America COMPETES Acts: Overall Appropriations Have Increased and Have Mainly Funded Existing Federal Research Entities
Released: 2013-07-19T00:00:00

Letter

Background

In response to a congressional request in 2005, the National Academies gathered a group of business, government, and academic leaders to identify steps the leaders thought would ensure that the United States is a leader in science and engineering and can compete, prosper, and be secure in the twenty-first century. The resulting 2007 report, entitled Rising above the Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future, recommended a number of specific actions to address these goals.increasing federal investment in long-term basic and cross-disciplinary scientific research, creating an agency within DOE to support transformational energy research that might be high risk but could also provide dramatic benefits for the nation, increasing the number and skills of science and mathematics teachers in primary and secondary schools, and investing in higher education with the goal of increasing the number of undergraduate and graduate students with degrees in science, engineering, and mathematics fields. The COMPETES Acts addressed some of the actions in these areas. For example, COMPETES 2007 authorized creation of the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy in DOE to overcome long-term and high-risk technological barriers in developing energy technologies, and it authorized programs in Education and NSF to train teachers in STEM fields.

Among other things, the report advocated Investments in scientific research have led to significant advances such as the development of the Internet, satellites, aircraft, and the mapping of the human genome, while investments in STEM education have provided multiple forms of support for developing a highly qualified STEM workforce. However, evaluations of such investments face inherent challenges, such as those related to the long-term nature of many scientific research projects, an inability to predict certain outcomes, and difficulty tying specific investments to direct outcomes. As we reported in 2012, evaluations of STEM education programs may be hindered by inconsistent collection of output data, such as the number of institutions or students directly served by programs.effectiveness of investments in scientific research and STEM education in improving U.S. competitiveness—the overall goal of the COMPETES Acts—are complicated by a number of factors. For example, it is difficult to measure competitiveness. The Council on Competitiveness, a group of business, academic, and labor leaders focused on ensuring U.S. prosperity, reported that traditional measures of competitiveness, such as trade balances, levels of foreign direct investment, employment, or wages Further, efforts to evaluate the may not fully capture a nation’s competitiveness because of the complexities brought about by multinational corporations competing in constantly shifting global networks. Further, complications arise from ambiguities surrounding the term competitiveness, which has multiple definitions.

Efforts are under way to address some of these challenges. For example, STAR Metrics—Science and Technology for America’s Reinvestment: Measuring the Effect of Research on Innovation, Competitiveness, and Science—is a partnership between science agencies and research institutions to consistently document the outcomes of federally funded science investments. In addition, the National Science and Technology Committee on STEM Education within the Office of Science and Technology Policy collects and maintains information on how investments in STEM education are distributed across agencies, programs, and target groups. The committee compiled a comprehensive inventory of STEM education programs across the federal government in 2011 and released a 5-year federal STEM education plan in May 2013 to establish a strategy for focusing federal STEM education investments so they have the most significant impact possible on national priorities.

As we reported in 2010 when we reviewed COMPETES 2007, agencies collect data and use different approaches to evaluate their progress NSF, DOE, Commerce, and Education use toward long-term outcomes.several tools—which may either broadly assess agency-wide activities or focus on program-level activities—to evaluate their scientific research and STEM education activities. Such tools include the following: advisory committees, such as NSF’s committees that exist for each directorate—for example, the Education and Human Resources Advisory Committee provides advice, guidance, and recommendations concerning NSF’s science and engineering education programs; performance reviews, such as Commerce’s Annual Performance and Accountability Reports, which provide data on performance measures for NIST including the number of publications produced, or the Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy’s (ARPA-E) quarterly technical milestone reviews of funded projects, which help reviewers decide if project funding should be continued;

Committees of Visitors, such as those used by NSF, Science and NIST, which are groups of external experts that assess the overall quality of program operations and, in some cases, program outcomes; and formal program evaluations, which are systematic, empirical studies used by agencies to assess how well a particular program or component of a program is working.

Appropriations Generally Increased but Fell Short of Authorizations, and Most Newly Authorized Programs Were Not Funded

Of the $62.2 billion authorized under the COMPETES Acts in fiscal years 2008 through 2012, $52.4 billion was appropriated, including $51.9 billion for the entire budgets of NSF, Science, and NIST. Funding for these three entities accounts for more than 99 percent of the funding appropriated under the COMPETES Acts during this period. (See fig. 1.)

