experience. I am, or was, an experimental solid state physicisL I have served as Deputy Director and as Acting Director of the National Science Foundation. I am currently CEO of an eleven-campus state university system, Chairman of the Board of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and Chairman of the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges. These affiliations account for some of my biases, but most are a result of my service as chair of a National Research Council panel that wrote a 1989 report entitled Information Technology and the Conduct of Research: The User's View. My service on the panel convinced me that the current breathtaking rate of change in information technology will inevitably force historic changes in our institutions for managing information. Nowhere is this more evident than in the research and education communities that both create important new developments in information technology, and are often bellwethers in its use. It is the viewpoint of these communities that I will try to represent this afternoon. Information is the fundamental stuff of both research and education. Research and education are about the creation of information and its transformation into knowledge and understanding, for our individual and collective benefit. Modern information technology has presented us with a challenge of unprecedented scale. The Library of Congress contains about 10 terabytes of information. It took us over two centuries to collect ii It's stored nearby in an impressive collection of expensive real estate. Medical imaging machines nowadays produce that much information every week or so. The particle detectors of the Superconducting Super Collider will one day engulf their designers with that much information every few seconds. NASA already has 1.2 million magnetic tapes containing data from past missions, and its archives are growing by about one Library of Congress every year. In ten years, if all goes according to plan, NASA will be piling up about fifty Libraries of Congress each year. Everywhere one looks, similar gushers of information exist or are in prospect. Fortunately, modern information technology also promises to give us the means to meet this challenge. Transforming promise into reality, however, will take time, skill, resources, and, above all, wisdom. In my opinion, S. 272 represents a major contribution to that transformation. I strongly support its passage into law. Let me make a few points related to the work of our NRC panel. 1. The Panel found that there exist significant technical, financial, behavioral, and infrastructural impediments to the widespread use of information technology in research. Though the Panel's charge was confined to research, I believe the same impediments exist with respect to education. The Panel made three main recommendations and a host of subrecommendations for dealing with these impediments. S. 272 responds to most of them. 2. One of the Panel's three principal recommendations was that, "the institutions supporting the nation's researchers, led by the federal government, should develop an interconnected national information technology network for use by all qualified researchers." S. 272's National Research and Education Network (NREN) responds directly to the need reflected in this recommendation, and also to the very important collateral need of the educational sector. In my judgment, NREN will revolutionize both research and education (in an evolutionary way, of course). 3. When one thinks of what NREN might do for education, one thinks first of the education of scientists and engineers, then perhaps of the incredible potential inherent in linking NREN to every elementary school, secondary school, public library, and museum in the country. There is another educational need of utmost importance. I believe that part of the challenge we face is the creation of an entirely new kind of institutional infrastructure for managing the new information technology, led and supported by a new breed of information professionals. The latter may bear some resemblance to librarians, or to computer scientists, or to publishers. Whatever they might be, we need to create schools for training them and institutions within which they can function. That means educational and institutional innovation of a kind S. 272 appears well designed to foster. 4. The most important words in the title of our panel report reflect our most important observation. They are "the user's view." In simple terms, the Panel concluded that the development of information technology and its applications in the conduct of research (and, I would add here, education) are far too important to be left to the experts. The Panel cautioned that planning and development should be guided by users of information technology, both current and prospective, Dot by information specialists, information scientists, information technologists, or local, national, and international policymakers. It may not invariably be true that "the customer is always right," but institutions that create technology or make policy without a clear understanding and appreciation of the real needs of their clients and constituents risk making serious and expensive blunders. S. 272 calls for the advice of users in the development of the National Research and Education Network I especially applaud this provision. 5. In my preface to our panel's report, I wrote: "I share with many researchers a strong belief that much of the power of science (whether practiced by scientists, engineers, or clinical researchers) derives from the steadfast commitment to free and unfettered communication of information and knowledge. This principle has been part of the ethos of the global research community for centuries, and has served it and the rest of humanity well. If asked to distill one key insight from my service on this panel, I would respond with the assertion that information technology is of truly enormous importance to the research community, and hence to all humanity, precisely because it has the potential to enhance communication of information and knowledge within that community by orders of magnitude. We can now only dimly perceive what the consequences of that fact may be. That there is a revolution occurring in the creation and dissemination of information, knowledge, and ultimately, understanding is clear to me. It is also clear to me that it is critically important to maintain our commitment to free and unfettered communication as we explore the uses of information technology in the conduct of research." What I asserted there about research, I would assert now about education. If I am right, then by far the most profoundly important consequence of the creation of NREN will not be the expedition of research or the improvement of next year's balance of trade. It will be the fundamental democratization of all the world's knowledge. That means placing the accumulated intellectual wealth of centuries at the beck and call of every man, woman, and child. What that might mean can only be guessed, but let me reminisce for a moment. I grew up in a small town on the Great Plains. In that town was a Carnegie Library, one of hundreds Andrew Carnegie endowed across the nation. That modest building and the equally modest collection it housed opened the world to me. I have been grateful to the Pittsburgh steelmaker ever since. What if I had had direct personal access to the Library of Congress, the British Museum, the Louvre, and the Deutsches Museum, all in the course of a summer afternoon in North Dakota? Imagine! My point here is that there is an overriding public interest in NREN and in the rest of the provisions of S. 272, an interest that transcends research and its industrial applications, or issues of governance and the timetable for commercialization. We have an opportunity here for an American achievement of truly Jeffersonian proportions. Let's not blow it! 6. Finally, I note with approval that S. 272 identifies the National Science Foundation as the lead agency for the development of NREN. The choice is wise, I think NSF has a demonstrated capacity to manage large complex technical operations. Unlike other S&T agencies, NSF's focus is not on some "mission," but on its "users," i.e., its client science and engineering communities. And, perhaps most important, alone among federal agencies NSF bears responsibility for the support of research across the full spectrum of scientific and engineering disciplines, and for the training of those who perform the research, and for the general education in science and technology of everybody else. You will have gathered that I have considerable enthusiasm for S. 272. I do! I urge you and your colleagues to enact it into law.