NSB-04-18
February 7, 2004

MEMORANDUM TO MEMBERS OF THE NATIONAL SCIENCE BOARD

SUBJECT: Major Actions and Approvals at the February 5, 2004 Meeting

This memorandum will be made publicly available for any interested parties to review. A more detailed summary of the meeting will be posted on the Board’s public website within ten business days. A comprehensive set of NSB approved meeting minutes will be posted on the Board’s public website following its March 2004 meeting.

Major actions and approvals at the 378th meeting of the Board that took place at Xavier University, New Orleans, Louisiana, included the following (not in priority order):

1. The Board approved the minutes for the Open Plenary Session (http://www.nsf.gov/nsb/meetings/mtg_list.htm#recent) and Closed Plenary Session of the November 2003 meeting of the NSB.



2. The Board approved a resolution to close portions of the upcoming March 24-25, 2004, NSB meeting dealing with staff appointments, future budgets, pending proposals/awards for specific grants, contracts, or other arrangements, and those portions dealing with specific Office of the Inspector General (OIG) investigations and enforcement actions, or agency audit guidelines (NSB-04-12) (Attachment 1).



3. The Board approved the establishment of a Committee on Programs and Plans Task Force on Long-lived Data Collection (NSB 04-19) (Attachment 2).


4. Dr. Washington announced the establishment of two ad hoc committees:

• Ad hoc Committee on the 2004 Vannevar Bush Award with Dr. Ray Bowen, Chair and Drs. Steven Beering, Daniel Hastings, Nina Fedoroff and Maxine Savitz as committee members. Mrs. Susan Fannoney will serve as Executive Secretary.



• Ad hoc Committee on NSB Nominations for the Class of 2006 - 2012 with Dr. Mark Wrighton as Chair, and Drs. Barry Barish, Kenneth Ford, Diana Natalicio, Douglas Randall, and Daniel Simberloff, as members. Dr. Michael Crosby, NSB Executive Officer, will coordinate the committee’s activities and be the liaison to the White House and Mrs. Susan Fannoney will serve as Executive Secretary to the committee.

Attachment 1: NSB-04-12
Attachment 2: NSB-04-19

Attachment 1 to NSB-04-18

NSB-04-12
January 22, 2004

MEMORANDUM TO MEMBERS AND CONSULTANTS OF THE NATIONAL SCIENCE BOARD

Subject: Closed Session Agenda Items for March 24-25, 2004 Meeting

The Government in the Sunshine Act requires formal action on closing portions of each Board meeting. The following are the closed session agenda items anticipated for the
March 24-25, 2004 meeting.

1. Staff appointments

2. Future budgets

3. Grants and contracts

4. Specific Office of Inspector General investigations and enforcement actions

A Proposed resolution and the General Counsel's certification for closing these portions of the meetings are attached for your consideration.

Attachments (2)

PROPOSED
RESOLUTION
TO CLOSE PORTIONS OF
379th MEETING
NATIONAL SCIENCE BOARD

RESOLVED: That the following portions of the meeting of the National Science Board (NSB) scheduled for March 24, 25, 2004 shall be closed to the public.

1. Those portions having to do with discussions regarding nominees for appointments as National Science Board members and National Science Foundation (NSF) staff appointments, or with specific staffing or personnel issues involving identifiable individuals. An open meeting on these subjects would be likely to constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.

2. Those portions having to do with future budgets not yet submitted by the President to the Congress.

3. Those portions having to do with proposals and awards for specific grants, contracts, or other arrangements. An open meeting on those portions would be likely to disclose personal information and constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of privacy. It would also be likely to disclose research plans and other related information that are trade secrets, and commercial or financial information obtained from a person that are privileged or confidential. An open meeting would also prematurely disclose the position of the NSF on the proposals in question before final negotiations and any determination by the Director to make the awards and so would be likely to frustrate significantly the implementation of the proposed Foundation action.

4. Those portions having to do with specific Office of the Inspector General investigations and enforcement actions, or agency audit guidelines.

The Board finds that any public interest in an open discussion of these items is outweighed by protection of the interests asserted for closing the items.

CERTIFICATE

It is my opinion that portions of the meeting of the National Science Board (NSB) or its subdivisions scheduled for March 24-25, 2004 having to do with nominees for appointments as NSB members and National Science Foundation (NSF) staff, or with specific staffing or personnel issues or actions, may properly be closed to the public under 5 U.S.C. § 552b(c) (2) and (6); those portions having to do with future budgets may properly be closed to the public under 5 U.S.C. § 552b(c) (3) and 42 U.S.C. 1863(k); those portions having to do with proposals and awards for specific grants, contracts, or other arrangements may properly be closed to the public under 5 U.S.C. § 552b(c) (4), (6), and (9) (B); those portions disclosure of which would risk the circumvention of a statute or agency regulation under 5 U.S.C. § 552b(c) (2); and those portions having to do with specific Office of the Inspector General investigations and enforcement actions may properly be closed to the public under 5 U.S.C. § 552b(c) (5), (7) and (10).

Lawrence Rudolph
General Counsel
National Science Foundation

Attachment 2 to NSB-04-18

NSB 04-19
February 5, 2004

Charter for the Long-lived Data Collection Task Force

Data collections, particularly digital data collections for research, have been increasing in number and size over the past couple of decades. They range from small single investigator collections to very large collections whose content is derived from instruments housed in large facilities. Over this same period, the National Science Foundation (NSF) obligations for support for both data collection and curation has been increasing.

The Foundation differs from agencies, such as NASA, NOAA, and the Department of Energy. Typically, their strategy is for the agency to own and manage the collections. As a consequence, they own and manage many fewer independent collections than the NSF supports. With ownership comes agency control for data format standards and access policies. The Foundation does not typically maintain data collections itself. It is individual researchers, consortia, and organizations that develop and maintain large facilities that manage the collections. This has resulted in a proliferation of data collections, large and small, across all disciplines. There is divergence in formats, access policies, and in quality.

It is timely to consider the policy ramifications of this rapid growth of data collections in the NSF-supported community. This National Science Board task force will address the policy issues directly relevant to the NSF’s style of data collection support. These policy issues and questions include:

• when, why, and for how long the NSF will fund each data collections that are or appear to be very long-lived (decades)?
• are their conditions under which it is appropriate for NSF to maintain a data collection intramurally, as most other agencies routinely do?
• what responsibility does NSF have to assure quality of the collections that it supports?
• what part, if any, should NSF play in creating and enforcing community technical standards, for example, for the use and form of metadata?
• how does NSF assure that data is accessible to a broad, diverse, and interdisciplinary community?
• should the budget for collection curation be made more visible, or remain (more or less) integral to the many different research budgets?
• is there a desired balance between expenditure on collection and curation?
• since digital media are impermanent, migration to new media are crucial if a collection is to persist. Under what conditions should NSF support such migration?
• what policies should guide relationships with national, international, and private agencies and organizations to cooperatively support data curation?

The objective of this National Science Board task force is to delineate the policy issues relevant to the National Science Foundation and its style and culture of supporting the collection and curation of research data. For those issues where guidance to the Foundation is appropriate, the task force should make recommendations for the National Science Board and the community to consider.