Rep. Rick Boucher (D-Va.) on Monday promised to work with lawmakers to "enact legislation which will carry forward" the Federal Communications Commission's proposed changes to the Universal Service Fund.

Those reforms, released Monday as part of the agency's National Broadband Plan, would allow federal officials to devote some of the fund's money to broadband expansion -- a focus that current law still prohibits.

"It is essential that the funds be expended in a manner that helps achieve nationwide broadband deployment, and I look forward to working with the FCC to pass the comprehensive reform legislation that achieves that goal,” Boucher said in a statement.

As chairman of the House Subcommittee on Communications, Technology and the Internet, Boucher has long pushed for changes to that 1996 program, which guarantees money for the establishment of universal telecommunications services nationwide.

However, the fund is prohibited from using federal dollars to subsidize broadband expansion, even to areas still without high-speed Internet. Boucher has consequently promised legislation to address that oversight, which he said Monday would pair nicely with the FCC's new recommendations.

“Both the Commission’s plan and our comprehensive reform legislation would ensure the Universal Service Fund supports broadband deployment," the chairman said in a statement, noting he agreed with the agency's plan to pursue 100 megabite-per-second broadband connections for 100 million homes by 2020.

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Innovation in the classroom, at the workplace and within the branches of the federal government will dominate committee hearings on Capitol Hill this week.

Science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education is the subject of the House Science and Technology Committee's first hearing on Tuesday. A collection of education experts from universities and research groups around the country will offer their takes on how to best broaden participation in STEM programs, one of the White House's key education goals. When: Tuesday, 10 a.m. - 12 p.m.; Where: Rayburn 2318.

Members on the House Homeland Security Committee's Subcommittee on Emerging Threats on Tuesday will markup the Homeland Security Science and Technology Authorization Act of 2010. The bill appropriates money for the agency's Directorate of Science and Technology for 2011 and 2012. When: Tuesday, March 16, 2 p.m.
 Where: Cannon 311, also available via webcast.

Meanwhile, the House Oversight Committee will examine the effectiveness of the federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) on Tuesday. That hearing arrives at the same time Sens. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and John Cornyn (R-Tx.) are pushing a bill that would establish a panel to investigate the federal government's running FOIA backlog. When: Tuesday, March 16, 2 p.m.; Where: Rayburn 2154.

On Wednesday, the House Science and Technology Committee will convene again to focus on the federal government's role in stimulating private innovation. Attending that hearing will be Dr. Susan Smith, a chief researcher at General Motors, among representatives from other industries and science/technology researchers. When: Tuesday, 10 a.m. - 12 p.m.; Where: Rayburn 2318.

The Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee will also convene Thursday to hear testimony on "commercial space capabilities." That hearing arrives in response to the president's 2011 NASA budget, which in part would contract out some low-orbit, manned space missions to private firms.

However, a handful of lawmakers from both political parties believe commercial entities are far from ready to begin those missions in the near future. Many are now calling on the Obama administration to rethink its budget proposal -- an argument likely to be repeated during Thursday's discussion. When: Thurs. March 18, 2:30 p.m.; Where: Russell 253.

The National Broadband Plan laid out Monday by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) offers a far-reaching, multi-pronged strategy for expanding broadband access. Read more...

The Federal Communications Commission on Monday released the opening pages of its National Broadband Report, due to Congress later this week.

The executive summary (.pdf) confirms weeks of reportage and countless predictions that the agency would propose a host of sweeping and sometimes costly changes, all designed to expand broadband access to 90 percent of American households by 2020.

Among the FCC's suggestions are new competition policies, including requirements that federal officials publish broadband pricing and availability and investigate decades-old competition rules.

The agency also called on Congress to create a host of incentives that would promote "universal access" to broadband, including the establishment of two funds that would help states, federal officials and Internet companies promote high-speed broadband expansion and use.

Full details of all of the FCC's suggestions are due to Congress on Tuesday, the FCC announced on Monday.

