0.13 The clinton years: 1993-2001  (Page 3/7)

Clinton and Vice President Al Gore were determined to integrate technology more closely with the economy. On February 23, 1993, they issued a technology-policy statement that barely mentioned universities and did not refer to science at all. The immediate reaction of the scientific community, which had become accustomed to hearing a succession of presidents proclaim the importance of basic research and the imperative for federal support, was one of chagrin, even outrage, with several scientists claiming that the Clinton administration was anti-science.

Clinton and Gore seem to have gotten the message. At Gibbons’s request, the National Academy of Sciences convened a Forum on Science in the National Interest in January 1994, proclaiming that it was “a milestone in shaping this Administration’s goals and strategies for science.” The results of the forum were published in August under the authorship of Clinton and Gore. President William J. Clinton and Vice President Albert Gore, Jr., Science in the National Interest (Washington, DC: Executive Office of the President, Office of Science and Technology Policy, August 1994).

In November 1995, the White House issued a follow-up to its February 1993 policy statement, again paying due respect to science. President William J. Clinton and Vice President Albert Gore, Jr., Technology and Economic Growth: Producing Real Results for the American People (Washington, DC: the White House, November 8, 1995).

The administration’s February 1993 faux pax notwithstanding, Clinton was moving decisively to manage the federal science and technology enterprise. On August 17, 1993, Gibbons and OMB director Leon Panetta issued a five-page memorandum to the heads of each cabinet department and independent agency ordering agencies to cease categorizing R&D in terms of basic research, applied research, and development in their annual budget requests, and to list priorities and describe how their requests were consistent with administration goals and the broader public good. According to the memorandum, “while these categories have some utility, they provide little information about their relevance to society…. Does the overall S&T budget reflect the kinds of priorities that it is meant to support, mainly the president’s overarching national goals?” Jeffery Mervis, “Clinton Moves to Manage Science,” Science (September 24, 1993), 1668-1669.

Another innovation was particularly problematic for agencies providing primary federal support for R&D and basic research. Reinventing Government , a study headed by Gore, resulted in a 1993 Act of Congress—the Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA)—which required organizations to work with OMB on a five-year performance plan that would then be submitted to the Congress along with the president’s budget request. Neal Lane, “U.S. Science and Technology: An Uncoordinated System Which Seems to Work,” Technology in Society 30 (August-November 2008), 251. Each plan was to be accompanied by a set of metrics that would help assess an agency’s progress in meeting its performance goals; annual reports based on these metrics were to be submitted to OMB and the Congress, beginning with the fiscal year 1999 budget. Although it was fairly straightforward for agencies charged with producing such tangible products as improved airport safety systems and better services to constituency groups to define quantitative metrics, agencies such as NSF and NIH, whose primary missions are to support basic research, were faced with a more difficult challenge. How, from year to year, were they to quantify the results of research they supported in non-government organizations if the tangible results of such research rarely if ever were visible in fewer than five or even ten years? (These agencies did, however, develop five-year plans and performance metrics to the satisfaction of both OMB and their congressional appropriations committees. Results of these annual evaluation reports for all federal organizations can be found at (External Link) . Five-year performance plans as well as results of annual evaluation reports can be found on the websites of many agencies, e.g., (External Link) . )