164 



Dr. Frosch. I only wanted to reinforce the comment that the 

 abiUty of the federal agencies to cooperate and work together on a 

 problem that covers all of them, or msmy of them, is a reflection 

 of the ability of the Congress to give them authorization and guid- 

 ance in a way which is comprehensive across the problem. 



That m.ay require an institution or it may require some special 

 handling. But the difficulty has frequently been that each agency 

 gets its direction and instructions from a different committee and 

 a different subcommittee for which there is no mechanism of co- 

 ordination. 



So they get separate instructions and when they try to coordi- 

 nate, they sometimes run into real difficulty. 



I think this is a very important point. 



Mr. Weldon. Good point. Dr. Alberts? 



Dr. Alberts. I just want to make the point — I don't want to com- 

 ment specifically on the new national institute, but I don't think 

 this can be done only by government. 



Part of the message here is we need to get the user community, 

 people in academia who are experts, people in private industry, to 

 be an important part of this process. 



I think that's the way you get people to cooperate. You need 

 some outside — both the infonnation they bring and the pressure 

 they put on are sort of inertial mechanisms in government to make 

 things change. 



So I think, no matter what kind of government structures you 

 need, you need these partnerships with the private sector and with 

 academic institutions to be stronger and to be informing this proc- 

 ess. 



With regard to the issue of the person on the coast who needs 

 the information, I think we have a brand new tool we should be 

 thinking much more seriously about, and that's, of course, the 

 World Wide Web. 



We now use it for E-mail and there's a lot of junk on there. But 

 we have to think as a community about setting up specific plat- 

 forms which will be useful to those very people you're talking about 

 which will connect them. 



We have the opportunity now to connect them to information and 

 to people directly in ways we never have been able to do before. 



I think the scientific community in general has to work with all 

 of the agencies to try to think through this smd how can we get this 

 information accessible to the whole country and everybody who 

 pays for it and everybody who needs it. 



And conversely, how can we feed their ideas through the same 

 mechanisms to government about things that they need? 



We have a great way of communicating that we haven't even 

 begun to exploit. 



Mr. Weldon. Thank you for your comments. 



I think, along that line, in terms of provoking the private sector, 

 I would agree with you totally. 



I can recall in the ten years I've been in this city that we've seen 

 a number of shows and demonstrations of technology relative to 

 outer space in the Cannon Caucus Room and the Capitol. I don't 

 remember any really kind of public demonstration of what we've 

 done in terms of the oceans. 



