The Information Technology Research (ITR) program is a unique, interdisciplinary program at the National Science Foundation (NSF). It is designed to fund innovative information technology research and education. To assess and learn from the experiences of the ITR program, two related phases of work are proposed. In the first phase, an ITR Principal Investigator (PI) meeting will be held. This meeting will foster an exchange of information and collaborative experiences among ITR PIs and NSF Program Officers to learn the outcomes of the ITR program. Detailed field notes will be collected from the ITR PI meeting. They will be analyzed systematically, and then applied to the next phase. In the second phase, the factors that lead to greater success in ITR projects will be analyzed. A survey will be created and objective data will be collected to evaluate quantitatively how different attributes of projects, such as geographic dispersion, number of disciplines and coordination strategies, effect the way that projects are conducted and research outcomes achieved. Projects will be assessed in comparison with NSF's GPRA goals to improve research knowledge, research infrastructure, scientific and engineering training and personnel, and society's use and understanding of science. The intellectual merit lies in the use of diverse metrics and systematic user-centered research design to assess interdisciplinary research programs, such as ITR. The broader impacts include advancing understanding and policy for successful interdisciplinary, distributed scientific work.
