May 2006

Rep. Holt Eying Further Legislative Effort to Create OTA Successor Agency for S&T Assessment, with IEEE-USA Support

By Barton Reppert

Rep. Rush Holt remains "intensely interested" in the need for providing Congress with better information on complex scientific and technical issues. According to his staff, the New Jersey Democrat is preparing once again to introduce legislation setting up a successor agency to the congressional Office of Technology Assessment (OTA).

IEEE-USA has previously issued several senior-level statements endorsing this type of legislation — and is ready to support Holt's new bill after it is introduced, although its realistic chances of passing both houses of Congress are rather slim, according to Russ Lefevre, IEEE-USA vice president for technology policy activities.

"IEEE-USA would strongly endorse any effort to institutionalize an organization to provide scientific and technical understanding to Congress," Lefevre said. "But my personal thought is that under the current leadership, I think it will be an uphill struggle."

OTA was defunded and thus forced to shut down in 1996, after the Republican leadership of Congress — with support from many of their rank-and-file GOP colleagues — took the position that OTA cost too much, spent too much time to perform full-fledged assessments, and tended to be too strongly allied with Democratic liberal forces on Capitol Hill.

On several previous occasions, Holt — a nuclear physicist and one of the few professional scientists serving in Congress — has introduced bills intended to revive OTA and to locate the resuscitated agency, rechristened the Center for Scientific and Technical Assessment (CSTA), within the Government Accountability Office (GAO), which mainly serves as an accounting and investigative arm of Congress.

Martin Sokoloski, a retired technology consultant based in Columbia, Md., and a member of IEEE-USA's Research and Development Policy Committee, assisted with drafting and follow-up activities involving one of Holt's bills while serving in the representative's office two years ago as a Congressional Science Fellow.

Sokoloski said the OTA revival bill was scheduled to have hearings before the House Science Committee in fall 2004, but the hearings were cancelled after Science Committee Chair Sherwood Boehlert (R-N.Y.), was hospitalized for open-heart surgery. The bill died at the end of 2004.

According to Sokoloski, a successful move to create a successor agency to OTA would require persuading a substantial number of Republican members of Congress to support the legislation. "That's the key. But most Republicans don't seem to be very enthusiastic one way or the other. You couldn't even say OTA [after Holt's previous bill was introduced], because that brought back memories of the past OTA. The Republicans did [OTA] in because they figured that the agency had turned into a huge bureaucracy, and it was politically oriented, more liberally oriented. So that's why we talked about the Center for Scientific and Technical Assessment residing in the Government Accountability Office."

Patrick Eddington, press secretary to Rep. Holt, commented: "He remains intensely interested. There's no question about that. Mr. Holt wants to see the Congress re-establish an independent capability to evaluate scientific and technological proposals and ideas. So, the commitment to do that is there. As far as the specifics on any [new] legislation, that's kind of in the category of stay tuned."

During the past several years, IEEE-USA has sent four letters to Holt and other members of Congress endorsing legislation to create an OTA successor agency — either Holt's proposed CSTA or a National Science and Technology Assessment Service (NSTAS), proposed as part of an energy bill by then-Sen. Ernest F. Hollings (D-S.C.).

The most recent letter, dated 7 October 2004, was sent on behalf of IEEE-USA together with seven other professional technical societies — the American Association of Engineering Societies (AAES); the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE); the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE); the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME); the Federation of Materials Societies (FMS); the National Society of Professional Engineers (NSPE); and the Optical Society of America.

In view of the unprecedented speed and complexity of technological development taking place around the globe, said the letter to Holt and then-Rep. Amo Houghton (R-N.Y.), "members of Congress, now more than ever, need to have access to objective, timely and sound science, engineering and technology-related assessment pertinent to legislation and the complex policy issues before them. The sheer volume and complexity of the technological data facing federal legislators necessitate some mechanism for balanced, non-partisan and technologically informed analysis provided in a judicious manner."

The letter contended that "a Center for Scientific and Technical Assessment as envisioned in H.R. 4670 would satisfy these criteria by operating under the highly respected Government Accountability Office (GAO), being overseen by a bipartisan, bicameral Technical Assessment Board (TAB) consisting of members of Congress and the comptroller general of the GAO, to provide non-partisan peer review of all CSTA reports."

Cliff Lau, chair of IEEE-USA's Research & Development Policy Committee, and a researcher with the Institute for Defense Analyses in Alexandria, Va., said he would not describe reviving OTA or creating a successor agency to it as a particularly high priority for IEEE-USA. "Inasmuch as we would like to see a group to provide unbiased advice to Congress based on sound technical evaluations, Congress is facing other issues, such as innovation and science and technology competitiveness, that are of higher priority to us and that demand our attention."

Lau added: "My view is that there is very little likelihood that Congress will pass legislation to re-establish OTA or something to serve a similar function. The congressional leadership has been opposed to such a step, and it is not likely that [their position] would be changed any time soon. I still think that Congress can use sound technical advice, untainted by special interests, in legislation concerning science and technology policy."

Joseph Coates, a Washington-based consulting futurist who formerly worked at OTA, said he saw little near-term prospect for reviving OTA or creating a successor congressional agency, saying "they've managed to politicize all the issues and make them a matter of party differences. The whole intent of OTA was to be able to provide all parties in the Congress with neutral, balanced, even-handed analysis."

Coates said that in the absence of OTA, Congress has had to draw upon sources of scientific and technical information which aren't really adequate — including the Congressional Research Service (CRS) and the National Academies.

Although OTA had its problems — including taking too long to carry out and deliver full assessments — Coates asserted: "OTA was the finest policy research agency in government, in Washington, ever … After its first year and a half, it was the best game in town."

Daryl Chubin, another former OTA staff analyst who now works as director of the Center for Advancing Science and Engineering Capacity, part of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Washington, looks back with a strong sense of satisfaction to his years with OTA.

"It was, as far as I'm concerned, the best professional experience of my life," Chubin said. "I spent seven years there. And the kinds of opportunities that we had to learn and to do things — not too many organizations would allow that."

At the same time, Chubin said that in the current Washington climate, where "everybody has got their spin," there may not be a viable market for serious, non-partisan, even-handed policy analysis such as turned out by OTA.

"Do I think that the state of science and tech policy would be better with an OTA? Absolutely. But I just don't think it could be resurrected … You could not recreate this agency today," he said.

Barton Reppert is a freelance science and technology writer specializing in S&T policy coverage. He previously worked for 18 years as a reporter and editor with The Associated Press in Washington, New York and Moscow. He can be contacted at barton.reppert@verizon.net.