Presidential Science Council Has Low Profile But Lofty Objectives

Some observers laud body's work to date; others await evidence of true progress Despite President Bill Clinton's headline-grabbing political hassles and the furor surrounding the White House's campaign to enact health-care reform, his comparatively low-profile National Science and Technology Council -- a Cabinet-level policy body he formed late last year -- is functioning undaunted. So far this year, the 16-member panel, composed of the administration's highest officials and created to provide oversight and interagency coordination of United States research programs, has convened two major science policy forums in Washington, D.C., attended by hundreds of prominent scientists. One of the forums focused on determining strategies for maintaining America's leadership in basic science, mathematics, and engineering; the other centered on environmental and natural resources R&D. The 16 members of the National Science and Technology Council President Bill Clinton Vice President Al Gore Presidential science and technology adviser John H. Gibbons Secretary of Commerce Ronald H. Brown Secretary of Defense William J. Perry Secretary of Energy Hazel R. O'Leary Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna E. Shalala Secretary of State Warren M. Christopher Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt Neal Lane, director of the National Science Foundation Daniel Goldin, administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Carol M. Browner, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency Leon E. Panetta, director of the Office ofManagement and Budget Anthony Lake, national security adviser Robert E. Rubin, assistant to the president for economic policy Carol Rasco, assistant to the president for domestic policy Over the summer, NSTC will be using information gathered at these forums in an ongoing, comprehensive review of the federal R&D budget--a process that ultimately will affect, among other things, future federal science funding and, therefore, the careers and concerns of bench scientists across the nation. Besides Clinton, the council includes Vice President Al Gore, presidential science adviser John H. Gibbons, several Cabinet secretaries, administrators, chiefs of the major independent science agencies, and high-level advisers (see accompanying list). Because NSTC is composed of officials who have the authority to carry out its recommendations, the panel's formation has won the support of many science policy observers. "We're very pleased to see such an organization develop," says Martin A. Apple, executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based Council of Scientific Society Presidents (CSSP). "We're very optimistic about what [NSTC] can do for the nation's future and for the integration of science into the appropriate levels of policy decision-making." At the same time, some veteran policy watchers have voiced concerns about how well NSTC, with numerous committees and its component staff structure, will function, especially as compared with the Federal Coordinating Council for Science, Engineering, and Technology (FCCSET), which NSTC supercedes. FCCSET had drawn criticism for being ineffective. Erich Bloch, former director of the National Science Foundation and now a distinguished fellow at the Council on Competitiveness, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, says that bureaucratic bloat may hamper the Clinton panel. "First of all," says Bloch, "you have nine committees. Each one has two or three cochairs, and each committee will have umpteen subcommittees. That, to me, is absolutely uncalled for--and a complexity that will really be a handicap rather than a help. I think it's too complicated. It will encompass a thousand people before everything is said and done." Rep. Rick Boucher (D-Va.), chairman of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee's science subcommittee, disagrees. He predicts that NSTC "is going to function much more effectively than FCCSET--in part because there is real enthusiasm on the part of this president... to have it play an active role." In announcing the council's formation last November, Clinton said that "the principal purposes of NSTC will be to establish clear national goals for federal science and technology investments and to ensure that science, space, and technology policies and programs are developed and implemented to effectively contribute to those national goals." Clinton added that "one of the most critical tasks I expect the NSTC to undertake is an across-the-board review of federal spending on research and development. The council will prepare coordinated R&D budget recommendations for accomplishing national objectives in areas ranging from information technologies to health research, from improving transportation to strengthening fundamental research and international science and technology programs." At the operating level, most of the council's functions are being carried out by its nine committees, addressing issues of fundamental science; health, safety, and food R&D; information and communications R&D; environment and natural resources research; national security R&D; civilian industrial technology R&D; education and training R&D; transportation R&D; and international science, engineering, and technology R&D. At a February hearing before Boucher's subcommittee, Gibbons testified that during the start-up phase of NSTC, "top priority has been given to reviewing various federal R&D agency budgets with the intention of providing detailed advice to the Office of Management and Budget. "In the course of developing budget requests, the committees will assist the NSTC in establishing priorities of research, in generating criteria for evaluating progress toward national goals for science and technology, and in refining those goals as science and technology evolve." As its maiden voyage on the science-policy seas, NSTC convened a "Forum on Science in the National Interest" early this year at the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) headquarters in Washington, bringing together more than 280 scientists, research administrators, and science policy experts. In addition to plenary sessions featuring top-level speakers, the program included meetings focusing on areas such as involvement of industry in fundamental science and engineering; the civilian/military balance in R&D; internationalization of research programs; support of major research institutions; the role of federal laboratories; and education and training programs for science and engineering. Speakers included Gore, Gibbons, NAS president Bruce Alberts, biochemist Thomas R. Cech of the University of Colorado, Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.), and Rep. George E. Brown, Jr. (D-Calif.). (A long-awaited "white paper" stemming from the conference had not yet been released at press time.) The second forum, held in late-March and sponsored by NSTC's Committee on Environment and Natural Resources R&D, addressed a broad array of environment issues, such as global change, biodiversity and ecosystems, resource use and management, water resources and coastal and marine environments, air quality, toxic substances and hazardous and solid waste, natural disasters, and risk assessment. Speakers at the meeting included Gore; Gibbons; Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt; Peter Raven, director of the Missouri Botanical Garden and NAS home secretary; and F. Sherwood Rowland, a professor of chemistry at the University of California, Irvine, and former president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Robert T. Watson, Office of Science and Technology Policy associate director for environment, says the most important outcome of the forum was general agreement on the need to develop strategies based on a partnership among government, academia, industry, and various nongovernmental organizations. "We did put some provisional, draft [policy] documents on the table," he says. "And I think in large measure, the general directions we laid out--more emphasis on ecological systems; more emphasis on social sciences; more emphasis on economic sciences; more emphasis on developing the tools for science policy, such as integrated assessments; more use of risk assessments--most of those things were largely endorsed by the group there." Some science policy specialists say it is too early to tell whether NSTC will prove to be a significant improvement over FCCSET. OSTP's Watson says: "I think that elevating [NSTC] to a presidential council will put much more teeth into it. I think you will have much more buy-in from all levels of the agencies-- from the Cabinet members themselves and the heads of the agencies all the way down to the program managers. I believe that to get anything to work, you need it to be both top-down and bottom-up simultaneously." However, Bruce L.R. Smith, a science policy analyst at the Brookings Institution in Washington, is more cautious in his assessment. "The question is--is this really anything different?" he says. "They've got it renamed. Does this constitute new energy, vigor, or what-not?" He adds that "I haven't really come to a judgment on it.... It's hard to sort out the P.R. from the operating reality." D. Allan Bromley, former President George Bush's science adviser and now a physics professor at Yale University, says that NSTC's effectiveness may revolve around Clinton's commitment to it: "If in fact the NSTC is chaired by the president, and if in fact he finds the time to participate to any significant extent, that is all to the good. It raises the visibility of science and technology in the whole federal government." Barton Reppert is a freelance science writer based in Gaithersburg, Md.

Presidential Science Council Has Low Profile But Lofty Objectives

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