7/30/2019 Little-Known Agency Draws Worldwide Interest (OTA)

1/2

Little-Known Agency Draws Worldwide Interest

By David Burnham

New York TimesJanuary 12, 1984

WASHINGTON, D.C. A tiny Federal agency with an extraordinary mandate has become a powerfulmagnet for government officials from all over the world.

In just the last year, for example, more than 100 visitors have come to Washington from 25 countriesincluding China, France, Indonesia, Denmark, Egypt, Britain, Brazil and Australia to find out how theagency works and what it produces.

The focus of all this international interest is an agency that is largely unknown to the Americanpeople, the Office of Technology Assessment. Created over 10 years ago as an arm of Congress, it wasgiven the difficult assignment of trying to anticipate, understand and describe how the world's new

technologies will effect the people, environment and institutions of the United States.In a world where dozens of powerful new chemicals, startling scientific discoveries, far-reachingcomputer systems, earth-shattering weapons and potent drugs present difficult new social problems onalmost a weekly basis, the challenge of this job is a major one, apparently of interest to both thedemocracies and the authoritarian states. The head of the agency, Dr. John H. Gibbons, visited theSoviet Academy of Sciences last spring to describe his agency's work.

Pressures From Congress

Dr. Gibbons is a 55-year-old physicist who has specialized in energy and environmental issues. With apermanent staff of 139 people and a $14.6 million budget that enables the agency to hire some 2,000outside experts a year to work on special projects, Dr. Gibbons is generally credited with guiding theagency out of difficult waters in its first few years, when it was buffeted by political pressures from

Congress."The problem is to keep the agency relevant to the political process but avoid partisan biases," he

said. "Our process of tapping national wisdom, stripped of bias and advocacy, has begun to make itsmark."

While many of the reports prepared by the OTA in the last few years have won wide praise, somecritics doubt the agency's work has much effect on the policy decisions made by the FederalGovernment on such volatile and complex subjects as acid rain, the financing of new missile systemsand improving the performance of the nation's schools.

"The need is not for more seers and forecasters," said Lawrence Tribe, a professor at Harvard LawSchool, one of the early advocates of technology assessment. "The real problem is to find ways to makesuch advice more salient."

Professor Tribe contended in an interview that the principle problem with OTA was outside itscontrol. "I think that to be effective, there would have to be a similar effort in the executive branch," hesaid. "Unfortunately, however, the last two or three administrations have gradually dismantled andpoliticized the scientific advisory machinery at the White House level so that the Congressional effortseems to make relatively little difference."

7/30/2019 Little-Known Agency Draws Worldwide Interest (OTA)

2/2

Representative George E. Brown Jr., Democrat of California who is a member of the agency's board,has a different concern. "There is no question that the office has escaped the controversy of its earlieryears and is now providing Congress with useful material, a distillation of the best knowledge on asubject and a list of policy options that Congress might adopt," he said. "But I am not sure that that iswhat we require, that rather than possible options, we need clear strategic advice."

A brief description of some of the agency's recent publications suggest the wide range of its concern.At the request of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, for example, the agency prepared a 151-page study, "The Effects of Nuclear War," which described the estimated casualties and destruction thatwould result from the explosion of nuclear bombs at various altitudes over Detroit and Leningrad. Thisauthoritative study has become one of the agency's most requested reports.

In a second study, undertaken for the House Committee on Education and Labor, the staff andconsultants of the OTA analyzed "Information Technology and its Impact on American Education,"describing the advantages and disadvantages of various possible actions Congress might consider inthis area to improve the performance of the nation's schools and their students.

At the request of several Congressional committees, the agency prepared a 331-page report entitled"Impacts of Applied Genetics." It described the process and potential effects of man's rapidly increasingability to manipulate the inherited characteristics of plants, animals and microorganisms.

In the agency's history, according to several staff members and others who have followed its history,the OTA has gone through several phases. At the beginning, under a former Connecticut Congressman,Emilio Q. Daddario, many of the staff members worked almost directly for the Senators and Housemembers who served on the agency's board, and most of its projects were directly related to thepolitical needs or these members.

Early Days of CriticismThen, Russell Peterson, a highly regarded industrial scientist who now is the president of the NationalAudubon Society, became the head of OTA. Mr. Peterson won the right to have complete control ofstaff appointments. But he ran into criticism from Congress because he tended to ignore requests forhelp on immediate problems and concentrate all of the agency's research on long-term projects.

Dr. Gibbons, it is generally agreed, has retained the right to hire his own staff while at the same timebecoming somewhat more responsive to the demands of Congressional committees for assistance onimmediate problems.

"OTA is doing good, sometimes excellent work," said Frank Press, the current head of the NationalScience Academy, a nonprofit organization that earns most its keep doing similar kinds of research forexecutive branch agencies such as the Energy Department. "The only reservation I have is that it hasbecome too popular with Congress and is not able to devote enough of its time to looking further intothe future at the very large technical questions."