Earlier this month, President Obama announced plans to expand broadband and wireless Internet access to every school and library in the U.S. The new initiative, ConnectEd, has a goal of connecting 99 percent of students to the Internet within five years by having the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) modernize and leverage its existing E-Rate program. The president claimed that millions of students lack access to high-speed broadband and fewer than 20 percent of educators say that their school's internet connection meets their needs, particularly those in rural America.

Expanding the federal research tax credit and making it permanent could help generate $10 billion per year in research activity, according to a report from the U.S. Department of Treasury's Office of Tax Policy. Treasury also suggests that the enhanced credit could expand use of the credits, which already generate a one-to-one match in research spending and help support almost one million jobs. The current credit, which has been reauthorized temporarily 14 times since its introduction in 1981, is set to expire at the end of the year.

This week, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) released a wide-ranging roundup of new and ongoing efforts to leverage availability of large, accessible data sets to spur innovation. While many of these efforts were focused on supporting research on the potential of big data, several agency efforts are using the model of open data app competitions to fuel private-sector business creation.

The federal, cross-agency Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) has proven so invaluable to developing STEM expertise across the country that the word "experimental" should be removed from its name, according to a comprehensive new report from the National Academies. The academies, however, recommend that the program be restructured to create a more rigorous competitive process for research projects and improve project evaluation. Download the report...

The Global Clinton Initiative (GCI) and five partner organizations announced a regional pilot program that will create a manufacturing supply chain network to support small- and midsized-manufacturers in the Hudson Valley region of New York. The goal of the pilot program is to create a scalable model that will ultimately provide a framework for a nationwide supply chain network and grow the country’s manufacturing base.