the President's Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology released a report "Teaming With Life: Investing in Science to Understand and Use America's Living Capital" which urged that current information technology be applied to the management of science information, and reiterated the findings of the 1993 report. In 2001 money was finally appropriated for the development of the system of NBII networked nodes, though far below the level recommended in the report. In implementing this system, the USGS designed each aspect of the system to focus on a narrow scope (often geographic) or purpose-based. For example, the Southwest Information Node focused on desert ecosystems. International Initiatives The NBII was involved with a range of international initiatives including: "Global Biodiversity Information Facility" (GBIF) "Inter-American Biodiversity Information Network" (IABIN) "Invasive Species Information Network for the Americas" (I3N) "Pollinators Thematic Network: A Network for Pollinator Information and Expertise in the Western Hemisphere" (PTN), primarily an IABIN initiative. "Global Invasive Species Information Network" "FishBase for the Americas: Improving Access to Western Hemisphere Fisheries" is a partnership of FishBase, the Inter-American Biodiversity Information Network (IABIN) and the NBII Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (FAR) Node. Reviews Early on researchers found the NBII coordination less than expected. The NBII navigation buttons on the Invasive Species databases had confusing topic labels especially when compared with the National Agricultural Library labels. The switching back and forth between the portal and the databases was "a tedious exercise indeed." Nonetheless, the Federation of Government Information Processing Councils awarded the NBII a 2002 Award for Outstanding Intergovernmental Technology Solutions. Due to the extensive amount and array of resources and data available, users often needed to both browse and search to locate specific information of interest. "A great deal of persistence may be required to find a particular database. Some valuable resources are found four or five layers into the site's hierarchy." An example of this excessive hierarchy was FRAMES, the "Fire Research And Management Exchange System" portal to U.S.-based Internet resources on forest and wildland fires. Other problems included resources that were listed well down on a long page, so that they did not appear on the screen, and there were the occasional dead links. " Termination and storage In the President's Budget for Fiscal Year (FY) 2012, the NBII was identified as one of over 200 programs slated for termination or reduction. The FY 2011 Continuing Resolution for USGS, finalized in