Reports & Papers
BCSIA: 1996-1997 ANNUAL REPORT
4. Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program
Members
Core Faculty and Staff
John P. Holdren, Program Director and Faculty Chair;
Teresa and John Heinz Professor of Environmental Policy
Matthew Bunn, Program Assistant Director
Deborah Hurley, Information Infrastructure Project Director
James H. Keller, Information Infrastructure Project Associate Director
Nora O''Neil, Information Infrastructure Project Coordinator
Jennifer Weeks, Managing the Atom Project Director
Laura Wilson, Program Assistant and Assistant to John Holdren
Lewis M. Branscomb, Director Emeritus; Aetna Professor of Public Policy
and Corporate Management, Emeritus
Harvey Brooks, Director Emeritus; Benjamin Pierce Professor of Technology and Public Policy, Emeritus
Ashton B. Carter, Ford Foundation Professor of Science and International Affairs
William Clark, Sidney Harman Professor of International Science, Public Policy, and Human Development
Paul Doty, Director Emeritus, BCSIA, Mallinckrodt Professor of Biochemistry, Emeritus
David M. Hart, Assistant Professor of Public Policy
Henry Lee, Lecturer in Public Policy, Director, Environment and Natural Resources Program
Steven E. Miller, Lecturer in Public Policy, Director, International Security Program
F. Michael Scherer, Roy E. Larsen Professor of Public Policy and Management
Dorothy S. Zinberg, Lecturer in Public Policy
Veronica McClure, Assistant to Lewis Branscomb
Sarah Peterson, Assistant to David Hart
Associates and Visitors
Richard Florida, Visiting Professor; Director, Center for Economic Development,
Carnegie Mellon University
Robert Frosch, Senior Research Associate
Young Gul Kim, Visiting Professor; Seoul University
C. Evan Smith, Research Associate in Information Infrastructure
Research Fellows
Guillermo Cardoza, Technology Policy Fellow
Paul de Sa, Energy R&D Fellow
Allison Macfarlane, Bunting Fellow; Managing the Atom Fellow
Robert Newman, Managing the Atom Fellow
Lucien Randazzese, Technology Policy Fellow
Ambuj Sagar, Energy R&D Fellow
Background
The Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program (STPP) focuses on the interactions of science and technology with public policy institutions and decision making. Specifically, STPP seeks to address the following three questions. First, how do these interactions work? Second, how do they affect the mix of societal benefits, costs, and risks associated with science and technology? And, third, how CAN the interactions be improved in ways to increase the benefits and reduce the costs and risks?
Like the other Belfer Center programs, STPP is strongly interdisciplinary, drawing on perspectives and methods from the natural sciences, engineering, political science, economics, management, and law to study problems where science, technology, and policy intersect. Current focuses of STPP research, policy outreach, and teaching include: the future of civilian and military nuclear activities and public participation in decision making about them; energy research and development to meet the challenge of human-induced climatic disruption; the expanding global information infrastructure; science and technology policy for innovation and economic performance; and the processes by which science and technology policy decisions are made.
The 1996-97 academic year was a time of change, growth, and accomplishment for STPP. Professor Lewis Branscomb, who had succeeded Professor Harvey Brooks as Director of STPP in 1986, assumed emeritus status at the end of the preceding academic year and was succeeded as Director by John P. Holdren, the new Teresa and John Heinz Professor of Environmental Policy in the Kennedy School (and Professor of Environmental Science and Public Policy in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences).
With the benefit of Professor Branscomb''s continuing energetic involvement in the oversight of the STPP projects on information infrastructure and technological innovation, together with the continuing STPP strength in science and technology policy processes anchored by emeritus Professor Harvey Brooks, Assistant Professor David Hart, and Dr. Dorothy Zinberg, Professor Holdren was able to devote much of his initial effort in STPP to establishing two new research projects. The first, the Project on Managing the Atom, is designed to improve understanding of— and to recommend new policies to address— a set of issues critical to the future of both military and civilian nuclear activities. The second, the Project on Energy R&D for a Greenhouse-Gas Constrained World, addresses the gap between the kinds and magnitudes of energy research and development being performed today in the United States and other major greenhouse-gas-emitting countries and the kinds and magnitudes of such research that would be needed to position the world to reduce greenhouse emissions sharply at affordable cost.
To help manage these new efforts, Holdren recruited a new STPP Assistant Director, Matthew Bunn, and an Executive Director of the Managing the Atom Project, Jennifer Weeks. New leadership came to the Information Infrastructure Project (IIP) within STPP as well. Deborah Hurley replaced IIP''s founding Director Brian Kahin, who left to guide the work on information infrastructure at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.
Research Agenda and Policy Outreach
I. Managing the Atom
The Project on Managing the Atom focuses on key topics in three areas: military nuclear activities, civilian nuclear activities, and democratic management of both. While housed in STPP, Managing the Atom addresses core issues that reach across the Belfer Center and beyond, and hence is a joint effort between STPP, the International Security Program (ISP), and the Environment and Natural Resources Program (ENRP), with the directors of all three programs serving as coprincipal investigators.
Managing the Atom takes a strategic approach, concentrating in each of its three key areas on issues that are both (1) central to future policy and (2) a fruitful focus for additional work, because they are either underexamined or the focus of such intense political conflict that unbiased review has been difficult.
