Around this time every year, the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) typically issue a joint guidance memo to Federal agencies describing the Administration’s R&D priorities for the next budget cycle. This year’s memo — specifying priorities for the FY 2014 budget — was released last week. It encourages agencies to focus on ambitious “grand challenges,” and directs agencies to prioritize research investments over development activities. Because of the crucial government role in supporting research, in general agencies should give priority to funding for research above funding for development activities. Within research portfolios, agencies are encouraged to identify and pursue “Grand Challenges” — ambitious goals […]

As we described in this space yesterday, this morning at an event at the White House, the Obama Administration will formally launch the US Ignite Broadband Initiative, an at-scale, nationwide innovation ecosystem for developing and deploying public sector applications and services on ultra-high-speed, software-defined networks. The announcement will be streamed live beginning at 9am EDT — and we’ll cover it below (more after the jump…).