Drawing on NSF's expertise to make it the coordinating agency, Congress could instruct every research agency to develop a baseline of information. It could further direct the Office of Science and Technology Policy and the Office of Management and Budget to devise a plan to increase the reporting and use of agency data in the budget process, especially crosscutting information in priority research areas. The Federal Coordinating Council for Science, Engineering, and Technology has already been employed to carry out such analyses in the areas of global climate change, high-performance computing, and science and mathematics education. This mechanism seems to work, and could be more widely emulated. Because better data on the federal research system could be instrumental in the creation or refinement of research policies in the 1990s, it behooves researchers who serve as reviewers and consultants to federal agencies to scrutinize the empirical bases on which resource decisions are being made about their field.
Analysis can then raise questions about the information that decision makers have at their disposal.
Under almost any plausible scenario for the level of research funding in the 1990s, policymakers will address issues of planning, management, and progress toward national goals. Congress and the executive branch will continue to wrestle with scientific and other national priorities, as changing funding patterns and various pressures from both outside and within the scientific community test the federal research system. In such an environment, selective yet generous research funding will demand well-informed, coherent policies. Policies must respond to, and in some ways anticipate, the consequences of funding decisions on the research system. Improving both the measurement process and its routine use in setting research priorities can help to reveal opportunities and problems relevant to decision making at all levels of the federal government.