Appropriations for NSF, Science, and NIST generally increased in fiscal years 2008 through 2012 but did not reach authorized levels. For example, NSF’s appropriations increased from about $5.9 billion in fiscal year 2007—the last year before its appropriation was authorized under the COMPETES Acts—to about $7 billion in fiscal year 2012, when it was authorized to receive $7.8 billion. Appropriations for Science, which were authorized under the COMPETES Acts starting in fiscal year 2010, increased from $4.8 billion in fiscal year 2009 to about $4.9 billion in fiscal year 2012, when Science was authorized to receive $5.6 billion. Likewise, funding for NIST increased but not to authorized levels: in fiscal year 2007, before its appropriation was authorized under the COMPETES Acts, it received about $680 million, compared with $750 million in fiscal year 2012, when NIST was authorized to receive about $970 million. In addition, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Recovery Act) appropriated about $5.2 billion to these entities in fiscal year 2009. The majority of the Recovery Act appropriations—over $3 billion—went to NSF. Figure 2 shows the amounts authorized under the COMPETES Acts for NSF, Science, and NIST, as compared with the amounts appropriated, including Recovery Act appropriations.

The COMPETES Acts also specifically authorized funding for 40 individual programs, including some programs within and some outside of NSF, Science, and NIST. (See app. II.) For example, in addition to authorizing $22.1 billion for the entire budget of NSF in fiscal years 2008 through 2010, COMPETES 2007 specifically authorized $345 million of that total for NSF’s Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program in fiscal years 2008 through 2010. The programs not within NSF, Science, or NIST fell elsewhere within the Departments of Commerce and Energy, or in Education.

Among the 40 programs for which the COMPETES Acts specifically authorized funding, the 12 programs that existed before the acts all received appropriations and continue to operate. Six of the 28 newly authorized programs also received appropriations. Of these 6 programs, 1—ARPA-E—is continuing operations, 3 did not receive appropriations in fiscal year 2012, and 2 are in the process of being implemented as of May 2013. More specifically, according to officials NSF’s Science Master’s Program, NIST’s Technology Innovation Program, and Education’s Teachers for a Competitive Tomorrow did not receive appropriations in fiscal year 2012. Officials told us the Science Master’s Program and the Technology Innovation Program are in the process of shutting down, and Teachers for a Competitive Tomorrow has not awarded new grants since fiscal year 2010. Further, Commerce’s Loan Guarantees for Science Park Infrastructure and Federal Loan Guarantees for Innovative Technologies in Manufacturing are in the process of being implemented, according to Commerce officials; these programs first received appropriations in fiscal year 2012. Twenty-two of the 28 newly authorized programs did not receive appropriations, including 9 programs that were newly authorized in COMPETES 2007 but repealed in COMPETES 2010.

In total, 16 of the 40 programs for which the COMPETES Acts specifically authorized funding have been implemented, including the 12 previously existing programs, ARPA-E, and the 3 newly authorized programs that did not receive appropriations in fiscal year 2012. As noted previously, two other newly authorized programs that received appropriations are in the process of being implemented. As shown in figure 3, the implemented programs generally focus on five areas: (1) research and development programs focus on activities aimed at enhancing scientific research and development,(2) manufacturing performance programs focus on supporting innovation among U.S. manufacturers and other organizations,(3) STEM teacher training programs focus on education and professional development for prospective or existing STEM teachers, (4) STEM undergraduate programs focus on encouraging or improving undergraduate STEM education, and (5) STEM graduate programs focus on supporting graduate students training for careers in research or education in STEM disciplines.

With few exceptions, agency officials told us they did not include funding requests in their budget submissions for the programs that did not receive funding. Agencies did include funding requests in their budget submissions for 4 of the 22 newly authorized programs that did not receive funding. Specifically, Education requested appropriations for the Math Now program in fiscal years 2008 and 2009 and for the Foreign Language Partnership and Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate programs in fiscal year 2009, while Commerce requested appropriations in fiscal year 2012 for the Regional Innovation Program. For the other 18 programs, officials most often told us they did not request appropriations because their agencies already had similar programs under way or could work within current programs to carry out similar activities. For example, Science officials told us the office did not request appropriations for the Discovery Science and Engineering Innovation Institutes because the program’s implementation would have duplicated existing activities. Commerce officials told us that the department’s Economic Development Administration implemented certain aspects of the Regional Innovation Program (RIP) through the existing Economic Adjustment Assistance program when RIP did not receive appropriations. However, the officials also noted that by implementing aspects of RIP in this manner they have reduced funding available to other worthwhile aspects of the Economic Adjustment Assistance program. In other cases, officials told us they did not request appropriations because the programs did not fit into the agency mission or because the agencies prioritized other programs in light of limited resources or other factors.

