Human Factors Leaves Its Mark in Appropriation Bills
Posted August 21, 2023
Lawmakers on Capitol Hill have been busy this summer formulating and approving spending legislation for Fiscal Year (FY) 2024. Appropriations committees in the House and Senate are responsible for doling out $1.66 trillion in federal spending across several agencies of importance to HFES members, including the Department of Defense, Department of Transportation, National Science Foundation, Department of Health and Human Services, and many others.
Although Congress has adjourned for the August recess, the process of formulating and approving each of the appropriations committees’ 12 separate funding bills consumed much of June and July’s work. Both the House and Senate appropriations committees comprise 12 subcommittees, and each subcommittee holds jurisdiction over at least one – but oftentimes several – federal agencies.
Due to the fiscal austerity measures in place as a result of the debt ceiling agreement reached earlier this year, no major funding increases are expected for federal science, education, and healthcare programs. Some may see cuts compared to FY 2023 enacted levels. The House and Senate Appropriations Committees will begin negotiations to reconcile the differences between their bills when they return in September. This process will extend into FY 2024, which begins on October 1, and a Continuing Resolution (CR) will be considered in September to fund the government until a final spending package is negotiated.
Earlier this year, HFES submitted Outside Witness Testimony (OWT) to the Defense, Transportation, Labor-HHS, and Commerce, Justice, and Science (CJS) appropriations subcommittees advocating for increased attention to human factors issues. Below are the highlights from the approved bills from these subcommittees.
Defense
Both the House Appropriations Committee (HAC) and the Senate Appropriations Committee (SAC) approved their version of the FY 2024 Defense Appropriations bill. The two bills do not agree on a top-line funding level, with the House proposing a total of $886.3 billion and the Senate proposing $831.8 billion in total funding. Both versions are an increase compared to the President’s budget request (PBR).
In Outside Witness Testimony submitted to the Senate, HFES requested robust funding levels for DOD’s Research, Development, Test, and Evaluation (RDT&E) accounts. The Society also requested Congress direct DOD to provide opportunities across the Department’s service branches “to transition human performance research to defense RDT&E activities and acquisition programs.”
The House version proposed a total of $146.8 billion for RDT&E whereas the Senate version proposed $143.3 billion. Despite the total difference, the Senate version proposes more funding for the science and technology accounts (also known as “6.1-6.3”) than the House version, for a total of $20.4 billion compared to $18.8 billion in the House.
Both the House and Senate included funding for programs focused on human-machine interface and human effectiveness across the service branches. $9.3 million is proposed for “Personnel, Training, Simulation, and Human Factors” in both the House and Senate versions of Navy RDT&E, around $147 million for “Human Effectiveness Applied Research” in Air Force RDT&E, as well as increased funding for “Human digital twin and human-machine interaction” in the Army. Human-systems integration is one of the critical technology areas of the DOD and the proposed funding and increases in the area emphasizes the growing focus the Department has on the topic.
Transportation
In FY 2024, the Department of Transportation will likely receive similar funding for research, engineering, and development (RE/D) relative to FY 2023. HFES advocated for increased funding specifically for the FAA RE/D program and the Senate provided a slight increase from FY 2023 while the House slightly decreased the account. HFES priorities were included in both bills, including full funding for the NextGen Human Factors program and the System Integration Human Factors program. The Senate bill included a $2 million increase to the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) Flight Standard Certification Services Oversight Process to increase staffing, including for human factors engineers. In addition, FAA is directed to continue to improve and standardize the application process and to collaborate with an external entity to review the future state of type certification processes. These provisions, in tandem with FAA reauthorization legislation currently making its way through Congress that includes language which directs the FAA to adopt the ANSI/HFES 400 Human Readiness Level Scale, indicate keen interest in human factors issues by Congressional leaders.
Labor, Health and Human Services, Education
The House Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education (L-HHS-ED) Subcommittee approved an appropriations package that would set fiscal year (FY) 2024 funding for several federal agencies within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The comprehensive bill would provide a total of $43 billion for NIH, a decrease of $3.8 billion below the FY 2023 enacted level. The Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), which released its first Open Broad Agency announcement (Open BAA) earlier this year, would receive $500 million or $1 billion less than the FY 2023 enacted level. Additionally, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) would receive $6.5 billion in funding, a $2.7 billion decrease from FY 2023 enacted level, which would include funding cuts to Public Health Preparedness and Response programs and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH). Notably, the bill proposes to defund the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), which was funded at $374 million in FY 2023. However, details on programmatic level funding and agency directive language have yet to be released.
In contrast, the Senate bill would provide $49.2 billion for NIH, which would make it the ninth consecutive funding increase for the agency. This includes $47.7 billion for the NIH base budget, an increase of $200 million above the FY 2023 enacted level, as well as $1.5 billion for ARPA-H, as well as provide CDC with $9.2 billion, $20 million less than FY 2023 enacted levels. This includes $363 million for NIOSH, which is consistent with FY 2023 levels. The bill would also fund AHRQ at $370.5 million, a $3.5 million decrease from the FY 2023 enacted level.
Commerce, Justice, Science
The Senate Appropriations Committee approved their version of the FY 2024 Commerce, Justice, Science (CJS) Appropriations bill on July 13. The Full House Appropriations Committee has yet to approve their version but will do so after the August recess. HFES advocated in its Outside Witness Testimony for increased funding for the National Science Foundation (NSF), especially for basic research in Human Factors. The Senate bill would keep NSF funding essentially flat compared to FY 2023 at $9.5 billion, which is $1.8 billion below the President’s budget request (PBR) as well as $130 million below the level proposed by the House subcommittee. The bill particularly highlights safety and transparency issues surrounding human use of artificial intelligence and encourages NSF to fund research “to improve the transparency, interpretability, and explainability of AI to better understand why and how models arrive at their decisions, recommendations, and other outputs.” While not mentioned specifically in the Senate bill, NSF is expected to fund additional research into human factors through its Human Centered Computing (HCC), Decision, Risk, and Management Sciences (DRMS), and Science and Technology Studies (STS) programs.