Can The Office Of Technology Assessment Be Privatized?

As The Scientist has already noted (S. Sternberg, July 24, 1995, page 1), at the end of the fiscal year the 104th Congress eliminated the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA), an agency that provided Congress and the attentive public with comprehensive analyses of issues related to science and technology. Since its creation in 1972, OTA had produced nearly 800 reports covering broad topics in energy, materials, bioengineering, medicine, telecommunications and computers, space, agriculture, education, transportation, and other areas of applied science and engineering. All projects responded to requests from congressional committees, but finished reports were delivered simultaneously to Congress and to the public. Occasionally an OTA report had a clear, identifiable impact on a congressional decision or on a federal program-for example, the "Star Wars" controversy of the Reagan years. More often, the effects were more subtle and indirect, as Congress reacted to influential constituents or to the media, who in turn were influenced by OTA's analysis of an issue or a technological development. The Republican leadership sought to eliminate OTA, they said, to demonstrate their commitment to downsizing the federal government by beginning in their own backyard. Other factors were clearly also at play, however. Because the Democratic Party ruled Congress for most of OTA's 23-year lifetime, some members saw the agency as infected with "liberal" or "big government" assumptions. OTA analysts as well as many OTA admirers refused to believe that the concepts underlying the creation of OTA were obsolete. When OTA was established, science and technology were seen as central to American economic and social well-being; they are even more so today. Many, perhaps most, public-policy issues have a technology-related component or dimension. Legislators and the public still need a source of technical information and advice that is independent of lobbyists, bureaucratic programs, and administration political agendas. The best way to ensure this independence is still to generate and deliver advice through a thoroughly public process, drawing on the expertise of industry, academia, and the research community and integrating the insights and interests of all of those who will be affected by the outcome-that is, the stakeholders, including the public. During the last months of the struggle, OTA analysts asked themselves whether 23 years of analytical experience and innovation should be allowed to go down the tube. Could OTA's institutional memory and organizational culture be saved, and its clientele at the same time be broadened? After days of discussion and debate (at OTA, no conclusions were ever reached hurriedly), a group of senior associates and analysts incorporated a nonprofit Institute for Technology Assessment (ITA) to serve as the carrier of the flame. While the new institute is meant to continue many of the practices that ensured the high quality and credibility of OTA's work, ITA will not be limited, as OTA was, to studies of current congressional interest. Rather, it will undertake a mix of long-range assessments of emerging technologies and shorter-term, briefer-duration analyses of issues of immediate interest to states, industry, and international organizations, as well as to federal legislators and policymakers. A steering committee of eight people coalesced, largely by self-selection, and through the hectic closing weeks of OTA and the ensuing two months has continued to meet regularly. Some members of the group have devoted eight to 10 hours a day to the new institute, deferring any efforts to find other employment for themselves. Part of the effort has gone into identifying and consulting supporters in industry and academia, in Congress, in state legislatures and agencies, and in international organizations. A meeting was held in Washington in late October under the auspices of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and two local universities at which 28 people, from as far away as Minnesota, gathered to advise ITA on institution-building and fund-raising. Several members of OTA's former governing board (a dozen senators and representatives drawn equally from both parties) have agreed provisionally to serve as advisers to the new institute when it begins operations. The interim officers of ITA are: Vary Coates, president; Todd Laporte, vice president; Gerald Epstein, secretary; and Steven Bonorris, counsel. Other members of the steering committee include Denise Dougherty, Windell Fletcher, Mike Snyder, and Fred Wood, all in Washington, D.C. ITA can be reached by E-mail at vcoates@tmn.com. Vary Coates is interim president of the Institute for Technology Assessment in Washington, D.C. On January 8, ITA moved into temporary quarters at 2121 Wisconsin Ave., N.W., Washington, D.C. 20007; (202) 333-8887. Fax: (202) 333-5586.

Can The Office Of Technology Assessment Be Privatized?

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