Federal Agencies Plead For Cybersecurity Ideas

A group of federal agencies opened an online forum to collect ideas from the public for what it is billing as its "game-change" cybersecurity initiative, calling for proposals for R&D projects as it continues its efforts to leverage government heft to shore up public and private information networks.

"I want to really emphasize that we want everyone to be thinking big, thinking novel," Jeannette Wing, assistant director of the National Science Foundation's Computer Science and Information Assurance Directorate, said at an event Wednesday launching the initiative. "The administration is very, very keen to see how the government can be working with the private sector on this along with academia." The new portal is a joint effort of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and the National Coordination Office for Networking and Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD), a coalition of 14 agencies responsible for coordinating network research initiatives across the federal government. Participating departments and agencies include the NSF, NASA, National Security Agency and, most recently, the Department of Homeland Security.