White House Releases Strategic Plan for Advanced Computing

The National Science and Technology Council recently released a new strategic plan to address the nation’s strategy towards developing an advanced computing ecosystem to ensure U.S. leadership in science and engineering (S&E), global economic competitiveness, and national security. The plan lists strategic objectives that if implemented would improve federal operational and coordination structures that would promote advances in national strategic priorities such as AI, quantum computing, and other Industries of the Future as identified by the White House.
 
The plan outlines the following strategic objectives:

• Utilize the future advanced computing ecosystem as a strategic resource spanning government, academia, nonprofits, and industry.
• Establish an innovative, trusted, verified, usable, and sustainable software and data ecosystem.
• Support foundational, applied, and translational research and development to drive the future of advanced computing and its applications.
• Expand the diverse, capable, and flexible workforce that is critically needed to build and sustain the advanced computing ecosystem. 

This new strategic plan builds on recommendations made by the National Science and Technology Council in its 2019 report, which addressed changes that needed to be made since the last national strategic plan for computing that was released in 2016. The 2019 report identified new focus areas that would need to be addressed, and the new strategic plan addresses these areas.
 
The Council makes recommendations that would allow for the U.S. to pioneer new frontiers of digital and non-digital computation to address the scientific and technological challenges and opportunities of the 21st century. This is accomplished through implementing systems that will develop, broaden, and advance the Nation’s computational infrastructure and ecosystem by forging and expanding partnerships.
 
The plan calls on the Department of Energy, Department of Defense, and the National Science Foundation to take the lead on implementing the listed recommendations to fast-track foundational R&D that can then be used to develop and deploy new computing applications.
 
The plan also focuses on educating and training a workforce that is able to meet the nation’s future computing needs. The plan calls on the lead agencies to foster a “diverse, capable, and flexible workforce” that can effectively leverage an advanced computing ecosystem.   
 
To read the full strategic plan, please visit: https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Future-Advanced-Computing-Ecosystem-Strategic-Plan-Nov-2020.pdf?utm_medium=email&utm_source=FYI&dm_i=1ZJN,753VO,M3WXSL,SWH52,1.