15 



search enterprise. At the same time, the structure is hardly simple; rather, it is a 

 complexity of programs that weave through agencies or disciplines, such as com- 

 puter science, which are substantially dependent for support on one agency but in 

 fact benefit the missions of many agencies. Looking at the research enterprise agen- 

 cy by agency can offer a misleading picture of what is actually going on; rather the 

 enterprise needs to be viewed, and understood, in its totality. 



Finally, our committee stipulated that whatever it proposed would not require 

 major changes in procedures in the executive and legislative branches. To do so 

 would have been obviously naive, and, more damagingly, have buried the substance 

 of the committee's recommendations in arguments over process. Rather, we felt that 

 we could be most effective by setting out our proposals as clearly as possible, offer- 

 ing guiding principles in realizing these proposals, and giving specific examples of 

 how they might be implemented. 

 The Committee's Recommendations 



The heart of our report is the proposal for a budget process that provides both 

 a unitary view of the federal science and technology enterprise, in addition to the 

 separate S&T agency budgets Congress has been used to receiving. In l.his way Con- 

 gress will be able to gauge the overall health of the enterprise and understand the 

 interrelationships and complexities among governmental programs. 



As this committee knows well, while federal R&D spending totals are convention- 

 ally given as about $70 billion a year, nearly half of tnat involves initial production; 

 maintenance, and upgrading of large-scale weapons and space systems at DOD, 

 DOE, and NASA. Those activities are clearly of importance and in the national in- 

 terest, but with some modest exceptions they are neither long-term investments in 

 new knowledge nor investments in creating substantially new applications. If they 

 were excluded, the R&D investment budget — called the FS&T budget in this re- 

 port — would be between $35 billion and $40 billion annually. 



This FS&T, or Federal Science and Technology, budget defines federal invest- 

 ments in fundamental science and new technologies; it is these investments ihat m 

 aggregate lead to new knowledge and enabling technologies, which over time im- 

 prove government performance and enrich the nation. Put another way, the commit- 

 tee came to believe that the many arguments of support for basic versus applied 

 research, of support for basic research in one agency versus another, of U.S. spend- 

 ing versus that of other nations, and even of how much we spend as a fraction of 

 GNP missed the point. The key was to devise a process to formulate a FS&T budget 

 that would maintain our world strength in science and technology. Concomitant 

 with this proposed change in the structure of the federal budget for science and 

 technology were proposals for using it to make real decisions — by both the executive 

 and legislative branches. 



The committee linked its arguments for a unified science and technology budget 

 to several principles, to assure that the federal science and technology programs 

 maintain their base within the federal departments, their excellence, and their his- 

 toric ability to respond quickly to national needs and opportunities. These principles 

 included: 



• Tradeoffs within the FS&T budget; i.e., selective decreases and increases to meet 



new national needs, to reflect evaluations of quality, and to recognize budget 

 stringency when necessary — all in a manner to preserve the world-class stand- 

 ing of American science and technology. 



• Favoring projects and people over institutions, "to free up or reallocate resources 



to meet new opportunities and needs, [since] it is much easier to cut back or 

 eliminate a program of project grants than it is to disengage from support of 

 institutions." 



• Using merit review, one relying strongly on external evaluators, both to make 



awards and to judge programs. For awards, the committee felt strongly that 

 competitive merit review is the best system for assuring that the best people 

 and ideas are supported in a very tough environment for funding. For judging 

 federal programs for science and technology, the committee argued that "exter- 

 nal reviewers are a more diversified source of opinion and can bring a wider 

 range of experiences to the review process compared with federal agency person- 

 nel." 



• Urging that the nation pursue international cooperation — to share costs, to tap 



into the world's best science and technology, and to help it meet go"lo, espe- 

 cially where the necessary facilities and instrumentation are very costly for any 

 one nation. As the committee commented, "international cooperation is most 

 clearly appropriate for large and expensive facilities such as high-energ]/ accel- 

 erators and nuclear fusion facilities; for projects requiring coordinated research 

 programs, such as many in oceanography as well as studies of global climate 



