GOVERNMENT
greatest health and environmental risks first. By May, EPA will carry out the 75 recommendations that have the greatest likelihood of achieving meaningful change. However, EPA staffers who took part in the agency's reinvention process recognize that the success of the program means a long-term, agencywide commitment to change, to swift responses to new challenges, and to holistic thinking. Success means nurturing a staff to ensure trust, and then empowering that staff "to identify problems and find better ways to do their jobs," says Browner. The Sierra Club's Washington, D.C.,
representative, Blakeman Early, is not impressed with EPA's whole effort. He is particularly not enamored with the agency's suggestions that urge a multimedia approach to regulation, which he says are "beyond reality." Much of EPA's exercise contains "ideological themes that have been around for a long, long time. The problem is translating them into actions that are doable, verifiable, and enforceable, and that result in maintaining protection of the environment at a lower cost. It's the age-old concept of translating the theoretical into practical realities. In this case, it's a collision with reality," contends Early. •
Congress' handling of science issues targeted The Carnegie Commission on Science, Technology & Government earlier this month closed out its six-year life with release of its 19th and final report. This one prescribes what Congress should do to cope with the profusion of technical issues that cry out for logic but to some eyes look like hash. The study couldn't come at a better time, since Congress is already deeply, but cautiously, into efforts to reinvent itself. The Joint Committee on the Organization of Congress, established in 1993, recently issued its own final report. And the House and Senate rules committees have begun hearings that will lead to legislation setting forth a formula for reorganizing and, possibly, streamlining the operations of their respective chambers. The question for the Carnegie Commission—or what's left of it—is whether anyone will, wants to, or should act on its ideas about simplifying committee structures, relationships, and budget procedures. Most lawmakers like having control over as many issues as possible—it helps with their visibility. But as the panel members see it, Congress must act, because urgent matters are getting more out of hand, more complex, more tension producing. Congress already knows its machine is only clanking along, or else it wouldn't be addressing reform. One example of stasis is reform of the national laboratories. For years it has been the dream of science and technology visionaries to convert the labs into knowledge factories for the civilian economy. But nothing spectacular has happened to change the labs' ori34
FEBRUARY 28, 1994 C&EN
entation because too many committees get into the act. Consider this. Over the remaining three years of the Clinton Administration, Congress will be debating a number of critical legislative issues that bear significant science and technology content: health reform; nuclear and chemical waste cleanup and other environmental matters of every ilk; better schools; energy policy; and the postCold-War technology needs of the military. And that's just for starters. So with science and technology pervading almost everything Congress does, the question is whether Congress is adequately organized to digest these issues and convert them into wise and practical legislation. The commission thinks not. It finds that "when it comes to science and technology policy, Congress is not well organized to address the broad spectrum of challenging issues it must face." What to do about that is addressed in the Carnegie report—"Science, Technology, and Congress—Organizational and Procedural Reforms." It couldn't have a drier title. But for those really interested in improving the mix of science and technology with the less rational world of politics, it does offer some reflective juices, if only to spur debate. It was produced by a panel chaired by the former Democratic Representative from Indiana, John Brademas, president emeritus of New York University. With the joint committee's report just out, and the rules committees of the Senate and House now working on
changes, the time seems right for the commission's ideas to have an impact. It will, however, take some lobbying. Much of that work will fall to Brademas. His job will be to ensure that the right lawmakers and staffers get, and read, copies of the commission's report. Copies were sent to every member of Congress, and a second wave of mailings—as reminders—will be made in a few weeks. Staffers for the pertinent committees have been contacted. The Senate Rules & Administration Committee has ordered 50 extra copies. Are the changes important? The commission, naturally, thinks so. But for the recommendations to have an effect, they have to be noticed. They have to become part of the debate over Congressional reorganization legislation now going on. Science and technology wasn't mentioned in the final report of the joint committee. It wasn't even an afterthought. The Joint Committee on the Organization of Congress' cochairmen— Sen. David L. Boren (D.-Okla.) and Rep. Lee H. Hamilton (D.-Ind.)—decided to steer clear of all issues other than those relating to physical reorganization needs. Brademas, however, may appear before the rules committees as they hold their respective hearings on the proposed changes. At the Feb. 14 Capitol Hill briefing on the report, Brademas said he had been on a lot of commissions in his time and "found service here without question one of the most enlightening of all." He underscored the importance of enabling Congress to deal with technical issues in a less piecemeal, less contradictory, more orderly way versus the current mechanism of dividing them up via various committees. Environmental legislation, for example, is handled by at least seven committees in the House. And the House Science, Space & Technology Committee, while having oversight of all federal R&D programs, actually has scant legislative authority over any of them. But, Brademas was asked, wouldn't concentrating science and technology into fewer committees make them a more inviting target for budget cutters? Wouldn't the opportunity for checks and balances be lessened by drawing the fence more closely around research and development? Brademas said that was an obvious danger, "but it's a trade-off." He added, "In our political system, the opportunities for checks
A prescription for Congress on science, technology issues The Carnegie Commission says Congress should: • Foster a robust and resilient science and technology base, articulate long-term goals for government programs. 1 Establish by legislation a private National Forum on Science & Technology Goals to monitor policies, track national objectives in science and technology. • Assign studies of issues that cut across several committees to Congressional support agencies, such as the Office of Technology Assessment, and schedule combined hearings to discuss them. * Improve communication between Congress and the executive branch in setting and monitoring important science and technology goals. • "Forge stronger links" between military and civilian policies and programs, many of which should no longer be separate.
