RSPA has both legislative and departmental responsibilities for coordinating and evaluating DOT’s research and development programs, which, in fiscal year 2002, amounted to about $1 billion. The Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century (TEA-21) made DOT responsible for establishing a strategic plan for surface transportation research. The plan is to include a discussion of efforts to coordinate federal surface transportation research and technology development activities to avoid unnecessary duplication of effort. It also is to contain a description of program evaluations and a schedule for future evaluations of DOT research projects, among other things. DOT policy delegates the responsibility for meeting this and other legislative mandates related to research and development activities to RSPA’s Associate Administrator as chair of the department’s Coordinating Council. Moreover, DOT policy requires RSPA’s Associate Administrator, through the Coordinating Council, to coordinate all research activities by developing processes for sharing information about research and technology and reviewing the status of all research and technology projects throughout DOT. RSPA’s Office of Innovation, Research, and Education had nine full-time employees and a budget of about $560,000 for fiscal year 2003. In addition to coordination and evaluation duties, RSPA manages and supports a variety of other programs for the department, including its Technology Transfer and Technology Sharing Programs, Small Business Innovation Research Program, and University Transportation Centers Program. RSPA also conducts research on multimodal issues that affect the U.S. transportation system as a whole in contrast to the other operating administrations within DOT that focus on specific sectors of the U.S. transportation system. In fiscal year 2003, RSPA conducted and managed four major multimodal research programs. Participants in RSPA’s multimodal research programs include stakeholders from the departments’ operating administrations; other federal departments and agencies; state departments of transportation; private and state universities; private-sector partners; and various consortia. (See app. I for a listing of project stakeholders and researchers involved in RSPA’s multimodal research programs.) Although RSPA has developed an annual plan and taken other steps to facilitate research coordination, it has not fully met legislative and DOT requirements for coordinating departmental research. Figure 1 summarizes these requirements and the extent to which RSPA has met them. RSPA has met its legislative requirement under TEA-21 to develop an annual surface transportation research and technology development plan to coordinate and document research efforts. The plan covers not only surface transportation but also air and maritime. Now in its fourth edition, the plan discusses state and local transportation research activities; describes each operating administration’s mission; and conveys priorities for the department’s research activities, including identifying examples of research programs that are necessary to achieve the department’s strategic goals. According to the Associate Administrator, the plan is an important resource for the department’s budget and program deployment processes and helps to avoid unnecessary duplication of research among the operating administrations. In March 2000, the National Research Council, acting through the Transportation Research Board (TRB), assessed DOT’s strategic planning process, including the first edition of its research plan, and generally commended RSPA’s efforts in coordinating the department’s research activities. In September 2001, we reported that the department’s research plan achieved a number of important strategic functions, including supporting the department's budget and program development process, conveying priorities, linking research and development initiatives occurring throughout the department to specific strategic goals, and focusing on research and technology needs that concern the department as a whole. However, upon reviewing the fiscal year 2003 research plan, we found that it does not summarize results of the previous year’s surface transportation research programs. Such a summary is also absent from the department’s overall performance plan and reports, where it is required by TEA-21. Since the explicit intent of the research plan is to focus the department’s research efforts, and the department is required to gather summary information on the previous years’ research results, this information could provide continuity and context for observations about planned research for future years. The research plan is the culmination of monthly Coordinating Council meetings in which the Associate Administrator meets with members from each of DOT’s operating administrations as well as representatives from DOT’s Office of Policy, Office of Budget, Office of Intelligence and Security, and Office of Intermodalism. These meetings also serve as a means to fulfill the legislative requirement to coordinate surface transportation research and technology development and the DOT requirement to coordinate research across all modes within DOT. Agendas and minutes from these meetings indicate that the Coordinating Council’s discussions involve research processes, procedures, policy, and presentations from council members and guest speakers. According to the Associate Administrator, these meetings further provide a forum for networking among DOT researchers, a venue for DOT operating administrations to learn about each other’s research, and an opportunity for information sharing and technology transfer. In addition, in instances where research has multimodal