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6. The most serious management problems pertaining to government science and technology are related not to basic and applied research but rather to large development projects. The problems in this area are connected fundamentally with the choices among alternative goals rather than with specifically technical problems. Most of these choices involve economic evaluations (as in the case of civilian nuclear power) or operational cost-effectiveness studies (as in military and space systems). To an increasing degree these decisions depend as much on considerations of political, social, or military goals as on questions of technical feasibility. It is difficult to see how a Department of Science, which is further removed from these nonscientific aspects, could deal more effectively with this type of problem than the existing federal departments and agencies. Indeed one of the problems with which we are faced in the development of major systems is that technical feasibility tends to become confused with military or economic desirability. Technological developments tend to take on a life of their own, independent of the military, social, or economic context in which they will operate. The number of technical possibilities is rapidly exceeding the availability of resources to realize them, and more and more the problem of choice becomes a problem in resource allocation, an economic rather than a technical problem. The tendency for divorcement of technology from its political, social, or military context is likely to be aggravated rather than relieved by the creation of a Department of Science. There appear to be no good substitute for the present methods of debate and negotiation for resolving the complex interactions of technical and nontechnical considerations which are inevitably involved in all of our major decisions about priorities, whether between research fields, between hardware or operational systems, or even between research and procurement. 7. While the protection of the integrity of basic research is of the utmost importance, maintenance of a proper channel of communication from basic research to applications is also essential to the effective conduct of development. In the federal government, this channel is most effectively provided by the program officers who administer basic research for their mission-oriented agencies. It should be the duty of these program officers to understand the applied needs and requirements for their agency and to be alert to all the opportunities for filling these needs, which result not only from the basic research programs that they administer but also from related work throughout the whole body of science. It is their thorough knowledge of basic research and their contact with the scientific community which give them the necessary communication with the scientific world to alert them to the opportunities provided by science, but they need also to understand enough of the mission of their agency to be able to match scientific opportunity to need. If all basic research programs were administered exclusively in the Department of Science, the vital channel of communication between basic and applied work would be weakened, since the program officers of the Department of Science, though highly competent in science, would not be thoroughly familiar with the needs and requirements of the various government agencies.

CONCLUSIONS

1. In the American system of government, central management of the scientific enterprise, even by scientists, cannot be an effective alternative to the complicated and often frustrating process of arriving at a national consensus. Science is an important instrument for almost all the goals of the federal government; the agencies responsible for the achievement of these goals cannot function effectively if they do not individually keep their channels of communication open to the world scientific community, which they can only do by carrying out or supporting research and development on their own.

2. Although the present diversity of support and decentralization of decisionmaking for science are desirable, further fractionalization of scientific support should probably be discouraged, and in general, new areas of science should be developed by existing agencies or by the interagency mechanism rather than by the creation of wholly new federal scientific agencies.

3. The creation of any new scientifically oriented federal agency should be considered only when its service, production, or other operational functions reach an importance that is at least commensurate with its research and development function.

4. Better long-range planning for science and technology in the federal government is urgently needed, but in the last analysis, must be achieved by inter

agency agreement rather than by central direction. Many of the weaknesses noted in the present system for the management of science result from lack of technical competence or lack of adequate status for scientific activities within the agencies themselves rather than from deficiencies in central management and planning. 5. The function of central planning and coordination for science in the federal government is not to control the substance of the scientific activity in the nation but rather to ensure that the scientific enterprise as a whole develops in a way which is most responsive to the needs of the country and regulates itself responsibly. This function includes making sure that the needs and opportunities in science are made known and receive the proper attention in the process of arriving at a consensus on what the government should do. In the final analysis, continued and increasing support of science by the federal government will depend upon its continuing ability to demonstrate its social utility. Although the cultural and ethical aspects of science are of tremendous importance, one cannot expect that society will continue to support it on the present scale as a purely cultural activity. Therefore, in the management of science by the federal government attention must be given to the efficient utilization of science and to the realization of the opportunities it provides. Effective utilization does not automatically follow from a healthy and vigorous basic science, which is thus a necessary but not a sufficient condition.

[U.S. CONGRESS, SENATE COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT OPERATIONS. ESTABLISH A COMMISSION ON THE ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT OF THE EXECUTIVE BRANCH. HEARINGS BEFORE THE SUBCOMMITTEE ON EXECUTIVE REORGANIZATION, 90TH CONG.,

SECOND SESS., JANUARY-MAY 1968]

EXCERPT FROM TESTIMONY OF DR. J. HERBERT HOLLOMON, PRESIDENT-Designate of THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA

Mr. Chairman, members of the subcommittee, it is a pleasure and a privilege to appear before your subcommittee to discuss the important proposed legislation related to a study of the goals, structure and organization of the Federal Establishment. This appearance before your subcommittee is my first as a private citizen, after more than 5 years of appearances as a member of the executive branch.

I assure you that the circumstances are different and I appreciate the opportunity to bring to the subcommittee the results of my experience. I have a brief statement I should like to present, and thereafter answer any questions you may have.

