1879 



become mired in day-to-day concerns are partially misguided. Unless 

 a planning organization is useful to the Secretary and the Department 

 in helping them cope with current situations, it is likely to atrophy 

 or decline into irrelevance." While the Commission attached little 

 significance to the way in which the Policy Planning Staff was or- 

 ganized, it offered (in italics) three suggestions: 



A single, highly competent officer, personally selected by the Secretary, should 

 be given full time responsibility for the work on the "State of the World Report." 



Regular members of the Pojicy Planning Staff would normally be expected to 

 involve themselves at one time or another in each of the planning functions — 

 anticipation, challenge, reevaluation, and the formulation of strategic concepts. 



The Director of the Policy Planning Staff should have one deputy to lead 

 the work of the staff in fulfilling the role of anticipation and initiatives, and 

 another deputy responsible principally for the challenge and reevaluation 

 functions. *" 



In considering means of tapping outside expertise the Commission 

 considered and abandoned the idea of creating by contract a Rand 

 type of analytical advisory service responsible to the Policy Planning 

 Staff. Instead it favored a "less restrictive" arrangement that would 

 "seek more widely, and more selectively, expert assistance whenever 

 it can be found . . . ." To assist in tapping the academic community 

 at large, the Commission recommended that: 



An Advisory Committee be created by the State Department, consisting of 

 outside scholars and experts who can assist the Planning Staff [to] keep abreast of 

 new developments of substantive and methodological kinds. An officer of the 

 Policy Planning Staff should be charged with matching the Staff's needs with 

 outside researchers best qualified to meet them, and with being its link to the 

 Advisory Committee and the external research community. "* 



The Commission's discussion of policy planning concluded with 

 suggestions for strengthening the Bureau of Intelligence and Research 

 (INR) and for a fuller exploitation of "new methodologies and 

 analytic techniques." With respect to INR, the Commission stressed 

 the functional importance for planning of the "external research arm" 

 of INR. It said: 



The closest collaboration between the planning office and the external research 

 arm of the Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) is of course imperative. 

 In order for this external participation in planning to be effective, additional 

 resources will be needed, and better management of the sometimes difficult 

 relationship between government and outside researchers and consultants must 

 occur. The responsible officer should identify needed policy research in time to be 

 relevant to poUcy concerns. He must establish necessary priorities among them. 

 Within the State Department, individual planners or groups of planners working 

 on specific projects should be allocated funds to acquire the services of con- 

 sultants. The relationship between planners and outside experts should not 

 necessarily be a comfortable one; a major purpose of the relationship between the 

 two groups would be to compel planners periodically to reevaluate their own 

 guiding assumptions."" 



On the subject of new methodologies, the report cited "com- 

 puterized information processing and anal^'sis, more sophisticated 

 decision aids, gaming and simulations, and a variet}'' of forecasting 

 techniques for policy analysis." In the testing and use of such ap- 

 proaches, it would be necessary to maintain closer contact with the 

 academic community. 



5^ Murphy Commission report, p. 14S. 

 5"8 Op cit., 149. 

 W" Ibid. 