Recent Evaluations Generally Suggest Positive Results and Some Recommend Improvements for Implemented Programs

Recent evaluations that we identified have generally suggested positive results for the fully implemented programs for which the COMPETES Acts specifically authorized funding; some of the evaluations have also recommended ways to improve the programs. Recent evaluations have been conducted for 15 of 16 fully implemented programs. According to NSF officials, no evaluation of the Science Master’s Program was published during 2008-2012, which is the time frame of evaluations included in our review. These evaluations have provided information on how well programs—or aspects of programs—were working in each of the five areas on which the programs focus. Many studies have also made recommendations for program improvement. Following are examples of selected evaluations and key findings for programs in the five focus areas:

Research and development. Studies for these programs found that they were generally producing positive results and noted areas for continued improvement. For example, one study used econometric modeling to examine the effects of the Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research, which aims to improve the research and development capacity of participating states. The results suggested participating states have been effective in growing federal financial support for science and engineering at a faster rate compared with nonparticipating states. However, the authors noted that while the effect they found was statistically significant, it was a small effect. They concluded that more enhanced and innovative efforts are needed to sustainably build states’ research and development capacity. In another example, our 2012 review of ARPA- E found that it successfully funded projects that would not have been funded solely by private investors, in keeping with its goals.

Manufacturing Extension Partnership, Delivering Measurable Results to Manufacturing Clients: Fiscal Year 2009 Results (Washington, D.C.: March, 2011). These findings were based on MEP surveys of program clients; fewer than 50 percent of respondents reported that MEP had an impact on sales, investment levels, jobs created, or jobs retained. A majority of client respondents did report cost savings in areas such as labor, materials, inventory, and energy.

Jennifer Carney et al., Evaluation of the National Science Foundation’s Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship Program (IGERT): Follow-Up Study of IGERT Graduates (Arlington, VA: February 2011). experience positively contributed to their ability to finish their PhDs. A majority of respondents (94 percent) also reported that the IGERT experience helped them obtain their current work positions. An exploratory analysis comparing IGERT graduates with non-IGERT graduates from similar academic departments found no significant difference between the graduates in securing employment, but they did find that IGERT graduates reported a greater interest in interdisciplinary education or research training.

Agency Comments and Our Evaluation

We provided a draft of this report to Commerce, DOE, Education, and NSF for comment. Commerce’s Economic Development Administration did not have any comments on the draft. Commerce’s NIST provided written comments, which are reproduced in appendix III, along with our response. On behalf of NIST, the Secretary of Commerce stated that the draft, as scoped, does not fully capture the significant positive impact that the COMPETES Acts have had on NIST. As noted in our response in appendix III, the scope of our review is based on a mandate in COMPETES 2010 that calls for GAO to evaluate the extent to which programs authorized under the law have been funded, implemented, and are contributing to achieving the goals of the act. Our report addresses the total appropriations to NIST in fiscal years 2008 through 2012 in objective 1. To satisfy the needs of our congressional clients, we focused our review on programs for which the COMPETES Acts specifically authorized funding. DOE provided technical comments, which we incorporated as appropriate. Education did not have any comments on the draft. NSF provided technical comments, which we incorporated, as appropriate.

We are sending copies of this report to the Secretaries of Commerce, Education, and Energy; the Director of NSF; the appropriate congressional committees; and other interested parties. In addition, the report is available at no charge on the GAO website at http://www.gao.gov.

If you or your staff members have any questions about this report, please contact me at (202) 512-3841 or ruscof@gao.gov. Contact points for our Offices of Congressional Relations and Public Affairs may be found on the last page of this report. GAO staff who made key contributions to this report are listed in appendix IV.

Appendix I: Scope and Methodology

To inform our objectives, we reviewed our October 2010 report on agency obligations under the America Creating Opportunities to Meaningfully Promote Excellence in Technology, Education, and Science Act of 2007 (COMPETES 2007) and the steps agencies were taking to evaluate implemented programs under COMPETES 2007. We also reviewed relevant laws, including COMPETES 2007 and the COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2010 (COMPETES 2010), and we interviewed agency officials from the National Science Foundation (NSF); the Department of Energy (DOE), including the Office of Science (Science) and the Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy (ARPA-E); the Department of Commerce (Commerce), including the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the Economic Development Administration; and the Department of Education (Education).

To determine the extent to which funding was appropriated under the authorization of the COMPETES Acts, we reviewed the laws and identified the entities and programs for which the acts specifically authorized funding. To determine the extent to which funding was actually provided to such entities and programs, we reviewed annual appropriations data in Congressional Research Service reports and agency budget justification documents, and confirmed these data with agency officials. Agency officials were not able to provide complete appropriations data at the program level. Complete final appropriations data for fiscal year 2013 were also not available. We interviewed agency officials to learn about the status of programs that received funding. We also asked agency officials which programs were included in annual budget requests and why other programs were not included in those requests.