LONG-RANGE PLANNING AND EVALUATION IS LACKING

When I first came to Washington after 15 years of industry, I was most surprised at the almost total absence of long-range assessment and evaluation of the possible future of our country, particularly with respect to matters affecting our domestic economy and well-being. I thought that in Washington I would find a significant group, both in the executive and legislative branches, who concerned themselves with such matters. I thought that while industry of necessity, must be concerned mostly with the short range, there must be those in Washington dedicated to examining the longer range consequences of our current actions and the alternatives for us in the future. I was disappointed.

MIGRATION FROM RURAL AREAS NOT ANTICIPATED

Let me give you a specific example. For decades our policy toward agriculture has been to increase its efficiency, reduce the cost of food and encourage technological advances that would permit the production of food and fiber to the best benefit of the Nation and its people. This program has, in the main, been successful. In recent years the results have been impressive with an improvement in efficiency measured by the increased farm output per worker of nearly 6 percent per year.

But we did not anticipate, at least if we did there were no policies in effect to modify it, the vast migration to the cities and the problems in our slums. We did not anticipate the great social discontent that has resulted from this migration. We acted as if the problems of agricultural improvement were separate from urban development and implicitly, but not explicitly, encouraged that migration. In a recent study by the Economic Development Administration of the Depart

ment of Commerce, it was concluded that this migration will continue unless and until we look at the problem in its entirety and provide incentives that encourage rural industrialization and the regrowth of our small towns.

While hindsight is always clearer than foresight, I insist that analysis and study would have permitted policies to be adopted to ameliorate the problem with less direct Government involvement than is now needed to meet the crises of the cities.

GEAR PROGRAMS TO MEET FUTURE PROBLEMS

Now, our executive leadership must be used to deal with this and other immediate crises. This effort drains energy and perforce directs attention to problems of the immediate present rather than problems of the anticipated future. While the crisis in the cities needs imaginative programs of self-help today, we must, at the same time, look to the problems of continued migration pressures and the quality of city life of the future.

Had we looked at the total problem a number of years ago, I believe it would have been possible to provide programs, incentives, and policies through which the problems of discontent, alienation, and poverty in America could have been ameliorated.

It is obvious to me that there should be considered within the executive branch of the Government some means of thoroughly examining and anticipating the broad range of problems that our country shall face, particularly at home.

This is essential if we are to be sure that we use our resources to the best advantage and that the quality of our life will be the highest of which we are capable.

The second series of observations have to do with two major activities that affect much of our total welfare. These two activities are business and industry on the one hand, and science and technology on the other.

Business and industry provide the vehicle which generates the wealth of our Nation. They provide products and services which all of us enjoy and which protect our security. Science and technology today affect every facet of modern life. They alter the course of human welfare, influence every aspect of government, and provide the basis for development of new products and services.

The effects of science and technology through the development of modern industry, modern transport devices and the like, change the character of our total physical environment.

The integration of transportation activities has begun in the new Department of Transportation. No similar organization exists in the executive branch which is concerned with the broad, general matters, of science and technology. Neither in the case of business and industry, nor in science and technology is there a broadly based responsible department having the purview for these two matters so vital to our present and future welfare.

USE OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY IN EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENTS

While the President's proposals for a Department of Economic Affairs-or Business and Labor-might not have been the best possible arrangement, it would have represented a great step forward in integrating these matters related to our industrial and commercial enterprises.

Those who viewed only the short-term disadvantages to their constituencies effectively scuttled the proposal. It clearly deserved a better fate. We have in this country in our great industries and in our major governmental departments realized that science and technology provide new possibilities for change and improvement, and as a consequence, they are interwoven into the structure of these organizations.

The Department of Defense, in order to insure an adequate supply of future weapons and systems, has a large and important research and development activity. Even the Post Office Department now has a technical arm growing in strength, importance, and effectiveness.

In the last 25 years, we have accepted the fact that science and technology cannot be a thing apart and each agency must be prepared through organization and programs to use its results.

DEPARTMENT OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY PROPOSED

Now, it is time to ask if there isn't a need for a Department of Science and Technology to be responsible for those broad matters affecting the whole fabric of human existence and our national life. I would propose that a commission

such as that being considered today particularly examine the desirability of a Department of Science and Technology. This Department would not control and centralize all of the related activities of the diverse agencies. As a matter of fact, it is perfectly clear that each of the agencies must have programs related to science and technology that affect the future of their particular programs and their activities. What I would suggest is that those technical activities of the Government that serve the commonweal be brought together. Specifically, I would consider bringing into one agency the National Science Foundation, the National Bureau of Standards, the Environmental Science Services Administration, NASA, the Geological Survey, the Census Bureau, and perhaps parts of NIH and the Atomic Energy Commission. These agencies together provide the Federal mechanism for supporting the examination of man, the character and nature of his physical and social environment, even reaching out into space. These agencies provide strength to the scientific and technical institutions of our country and provide for the growth and good health of science and technology related both to the physical and social realms. If these agencies were brought together into a single department, it would allow much of the integration in the field of oceanography that has long been a matter of concern to Congress. It would provide a mechanism for integration of the study of the atmosphere and of the weather that likewise has been so diffuse as to almost defy integration under the present circumstances.

