NATIONAL OCEANOGRAPHIC PROGRAM LEGISLATION 489 



Mr. Seidman. There are instructions given to the agencies each year 

 which provide the general g-uidance in terms of budget preparation; 

 the guidance is not in terms of specific monetary ceilings, but calls for 

 restraint and keeping down expenditures. The President has indi- 

 cated, I think quite explicitly, that agencies wherever feasible will 

 provide the resources to meet new requirements by either cutting out 

 programs which have outlived their usefulness or are of lower priority 

 or through savings. 



So agencies are all under the general instruction with respect to the 

 budget that they are to try to finance to the maximum extent possible 

 the priority programs, the new programs with resources which are de- 

 rived from savings out of the old programs. 



Mr. Drewry. And these are directed to the departments and then in 

 turn to the participants in the ICO, for instance ? 



Mr. Seidman. This goes to the department heads and these are in- 

 structions to all of the Government. 



I might say that you mentioned briefly that in the spring there is 

 always what we call the budget preview which gives some guidance to 

 the agency, where they come in generally and discuss programs. 



This year we tried something new ; we told them not to come in with 

 figures, but to discuss program objectives. One of our problems in 

 budget preparation frankly, is that very often programs are justified in 

 terms of the things you do as an incident toward accomplishing the 

 objective and not in terms of accomplishing the objective. In other- 

 words, you process so many pieces of paper ; the agency is not in busi- 

 ness to process paper; its objective is to promote the Nation's health or 

 improve transportation, or some other purpose. 



What we endeavored to do in the preview this year was tO' put the 

 whole emphasis on the outputs — what is the program, what are you 

 trying to accomplish — rather than on the inputs and the various things 

 you do in attempting to achieve the goal. 



Mr. Drewry. Then this process is a continuing one. We start off 

 with a beginning and as the ICO, for example, meets, then any new 

 ideas you have or as things develop generally, you 



Mr. Sexdman. This would come down through the agencies that are- 

 members of the ICO rather than the ICO as a whole. I mean each 

 one of the agencies who is a participant in the ICO would have tliis 

 instruction and would discuss oceanography as well as their other 

 agency programs with the Budget Bureau. 



Mr. Drewry. On this guideline question you mentioned in your 

 statement the difficulty of 



Mr. Seidman. I might add, Mr. Drewry, because I think it might be 

 of interest to the committee here, of course, the budget is presented by 

 agency in the appropriation structure, so many of them necessarily 

 have to be considered agency by agency. Again, because of this 

 problem we have in the science area, in the Director's review where 

 the Director decides what he is going to recommend to the President, 

 we do have across-the-board review sessions, not by agency, in the field 

 of science, including oceanography and other science programs such 

 as high energy physics. In other words, we have a cross-cutting 

 science directors' review to try again to look at the science programs 

 of all of the agencies as a whole. 



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