OCEANOGRAPHY 1961 — PHASE 3 219 



national welfare. Your committee is charged with reviewing the Na- 

 tion's oceanographic assets, evaluating oceanographic progress, and 

 providing through the Congress appropriate policy guidance for this 

 rapidly developing program. 



If your committee is to carry out these functions effectively, it must 

 have some responsible agency to which it can look for authoritative 

 and comprehensive information on the status of the program and 

 through which it can establish the degree of accomplishment or lack 

 of accomplishment. Unless some centralized agency is made respon- 

 sible for the program, the problems confronting your committee in 

 providing effective congressional guidance are likely to prove unsur- 

 mountable. There must, in other words, be program accountability, 

 for without program accountability there can be no assurance that 

 adequate progress is being achieved. 



The proposed National Oceanographic Council would in my opin- 

 ion constitute an agency which could appropriately be held account- 

 able for program performance. It would have the requisite statutory 

 basis and would be constituted at a level at which accountability could 

 be exacted. It would have continuing responsibility and clearly de- 

 fined relationships not only with existing agencies but with the Con- 

 gress. In this respect the proposed Oceanographic Act of 1961 would 

 provide a reasonable means for your committee to carry out its re- 

 sponsibilities on a continuing basis and in so doing would overcome 

 a major deficiency existing m program organization at the present 

 time. 



The accountability provisions of the bill before you would be 

 strengthened, however, if membership on the proposed National 

 Oceanographic Council were expanded to include eveiy department 

 and independent agency participating in oceanographic endeavors to 

 any significant extent. 



The Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, an important 

 participant in oceanography through its Public Health Service and 

 its Office of Education, is not in the bill proposed for membership on 

 the Council, even though many of the projects carried out under its 

 auspices are essential to the overall oceanographic program. Its pro- 

 gram participation, moreover, is expanding, from $340,000 in 1960 ta 

 $699,000 in 1961 and $1,150,000 in 1962. The Smithsonian Institu- 

 tion also will have an important oceanographic role if the provisions 

 of section 9 in the bill before you are implemented. There would be 

 considerable merit, therefore, in adding both of these agencies to Coun- 

 cil membership by amending the provisions of section 2 of the bill 

 accordingly. 



These comments on Council membership have been limited thus far 

 to agency representation on the Council. I should like to now raise 

 briefly the question of whether the level of representation should be 

 held to Cabinet officers and the heads of independent agencies. 



All of these officials, with possibly one exception, and here, ]\Ir. 

 Chairman, I have in mind the Director of the National Science Foun- 

 dation, have so many major responsibilities Avhich are rather far re- 

 moved from oceanography that they cannot as a practical matter be 

 expected to devote any significant portion of their time to oceano- 

 graphic matters, or to have more than broad familiarity with the 

 oceanographic projects prosecuted under their overall jurisdiction. 



