H.R. 1223 — ANCHOR Act

This section establishes the short title of the Act as the “Accelerating Networking, Cyberinfrastructure, and Hardware for Oceanic Research Act” or the “ANCHOR Act.”

This section directs the Director of the National Science Foundation, in consultation with other Federal agency owners and the heads of universities or laboratories that own or operate vessels in the U.S. Academic Research Fleet, to submit to the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation and the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, not later than 18 months after enactment, a plan to improve the fleet’s cybersecurity and telecommunications. As background, the U.S. Academic Research Fleet consists of federally and non-Federally owned research vessels used for oceanographic and other scientific missions. The required plan must assess: (1) the fleet’s telecommunications and networking needs consistent with each vessel’s scientific mission; (2) cybersecurity needs for vessel operations and research functions, in accordance with guidance from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the National Institute of Standards and Technology; (3) the costs needed to meet those needs, including equipment costs such as satellite communications equipment, software, high-performance computing infrastructure, and enterprise hardware, as well as personnel, training, support, and logistics costs, and the effect on daily charter rates; (4) the time required to implement upgrades under varying budget scenarios; (5) opportunities for common solutions, consortial licensing, or centralized cybersecurity, telecommunications, or data management; and (6) a spending plan, developed with non-Federal vessel owners, for the National Science Foundation, the Office of Naval Research, non-Federal owners, users, or any combination of them to cover those costs. The Director must also consider, as appropriate, network speed and bandwidth needs for vessel operations, telemedicine, cloud-based data transfer, real-time streaming, remote scientific instrumentation and maintenance support, and video communications for K–12 outreach and remote classroom teaching. The section further directs the Director, in consultation with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and other Federal agencies as appropriate, to consider the JASON report “Cybersecurity at NSF Major Facilities” (October 2021), international information-security standards, access to cybersecurity personnel and training, and requirements for controlled unclassified or classified information. The Director may support upgrades to the fleet’s cyberinfrastructure and cybersecurity consistent with the plan, and must submit a progress report on implementation not later than 2 years after submitting the plan.