Science and Public Policy: Agency Mission 41 



suggesting that an agency can or should ignore what is happen- 

 ing in other parts of the government, but neither can it afford 

 in the long run to lose contact with the field. Unlike the first 

 two areas I have mentioned, an agency in this area has little 

 concern with the total volume or rate of research. It is not 

 here concerned with stimulating fields which are in danger 

 of falling into scientific backwaters or with supporting a 

 volume of activity consistent with the advancing requirements 

 of its own technology. Rather its involvement might be de- 

 scribed as a "listening post" commitment, a kind of scientific 

 early warning device. This listening post activity can often 

 be best achieved through extramural support. The relevance of 

 the work is usually not sufficiently certain to justify the per- 

 manence of commitment which is entailed in intramural sup- 

 port. An agency must participate actively in the continuing 

 assessment of the significant prospects and implications of basic 

 research, and must assure its own capability to make prompt 

 and vigorous response to innovations made possible by the 

 combination of discoveries in widely different fields of science. 

 The lead time for the evolution of such discoveries into the 

 possibility of a system development is so long, that a high price 

 can and should be paid for the earliest possible forewarning 

 and appreciation of the significance of such discoveries. But 

 since payoff will be infrequent, the agency must select a low 

 level of participation in a broad range of scientific disciplines, 

 laying its emphasis on gaining entry to the highest quality work 

 and the most productive groups in each field of this type. 



The listening post type of activity requires a much more 

 creative role from scientific program officers than the mere ad- 

 ministration of a broad scientific program. They must be in 

 close scientific communication both with their contractors and 

 with the applied needs of their agency. Above all they must 

 have the time to think, to put their feet up on the table and 

 to speculate frequently on where their science and technology 

 are going. And they must have the time to travel into the field, 

 not only to see what is going on in the laboratories which they 



