Founded in 1863 by congressional charter, the National Academy of Sciences has a long history of serving as a scientific adviser. The Academy, which has a total membership of 4,800, also serves as an honorary institution to recognize distinguished members of the scientific community. Among other activities, the Academy also organizes symposiums, manages scientific databases, and serves as a clearinghouse for research. Throughout this report we use “Academy” to refer to the constituent members of the Academy complex: the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, the Institute of Medicine, and the National Research Council. In 1916, the Academy formed the National Research Council to broaden its committee membership to include non-Academy members and to oversee the Academy’s advisory activities. In a 1998 report, the Academy reported that committee membership consists of 55 percent from academia, 24 percent from industry, 9 percent from nonprofit institutions, and 12 percent from different levels of government. The National Academy of Engineering and the Institute of Medicine were established in 1964 and 1970, respectively, to recognize distinguished members in these fields and to provide more specialized advice in these areas. The Academy is organized by study units, which produce reports in the following topic areas: transportation, health and safety, science, commerce, natural resources, defense, space, education, and international affairs. (See table 1.) The Academy issued 1,331 committee reports from January 1993 to June 1997 and had an average annual budget of about $150 million. During those 5 years, most of its work was performed for the federal government, which provided the Academy with 87 percent of its revenue. (See fig. 1.) The Departments of Transportation, Energy, Health and Human Services, and the Army; the National Science Foundation; and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration have been its largest federal sponsors—amounting to 75 percent of the total revenues for 1993 to 1997. The Academy also advises state governments, private industry, and nonprofit institutions, but that work is limited by internal Academy guidelines. In addition, the Academy may use its endowment to fund self-initiated studies deemed critical by the Academy leadership. The Federal Advisory Committee Act Amendments of 1997 addressed concerns over the openness of the Academy’s procedures. Prior to the amendments, the Academy’s committee procedures included some openness. A 1975 policy document stated that committee meetings where data would be gathered were to be open to the public with advance notice given. Announcements of scheduled open meetings were published monthly in a newsletter by the Academy’s Office of Information. However, the study unit heads determined which projects would have scheduled and announced open meetings. Executive meetings and working meetings, referred to as deliberative sessions, would “not normally be open to the public.” A 1995 proposed change to the Academy’s public access policy, among other things, further defined the types of meetings that could be closed and applied the policy uniformly across the Academy’s major study units. This proposal was under consideration at the time the amendments were enacted. According to Academy officials, the Academy had three main concerns that caused it to seek relief from the Federal Advisory Committee Act: (1) the erosion of independence if the Academy was under the influence of sponsoring agencies, (2) the inability to recruit committee members if committee deliberations were open to the public, and (3) the burden of administrative requirements that would render the Academy unresponsive to the government. Paramount among these concerns was the Academy’s independence from the influence of sponsoring agencies. Under the act, a federal government officer or employee would have to chair or be present at every advisory committee meeting. This individual would have the power to adjourn the meeting “whenever he determines it to be in the public’s interest.” According to Academy officials, the Academy could lose sole authority in appointing committee members, and the Academy and committee members could be under pressure from a sponsoring agency to change a report during the drafting process. Under the act and GSA regulations, advisory committee meetings, including deliberative meetings, would be open to the public. However, the Academy opposed opening its deliberative meetings to the public because it believed that such an action could stifle open debate and criticism of ideas in those meetings. The Academy was also concerned that the independence of the committees’ deliberations and the Academy’s review process would be jeopardized by attempts of sponsors and special interest groups to bring political pressure to bear. Academy officials said that closed committee deliberations are fundamental for ensuring the independence of their studies and the scientific quality of their reports. Moreover, they stated, if draft reports were available to the public, the first draft would become the enduring impressions of a report, regardless of any changes made later. In addition, the President of the Academy said that it could be more difficult to recruit potential committee members in the future if deliberations were open to the public. We surveyed 12 current and former Academy committee members to obtain their views on whether or not they would serve on Academy committees