The Cabinet officer responsible for this department could then be responsive to the President and to Congress for insuring the development of the broad areas of science and technology which in our state of national development are emerging as even more important resources than water, land, or minerals which we recognized many years ago through specifically authorized activities of the executive branch.

I am sure that there are other realinements and rearrangements that would modernize our Federal Government and make it better able to anticipate future needs, but these two specific areas are examples derived from our own knowledge and experience.

IMPROVE MANAGEMENT OF BROAD PROGRAMS

However, even with the most perfect alinement and organization of Government agencies there will still be matters and activities and programs that cut across whole organizations.

These particular programs will vary with time-some important at one time and others becoming important in the future. For example, transportation policy and programs affect urban development. Integration of transportation, with education, with building technology, in terms of their influence on the cities is required. It seems to me that greatest inefficiency in our Government structure results from the difficulty of providing responsible management for those programs that are parts of the activities of several different agencies. The way funds are allocated to departments by nearly independent appropriations subcommittees clearly ties the executive branch's hands in its attempts to integrate projects and programs of vital interest which are within the purview of different agencies.

The program planning and budgeting system, now in its infancy as applied to domestic programs, is clearly an attempt to provide a mechanism of integration, particularly for those activities which are important to the welfare of the Nation, but are not uniquely the responsibility of a single department.

The PPB system should provide an analysis of objectives, alternatives, and costs. But, until there can be a program director for such projects, with responsibility and authority cutting across the several departments, these studies can only be helpful and must be largely academic.

The success of such analyses, studies, and programs in the Department of Defense resulted from there being a single head of the Defense Department whose overall program responsibility included the Army, Navy, and Air Force.

REAPPRAISAL OF CONGRESSIONAL PROCEDURES NEEDED

Obviously, I believe that this matter of program integration is not just a problem for the executive branch. It is strongly influenced by the piecemeal process of the appropriation mechanism of the Congress. Any study in Congress that would affect the implementation of an executive reorganization must also examine procedures and policies in Congress, particularly of the Appropriations Committees that tend to deal with Government programs on a relatively narrow departmental or agency basis.

The opportunity to bring broad interagency programs to the review of the Appropriations Committees of both Houses would, in my opinion, do much to make our executive branch more effective.

THREE AREAS DEMAND PRIORITY CONSIDERATION

In summary, I should like to support the general concept of the need for a new examination of the goals, structure, and organization of the executive branch. There are three broad areas I would consider most important to examine. The first has to do with the establishment of some mechanism within the executive branch to examine the long-range goals, alternatives and possibilities for our Nation, particularly in matters affecting our domestic society and economy.

I would also suggest that there might well be broad realinement of Government agencies that would make it possible to improve the structure, as well as improve the efficiency and economy of its work. I suggest that we need to examine all those agencies that affect the industry and commerce of our country.

In addition, it is now time that a Department of Science and Technology be created having broad cognizance over those matters of general science and technology affecting the whole fabric of our life. Such a department would not centralize all the many diverse activities that are so interwoven into the structure of the agencies of the Government, but would bring together only those of broad general influence.

The third general area which I believe deserves attention is the need to examine the techniques for managing projects to which many agencies of Government contribute and for which integration and total management is required. Here we need the equivalent of a project manager as is often employed in modern industry, but which is very difficult to establish in Government because of the independence of appropriations committees and of the agencies of the executive branch. In this area, as well as others, I do not believe that serious consideration of a reorganization of the executive branch can be carried out without also examining whether or not the relationships of the executive branch to the Congress, and the Congress own organization would permit the effective implementation of any proposed reorganization.

NEW RECRUITMENT METHODS SHOULD BE STUDIED

Finally, there is a general comment that I should like to make concerning executive management in the Federal Government. All too often it was my experience that agencies of the Government have not realized the importance of the development of their personnel or of arranging mechanisms for changing the agencies themselves when, due to the changing times, they become outmoded. I think that any commission studying the executive branch should examine the question as to how new, vital, and young ideas can continually be brought to the attention of the agencies of the Government and to the President and to the Congress.

Thank you very much.

[From Science, Feb. 7, 1969]

UNITED STATES SCIENCE POLICY: ITS HEALTH AND FUTURE DIRECTION1

(By Donald F. Hornig)

It is timely that this review of U.S. science policy is being held in December 1968 just before a change in the U.S. Presidency-a time when special thought and attention are being given within and outside of government to the health and future directions of U.S. science policy. For myself, I look forward to contemplating what "they" should do rather than trying to get things done myself in a very complex government.

In a sense, such review and evaluation is a continuous process, but I am struck by the fact that there have been discontinuities in this process at roughly 5- to 6year intervals since 1940.

The first major appraisal of U.S. science came immediately after World War II. Under the Office of Scientific Research and Development we had built from

1 This article is adapted from an address presented 29 December 1968 at the Dallas meeting of the AAAS. At that time the author was President Johnson's Special Assistant for Science and Technology. He is now vice president of Eastman Kodak Company, Rochester, New York, and a professor of chemistry at the University of Rochester.

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