Consortium created to improve software reliability

Carnegie Mellon University and a coalition of government agencies and information technology firms May 16 in Washington announced the creation of the Sustainable Computing Consortium, a collaborative effort to protect the United States computing infrastructure and improve the reliability of U.S. IT systems.

The coalition is the first group to bring software users and developers together to address software dependability, quality and security, according to Pittsburgh-based Carnegie Mellon.

"The issue of ensuring software quality and security is one of the most important technical and public policy issues facing the nation and the world," said Jeffrey Hunker, dean of Carnegie Mellon's H. John Heinz III School of Public Policy and Management. "The mission of the SCC and its members will be to drive new developments in information technology and to produce groundbreaking research on software economics, risk management, auditing and liability."

Software defects cost global business an estimated $175 billion in 2001, according to Carnegie Mellon. In 2001, Carnegie Mellon's Computer Emergency Response Team Coordination Center, a clearinghouse for security issues, reported 2,500 software vulnerabilities, a 100 percent increase over the previous year.

"It is clear that our nation's computing infrastructure demands this kind of collaborative initiative, bringing together major players in business, industry and government to address these issues,"
said Dr. Henry McDonald, director of NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif.

The SCC will leverage nearly $30 million in existing research grants and member commitments, including an initial seed grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the Software Industry Center at the Heinz School. Coalition members include Cisco Systems Inc., Mellon Financial Corp., Merck & Co. Inc., Microsoft Corp., NASA, Oracle Corp., Raytheon Co. and RedSiren Technologies Inc. In addition, Carnegie Mellon's two-year-old High Dependability Computing Consortium, which includes 15 software industry companies and NASA, will form a High Dependability Working Group within SCC.

The SCC will also leverage the resources of two other Carnegie Mellon research entities: the Software Engineering Institute, home to the federally funded Computer Emergency Response Team Coordination Center; and the Institute for Software Research International, home of the Information Technology Services Qualification Center, a source of standards for rating outsourcing firms.

The coalition will work to:

* Foster the development of standards and methodologies to reduce software defects;

* Quantify and reduce the risks software flaws pose to the nation's computing infrastructure;

* Bring together global businesses, software industry leaders and public policy experts to address technical, legal, economic and policy issues surrounding sustainable computing;

* Conduct independent research, provide measurement and design tools and document best practices to quantify and improve software quality, dependability and security.