Rising Above the Gathering Storm Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future (2007) / Chapter Skim
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Understanding Trends in Science and Technology Critical to US Prosperity
Understanding Trends in Science and Technology Critical to US Prosperity
Pages 444-454
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From page 444... ...
emergence during the 1980s of Japanese companies in high-technology fields, such as microelectronics, robotics, and advanced materials. Policy-makers proposed that regular efforts to identify the technologies likely to underlie future economic growth and to assess the relative international standing of the United States in those technologies would yield information useful for making investment decisions.
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From page 445... ...
Many of the early assessments looked at Japanese capabilities and were performed by US or international panels.1 In the late 1980s, the Japan Technology Evaluation Center started as an interagency federal initiative managed by SAIC; it evolved into an NSF-contracted center at Loyola College of Maryland and is now an independent nonprofit known as WTEC, Inc.2 WTEC assessments cover a variety of countries and fields and are undertaken on an ad hoc basis. They are funded by the federal agencies most interested in the specific field being assessed.
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From page 446... ...
In addition, the Bureau of Industry and Security of the US Department of Commerce undertakes assessments of the US industrial and technology base in areas considered important for national defense.5 These assessments often take into account international competitiveness. Possible federal action includes the following: • Establish a system to conduct regular international benchmarking assessments of US research to provide information on the world leadership status of key fields and subfields of scientific and technological research.
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From page 447... ...
Report of the National Critical Technologies Panel. Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1991.
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Testimony before the Research Subcommittee of the Committee on Science of the United States House of Representatives. Hearing on "Nanotechnology: Where Does the US Stand?
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From page 449... ...
Testimony before the Research Subcommittee of the Committee on Science of the United States House of Representatives. Hearing on "Nanotechnology: Where Does the US Stand?
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From page 450... ...
Each of the 27 areas was identified on a competitive scale ranging from lagging to leading, and each area was then compared with Europe and Japan.11 Over the 1990s, the RAND Corporation played an increasingly important role in the preparation of the NCTRs. RAND assisted with the background research for the 1993 report and was a co-author of the 1995 report with OSTP.12 The 1998 critical-technologies report was prepared by RAND with little involvement of OSTP.13 This report, which refocused the study specifically on input from the private sector, identified five critical sectors of technology: software, microelectronics and telecommunications technologies, advanced manufacturing, materials, and sensor and imaging technologies.14 After the release of the 1998 report, the legal requirement for OSTP to prepare the NCTR was removed.
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SOURCE: Office of Science and Technology Policy. "National Critical Technologies List, March 1995." Available at: http:// clinton1.nara.gov/White_House/EOP/OSTP/CTIformatted/AppA/appa.html.
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From page 452... ...
For example, during the 1990s, information technologies were widely deployed throughout the US economy and played a major role in a surge of US innovation, yet this process was captured poorly, if at all, by traditional indicators of research and innovation. Except for statistics on formal R&D spending, patents, and some aspects of science and engineering education, innovation-related data are extremely limited.20 Among the steps the federal government could take to improve data collection and analysis are the following: • Mandate that OSTP prepare a regular report on innovation that would be linked to the federal budget cycle.21 The goal of the report would be to give the government and the public a clear sense of how federal support for R&D fits into the larger national economic system and how both are linked to an increasingly international process of innovation.
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From page 453... ...
.23 NSF needs to continue to collect the additional data items that are readily available in the defense agencies and expand collection of civilian data that would permit users to construct data series on FS&T expenditures in the same manner as the FS&T presentation in the president's budget documentation. • Overhaul the field-of-science classification system to take account of changes in academic research, including interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary research.24 It has been some three decades since the field-of-science classification system has been updated, and the current classification structure no longer adequately reflects the state of science and engineering fields.
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From page 454... ...
454 RISING ABOVE THE GATHERING STORM • NSF should increase the analytic value of its data by improving comparability and linkages among its data sets and between its data and data from other sources, such as the US census.27 • SRS should develop a long-term plan for its Science and Engineering Indicators publication so that it is smaller, more policy-focused, and less duplicative of other SRS publications.28 SRS also should substantially reduce the time between the reference date and data release of each of its surveys to improve the relevance and usefulness of its data. 27Committee on National Statistics, 2004.
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