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Expect more federal agencies to hold contests -- and offer prizes -- in the name of innovation, the White House signaled last week.

As part of President Barack Obama's open government directive, the White House is encouraging agencies like NASA and the Department of Energy to "increase the use of prizes and challenges as tools for promoting open government, innovation, and other national priorities," according to a policy memo from the Office of Management and Budget, released last Monday.

Moreover, the White House plans to establish "a web-based platform for prizes and challenges within 120 days," the memo notes.

"This platform will provide a forum for agencies to post problems and invite communities of problem solvers to suggest, collaborate on, and deliver solutions," according to the White House, which added it would soon task the General Services Administration with the primary responsibility of managing those challenges.

The White House's perhaps unorthodox emphasis on contests to promote innovation is one part of the Obama administration's latest push for more public-private collaboration.

The memo released Monday details a host of projects already improved through federal contests -- from vehicle technology ideas submitted to NASA, to low-cost, highly efficient lighting devices proposed to the Department of Energy, to less tech-oriented solutions pitched to the State Department's diplomatic missions.

Consequently, the White House hopes to expand that process manifestly to more federal agencies in the coming months. And with it, the Obama administration is ordering federal officials to offer better prizes to encourage participation.

"A prize should not be an end in itself, but one means within a broader strategy for spurring private innovation and change," according to the OMB memo. "Furthermore, agencies should plan appropriately for all stages of prize development and, where permissible, consider partnering with other entities that might administer, support, or catalyze the prize."

Chinese officials on Friday informed local websites that partner with Google that they must continue censoring online content, in the event Google does follow through with its threat to cease complying with China's strict online content restrictions.

Among other things, that would mean websites that include Google search bars -- including www.sina.com.cn, China's most popular site -- must remove those tools, or find an alternative way to censor its results, according to The New York Times, which first reported the news.

Ultimately, China's latest warning hints that a slew of penalties await website owners who follow Google's lead and begin to rally against the state's tough censorship regulations. Most are likely to comply.

But the Chinese government's salvo also reveals that negotiations between the search giant and officials in Beijing have not proceeded as smoothly as once reported, perhaps an early signal that Google may withdraw from China's search business entirely.

However, Google officials seemed to suggest to the Times this weekend that it had no plans to suspend all of its business in China, even if Beijing forces an end to its search operations. At the very lease, Google plans to continue its mobile phone ventures there, which have expanded recently in tandem with the launch of the Android operating system.

Here's an interesting look at the growth of e-commerce sites in the U.S. over the past decade. 

As we noted earlier this morning, today marks the 25th anniversary of the "dot-com" domain name that kicked off the explosion of internet-based commerce. It's a fitting time to take stock of the internet's impact on our society, as the FCC is scheduled to unveil its much-awaited National Broadband Plan tomorrow with recommendations of how to expand the reach of broadband to enable even more e-commerce growth.

Find more graphs and info like this in ITIF's report released this morning. Read the whole thing here. (PDF)

On March 15, 1985, the dot-com economy was born. Symbolics.com was the first domain to be registered.

During the rest of that year, only five other names were registered. Ten years later, there were 120,000 names registered. Today, there are 85 million registered .com sites.

"Over the last 25 years, the use of the .com domain names has expanded rapidly from a specialized name space for the high-tech community to an integral part of the global economy," writes Rob Atkinson in a report released this morning taking a look back at the history of the now-legendary "dot-com."

Today is, in fact, the 25th anniversary of the .com domain. You can expect to hear a lot of dot-com chest-pumping this week, with the 25th anniversary celebration planned for tomorrow in Washington. Former President Bill Clinton will give the keynote address, since it was under his administration that the Web and "dot-com" really got its start and began to flourish.

Atkinson, founder of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, estimates that the annual global economic benefits of the commercial internet equals $1.5 trillion--more than the global sales of medicine, investment in renewable energy, and government investment in R&D, combined.  

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Funnyman Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) is now a pitchman to bring Google's new fiber networks to two midwestern cities.

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