if the deliberative meetings were open to the public. Two members said that they would serve, six said that their decision to serve would depend on the topic of study, and three said that they probably would not serve on a committee whose deliberations were open to the public. One member did not respond directly to the question but said that closed deliberative sessions encourage greater candor among the members. In addition, these members generally echoed the Academy officials’ views regarding the need for closed deliberative sessions. The three members who responded that they would probably not serve said that open deliberations could seriously jeopardize the quality of the reports. Two members said that Academy study committees might be difficult to staff if deliberations were open to the public. Eleven out of 12 respondents indicated that the Academy should retain the ability to close committee deliberations. Finally, the Academy was concerned that the amount of time and expense associated with implementing the act would render the Academy unresponsive to the government in general and to the Congress in particular. Of particular concern was the requirement under the act that each committee have a charter. Since the Academy is not a federal agency, the federal agency sponsoring the Academy study would prepare the charter and submit it for review by GSA. Academy officials estimated that the process would take between 6 and 12 months, on average, a length of time that an Academy official said would render the Academy unresponsive to the government’s requests for information. In addition, most of the Academy’s studies are funded by multiple agencies. Thus, the Academy was not certain which agency would be responsible for fulfilling the administrative requirements of the act. Academy officials also pointed out that applying the act to the Academy would more than double the number of committee charters that GSA would have to review each year. Prior to the enactment of the amendments of 1997, the Academy established a number of procedures for committee work that are intended to help ensure the integrity and the openness of committee activities. The procedures consist of the following phases: project formulation, committee selection, committee work, report review, and report release and dissemination. (See fig. 2.) According to Academy officials, the whole process can take anywhere from 4 months to 2 years (usually from 6 to 18 months). During the project formulation phase, the Academy assigns the project to a study unit. According to Academy guidance, the study unit is responsible for defining the scope of the project, leaving room for the committee to further define the study, and for developing the initial cost estimates. After the study unit approves the project, the Academy gives final approval for the project. Then a contract, grant, or cooperative agreement (depending on the sponsor) is drawn up and entered into with the agency. A permanent Academy staff member, referred to as the responsible staff officer, is assigned to organize and support the project. The staff officer is responsible for ensuring that institutional procedures and practices are followed throughout the study and that the study stays on schedule and within budget. According to the Academy’s documents, each project is conducted by a committee of subject matter experts who serve without compensation. Committee selection starts with suggestions from the sponsoring organization, members of the Academy, outside professional colleagues, and Academy staff. After review of the suggestions, the President of the Academy selects committee candidates. The Academy’s procedures require that each committee candidate fill out a form on his or her potential conflicts of interest. The form consists of five questions asking for the member’s relevant organizational affiliations, financial interests, research support, government service, and public statements and positions concerning the committee’s topic. We reviewed a sample (about 10 percent) of the 331 current committees to determine whether the forms had been filed and found that the Academy’s procedures were generally being followed. Under Academy procedures, 5 of the 30 committees selected were not required to file the conflict-of-interest forms because they were not subject to section 15 for various reasons. Of the remaining 25 committees, we found that almost all members (316 out of 341 or 93 percent) had forms on file. At the first meeting of every committee, the Academy’s procedures require a confidential discussion among committee members and project staff of potential conflicts of interest. If a conflict of interest is identified, the committee member may be asked to resign from the committee. If the Academy determines that the conflict is unavoidable, the Academy will make the conflict public and will retain the committee member. After this meeting, the executive director of the relevant study unit makes a tentative determination of whether the committee as constituted is composed of individuals with the requisite expertise to address the task and whether the points of view of individual members are adequately balanced such that the committee as a whole can address its charge objectively. Final approval of the committee membership, however, rests with the President of the Academy. Committees meet in data-gathering sessions that are generally open to the public and in deliberative sessions that are closed to the public.