applicability, the Associate Administrator said RSPA staff and representatives from the other operating administrations have been active in sharing information through working groups, such as the Human Factors Coordinating Committee, which shares information on research conducted by each of the operating administrations focusing on identifying ways to better manage human operator fatigue. RSPA does not fully meet its legislative requirement to coordinate surface transportation and technology development activities because it does not review all surface transportation research projects to determine whether surface transportation researchers within DOT are unnecessarily duplicating research efforts. A similar DOT requirement broadens this responsibility to make RSPA responsible for reviewing the status of all research projects throughout DOT for the same purpose. In its March 2000 report, TRB reported the absence of information on the current status of all DOT research programs in the department’s annual research plan. We discovered that this information also remained absent from DOT’s fiscal year 2003 research plan. The Associate Administrator said that RSPA lacked (1) readily accessible data on the research activities of other parts of DOT and (2) the staff and resources to review all research projects across the department to, at a minimum, identify and report on the extent of unnecessary duplication, if any, across the department. He also said that even if RSPA reviewed all of the department’s research activities and identified any unnecessary duplication of effort, RSPA does not have the program and budget authority to direct changes in other operating administrations’ research activities. RSPA’s Associate Administrator explained that RSPA does not have readily accessible data on the research activities of other parts of DOT because efforts to develop a computer-based tracking system to share DOT research program and budget information have stalled. RSPA’s 1998 strategic plan discussed the need to create and deploy such a system to meet its strategic goal for coordinating research and technology. In fiscal year 1999, RSPA planned to allocate $200,000 annually for 4 years to develop and implement a system. According to the Associate Administrator, as of January 2003, RSPA had spent about $500,000 of its allocation and completed development of a prototype database. He said that implementing the centralized information system would (1) make basic project information (such as project methodologies, funding levels and sources, schedules, and planned products) across the department more accessible; (2) provide greater levels of organization and clarity on historical research; (3) facilitate strategic planning and coordination; and (4) improve the department’s annual research plan by providing decision-makers with more complete, accurate, and timely information on all DOT research activities. According to the Associate Administrator and Coordinating Council members, some operating administrations do not support implementation of the system because they believe that the system would put additional demands on limited resources and would produce little in terms of tangible results. Coordinating Council members also said it would duplicate existing information systems already in place at some operating administrations and the new system would not be integrated into their other, modal-unique information systems (such as budget and accounting information systems). According to the RSPA official in charge of developing the database, each operating administration would require up to approximately 2 full-time employees for up to 1 year to input the historical research project data going back 5 years, and an additional ½ to 1 full-time employees per year to manage and update the database. The Associate Administrator also said that RSPA did not review the status of all operating administrations’ research projects to identify any unnecessary duplication because his office lacks sufficient staff and resources to do so. He noted, for example, that RSPA’s total research and technology budget for fiscal year 1999 was about $3.7 million—of which $2.2 million was allocated for research and development planning and management activities—and 13 full-time employees. However, in fiscal year 2003, this decreased to a total budget of about $2.9 million—of which $560,000 was allocated for research and development planning and management activities—and 9 full-time employees. The Associate Administrator said that the decline in RSPA’s staff and resources—the only such staff and resources in the department for conducting long-term transportation research planning and coordinating research plans and programs—has also severely limited RSPA’s efforts to coordinate with transportation research stakeholders outside of DOT, such as state, local, and other federal agencies. Figure 2 shows RSPA’s funding levels for its research and development planning and management activities from fiscal years 1999 through 2003. RSPA’s Associate Administrator said he believes that little or no duplication of research activities occurs. He said that, because the monthly Coordinating Council meetings provided a forum for discussing ongoing and planned research, unnecessary duplication of research efforts would be identified. Also, he said that most DOT operating administrations have discrete research programs and budgets that support their mode-specific regulatory and safety mandates. For example, the Federal Highway Administration research focuses on public roads and highways, and its primary users are state and local transportation departments that seek better ways to repair the public infrastructure and find improved materials for pavements.