and balances are already so many that the proposal we make is, I think, the wiser one." Sen. Larry Pressler (R.-S.D.), a supporter of science and technology, was at the briefing, too, and endorsed what the Carnegie report was trying to do. Pressler said he was dog tired and frustrated with the existing process. T m on 13 subcommittees," he said. "One of the things Fm interested in is teaming more small colleges with large universities. But it's hard to effect that policy with the complex committee structure we have." He said it was also difficult to allocate the Defense Department's substantial "dual-use" technology money to the proper civilian agencies. "I'd like to see Congressional reform. I'd like to be on only two committees." Political theorists will find the Carnegie report most wanting. They will see it as failing to draw on theories in political science that might lead to new thinking of how science and technology fit into the notion of the polity. None of the background papers commissioned by the panel touch the subject. David Z. Robinson, executive director of the commission and a physicist, tells C&EN that he doesn't believe a general field theory of science and
• Improve coordination between authorizing and appropriating committees. Also, divide science and technology issues among fewer appropriations subcommittees so that these issues can be handled "in a broader policy context." House and Senate leadership should enforce the changes. • Schedule floor debate on science and technology issues, as already happens with health, environmental, and education issues. • Move toward multiyear appropriations for important science and technology programs. • Create a pilot program to see how a two-year budget cycle would work. • Establish "accurate and consistent" funding categories for science and technology programs that serve major national goals. Categories should move unchanged through all stages of the budget process.
technology can ever be possible. "It's too complex," he comments. Yet there are such sciences as systems and complexity theory that just might contribute. The report makes no mention of them. In addition, it always has been the work of social and behavioral research to produce field theories that help guide perspective on how to think about science, technology, and policy. Theory, however, may be too arcane in a report directed at Congress, which in the current jargon, is "results oriented." Take, for example, the House Ways & Means Committee, which deals with tax issues. As the Carnegie report says, "Tax policy has a significant impact on science and technology, both directly (through R&D tax credits and other mechanisms) and indirectly (by affecting the availability of capital for research and development)." Yet, it goes on, "no mechanisms exist for relating the policies of the revenue committees to those of the authorizing committees and the appropriations committees responsible for science and technology." But on query from C&EN, one of the staff administrators said she hadn't seen the report, and couldn't identify with the problems described to her. Whenever conflict arises between, say,
the Ways & Means Subcommittee on Health and other Congressional subcommittees with the same jurisdiction, senior staff simply get together to iron them out, she explained. As for obtaining needed information, she believed the committee members and staff are savvy enough to know where to go and whom to ask for any information they want. The committee has access to a lot of outside experts, even when they aren't asked for any advice. Another Congressional staffer, interviewed by C&EN, commented: "You might ask whether this report is a civics class or whether it is a true reflection of how Congress really works. To me, it appears ethnocentric in its view of the world. There's a certain robustness to having science and technology spread around the different committees. In my opinion, this system has served the technical community well over the years. Attempts to change it could make it worse." It's informed opinions of that sort by Congressional committees confident and jealous of their power that really count and that will do most to inactivate whatever catalytic effects the Carnegie Commission and the rest of the science and technology establishment apply to its latest set of problems. What could also hurt the best Carnegie intentions is that individuals close to, but outside of the science and technology policy establishment—public interest and environmental activists—have never believed that the establishment has ever cared that much about applying its heart and expertise to solutions to human problems. This report is the last of three studies the Carnegie Commission did under Brademas on improving Congressional operations. The first, on the Congressional support agencies—the Office of Technology Assessment, General Accounting Office, Congressional Budget Office, and Congressional Research Service—was issued in 1991. The second, out last October, dealt with how communication-information technologies like teleconferencing and multimedia devices could help Congress do its work. That subject—putting Congress on the electronic information highway— really seems to be catching on. Both the Senate and House rules committees will hold hearings on the subject as they draft their reform legislation. Wil Lepkowski FEBRUARY 28, 1994 C&EN
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