To examine what the results of evaluations suggest about how the programs for which the COMPETES Acts specifically authorized funding are working, we identified and reviewed a selection of recent studies that evaluated these programs. To identify these evaluations, we conducted a literature review and interviewed agency officials. Specifically, we conducted a literature search in databases such as ProQuest, SciSearch, and Academic One to search for recent reports or publications that evaluated programs authorized by the COMPETES Acts. We conducted an initial review of the summaries of the reports or publications returned in our literature search and provided by agencies, and we excluded those that did not appear to evaluate how well programs were working and were not published in 2008-2012. We included studies published from 2008 through 2012; in some cases, these studies included data on program activities that occurred before 2008. We reviewed the methodology of the identified studies and reported on the results of those we determined to be methodologically sound and reliable for the purposes of our report. We included the results of 21 studies covering 13 programs in our review. We reported findings on a select number of programs and evaluations based on the following criteria: (1) we included programs that received federal funding in fiscal year 2012 and are continuing operations as of May 2013 and (2) for each focus area, we chose programs with the most recent evaluations and included up to two of the most recent studies for those programs. Some agencies provided us with performance reviews and other reports containing performance measurements that we did not include in our review of evaluations. When drafting our report, we provided agency officials with information on the studies to be included. We determined focus areas for implemented programs based on agency information about the purposes and goals of those programs. We also interviewed officials from departments, agencies, and program offices with authorized funding under the COMPETES Acts, including representatives from NSF’s Education and Human Resources Directorate, Engineering Directorate, and Office of Integrative Activities; Energy’s Science and ARPA-E; Commerce’s NIST and Economic Development Administration; and Education’s Office of Postsecondary Education.

We conducted this performance audit from October 2012 to July 2013 in accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards. Those standards require that we plan and perform the audit to obtain sufficient, appropriate evidence to provide a reasonable basis for our findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives. We believe that the evidence obtained provides a reasonable basis for our findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives.

Appendix II: Programs for Which the COMPETES Acts Specifically Authorized Funding

Figure 4 below shows the 40 programs for which the America Creating Opportunities to Meaningfully Promote Excellence in Technology, Education, and Science (COMPETES) Act of 2007 or the COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2010 specifically authorized funding.

Appendix III: Comments from the Department of Commerce

GAO Comments

1. The scope of our review is based on a mandate in the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2010 (COMPETES 2010) that calls for GAO to evaluate the extent to which programs authorized under the law have been funded, implemented, and are contributing to achieving the goals of the act. Our report addresses the total appropriations to NIST in fiscal years 2008 through 2012 in our first objective. To satisfy the needs of our congressional clients, we focused our review on programs for which COMPETES 2010 and the America Creating Opportunities to Meaningfully Promote Excellence in Technology, Education, and Science Act of 2007 (COMPETES 2007) specifically authorized funding. 2. Our draft report notes that the Baldrige Performance Excellence Program is currently operating using private funds, according to agency officials. We clarified in our footnote that the program remains authorized to receive funding. We did not include information about funding for fiscal year 2013 because that is beyond the scope of our review. 3. The scope of our review includes program evaluations published from 2008 through 2012. The draft report includes the findings from the Manufacturing Extension Partnership’s (MEP) fiscal year 2009 client impact survey, which was the most recent survey published in our time frame. The results of the MEP 2011 client impact survey, which was published in March 2013, were outside the scope of our review. 4. To identify the evaluations we included in our analysis, as described in appendix I, we conducted a literature search and asked the agencies to provide evaluations of the programs that were published from 2008 through 2012. We conducted an initial review of the summaries of the reports or publications identified and excluded those that did not appear to evaluate how well programs were working. Based on the summary of the publication cited in NIST’s letter, we concluded it was not in our scope, and it was not included in the selection of studies we reported on. When drafting our report, we provided agency officials with information on the studies to be included, and Commerce officials did not bring this publication to our attention at that time. However, upon receiving NIST’s comments, we reviewed our criteria for identifying studies, and we continue to believe that our approach to identifying and selecting studies was appropriate. 5. We believe figure 4 clearly communicates the authorization of funding for the Technology Innovation Program (TIP) under COMPETES 2007. Figure 4 also shows that TIP did not receive appropriations in fiscal year 2012, and that the program is not currently operating. Further, in the body of our report, we say that according to agency officials TIP is in the process of shutting down. We do not provide information about fiscal year 2014 because that is outside the scope of our review.

Appendix IV: GAO Contact and Staff Acknowledgments

GAO Contact

Staff Acknowledgments

In addition to the individual named above, Karla Springer (Assistant Director), Nicole Dery, Cindy Gilbert, Michael Kendix, Cynthia Norris, Marietta Mayfield Revesz, and Barbara Timmerman made key contributions to this report.