CHAPTER 8 

 INTERAGENCY COORDINATION OF BASIC RESEARCH 



Coordination of the research and development 

 activities of the Federal departments and agencies 

 has been a matter of concern for many years to 

 members of the executive and legislative branches 

 of the Government and to members of the scien- 

 tific community. On the whole, there appears to 

 be a surprising degree of coordination, especially 

 with respect to basic and applied research. This 

 coordination is achieved by both formal and infor- 

 mal means, the latter being particularly important. 



This chapter is concerned primarily with intera- 

 gency coordination and does not attempt to look 

 at questions relating to intra-agency coordination. 

 Internal coordination of research activities is fre- 

 quently the responsibility of a designated official 

 such as the Under Secretary of Defense for Re- 

 search and Engineering in the Department of De- 

 fense, the Assistant Secretary for Policy Develop- 

 ment and Research in the Department of Housing 

 and Urban Development, or the Assistant Secre- 

 tary for Science and Technology in the Depart- 

 ment of Commerce. 



Definitions 



The word "coordination" has different mean- 

 ings for different people. To some, coordination 

 connotes or implies direction and/or control. This 

 connotation is responsible for a good deal of the 

 confusion, misunderstanding, and apprehension 

 associated with attempts by various bodies to 

 coordinate Federal research programs. To others, 

 coordination has seemed to be something less 

 menacing, with connotations of cooperation and 

 collaboration. To still others, who seek to quell 

 apprehension and uncertainty, coordination has 

 been equated with correlation, and the latter word 

 has sometimes been substituted for the former. 



Several definitions of coordination are referred 

 to in an excellent Library of Congress report on 

 interagency research coordination.! Haimann 

 defines it as "the conscious process of assembling 

 and synchronizing differentiated activities so that 



^Intenigency CoorJinnlion of Federal Scientific Research 

 and Development: The Federal Council for Science and Tech- 

 nology, a report prepared for the Subcommittee on Domestic 

 and International Scientific Planning and Analysis of the 

 Committee on Science and Technology, U.S. House of Repre- 

 sentatives, by the Science PoHcy Research Division, Congres- 

 sional Research Service. Library of Congress, July 1976. 



they function harmoniously in the attainment of 

 organization objectives."- Mooney defines coordi- 

 nation as "the orderly arrangement of group ef- 

 fort, to provide unity of action in the pursuit of a 

 common purpose. "^ 



Brief History Since 1938 



Whatever the perceptions and differences of 

 opinion about its precise meaning, a general feel- 

 ing of need for coordination of research and de- 

 velopment programs has persisted for many 

 years. 



National Resources Committee 



The National Resources Committee, the imme- 

 diate predecessor of the National Resources Plan- 

 ning Board, expressed the need for coordination 

 within the Government as early as 1938. 



Coordination between Federal research agen- 

 cies is essential in the interest both of science 

 and of efficiency. Coordination between re- 

 search agencies serves both an administrative 

 and scientific purpose. The administrative pur- 

 pose is that of programming research activities 

 to avoid duplication and to carry on service 

 functions more effectively. The scientific pur- 

 pose is to allocate research functions to those 

 agencies best equipped to prosecute them, to 

 keep workers in any given field informed of the 

 activities of others in the same field, and to 

 bring to bear on any specific problem the re- 

 sources of all the sciences capable of contribut- 

 ing to a solution. 



Although the scientific work of the Federal 

 Government is departmentalized and subdivid- 

 ed among numerous bureaus and offices, these 

 functional divisions should not, and in the main 

 do not, prevent concentration upon a single 

 problem of the resources of many agencies. As 

 the functions of the bureaus have become spe- 

 cialized, the machinery for cooperation and col- 

 laboration has grown up to a point of high oper- 



-Haimann Theo, and William G. Scott, Management in the 

 Modern Organization, sec. ed. (Houghton Mifflin Co.: Boston. 

 1974), p. 124. 



'Mooney. James D., The l^inciples of Organization, rev. ed. 

 (Harper and Row: New York, 1974), p. .S. 



INTERAGENCY COORDINATION Of BASIC RESEARCH 291 