In the area of military nuclear activities, it is clear that the control of nuclear warheads themselves and the fissile materials needed to make them will be crucial to the future of both nuclear arms reductions and nuclear nonproliferation. This complex set of issues is therefore a central focus of Managing the Atom''s work. This focus builds not only on previous work by Holdren and Bunn, including seminal National Academy of Sciences studies and reports to President Clinton on control of nuclear materials, but also on the Belfer Center''s long-standing efforts in this area, stretching from the1991 book, Soviet Nuclear Fission, which provided the basis for the Nunn-Lugar cooperative arms reduction and nonproliferation program, through Cooperative Denuclearization of 1993, which provided impetus to the Clinton administration''s efforts in those areas, to Avoiding Nuclear Anarchy in 1996, which provided a key part of the foundation for the 1996 Defense Against Weapons of Mass Destruction Act, known as "Nunn-Lugar-Domenici."
In the civilian area, the expansion potential of fission-based nuclear power as a carbon-free option for meeting the world''s future energy needs is in doubt, because of concerns about high costs, reactor-accident risks, radioactive waste management, and potential links to the spread of nuclear weapons. Managing the Atom is focusing particular attention on the potential links between military and civilian nuclear activities. Here, too, the control of fissile material— such as the problem of ensuring that none of the tens of tons of weapons-usable separated plutonium in civilian commerce around the world is stolen for use in weapons— is a fundamental part of the problem.
Other key aspects of Managing the Atom''s work related to civilian nuclear activities include: comparison of the costs, risks, and benefits of separating and recycling weapons-usable plutonium from spent fuel, as compared to direct geologic disposal of such fuel; prospects for interim storage facilities and final repositories for spent fuel (including the possibility of international cooperation to provide such facilities); the future of nuclear power in key Asian countries (likely to be the focus of most near-term future growth in the nuclear industry); the impact of increased utility competition on the nuclear industry; and U.S. policies, agreements, and legislation related to export of civilian nuclear technology.
In both the civilian and military areas, how decisions get made— and the performance of the relevant institutions in building, operating, and regulating all the necessary facilities— are critical. Improved mechanisms for genuine public participation in decision making are likely to be essential to attaining public acceptance for nuclear activities. Hence openness in nuclear decision making is a third critical area of Managing the Atom''s work. An initial focus in this area is an analysis of the increased openness at the U.S. Department of Energy in the 1990s, and the views of relevant shareholders concerning how much has been done, what impact it has had on public participation in the process, and what more ought to be done. Future work in this area is expected to include analyses of different methods for public participation in nuclear decisions, and a comparative review of recent efforts by several major nuclear powers to increase public input in nuclear decisions.
With the arrival of Director Weeks in January 1997, the Project has gotten off to a rapid start. In the military area, Managing the Atom has worked in close cooperation with ISP. Focusing on the key issue of controlling nuclear weapons and their essential ingredients— plutonium and highly enriched uranium— STPP Assistant Director Bunn and Director Holdren wrote the only existing comprehensive review of all U.S. and Russian programs in this area, including efforts designed to address the deadly threat of "loose nukes." The resulting article, "Managing Military Uranium and Plutonium in the United States and the Former Soviet Union," will be published in the 1997 edition of Annual Review of Energy and the Environment.
In a Center-wide effort, in early 1997 Managing the Atom staff and affiliates drafted a set of targeted recommendations to Congress for strengthening the U.S. response to the threat of nuclear, chemical, and biological terrorism— including the control of nuclear weapons and fissile material. The resulting memorandum to the Senate was signed by Kennedy School Dean Joseph Nye, BCSIA Director Graham Allison, Professor Ashton Carter (all three former U.S. Assistant Secretaries of Defense), former CIA Director and Deputy Secretary of Defense John Deutch, Holdren, and principal drafters Bunn, BCSIA Executive Director Richard Falkenrath, and Research Fellow Robert Newman. Several of the signers had an opportunity to brief key Senators and Senate staff on the memo and its recommendations, and these ideas helped motivate Senate action to protect the budgets for these critical activities against proposed reductions. The recommendations in this memo provided an important preview of the Center''s forthcoming book on preventing nuclear, biological, and chemical terrorism (described in the ISP section of this report).
In mid-1997 the National Academy of Sciences'' Committee on International Security and Arms Control (CISAC)--chaired by Holdren— published The Future of U.S. Nuclear Weapons Policy, a book-length study led within CISAC by Major General William F. Burns (U.S. Army, retired), a former Director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency and former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs. This study, whose other authors included a former Commander of the U.S. Strategic Command, a former President of the Institute for Defense Analyses, and a former Director of Russian, Ukrainian, and Eurasian Affairs at the National Security Council, made sweeping recommendations for pursuing further arms reductions, de-alerting nuclear forces, reversing the U.S. policy of maintaining the option of first use of nuclear weapons, and considering what would be required for the ultimate prohibition of nuclear weapons. The study is already playing a key role in the ongoing debate about the future of nuclear arms reductions and the potential for ultimate prohibition of nuclear weapons.
Also in the security area, Holdren served as the U.S. cochairman, and Bunn as the U.S. Executive Secretary, for the U.S.-Russian Independent Scientific Commission on Disposition of Excess Plutonium, established at the suggestion of Russian President Boris Yeltsin. This group, composed of senior independent nuclear experts from both countries, sent its unanimous final report to President Clinton and President Yeltsin in June 1997, outlining a step-by-step plan for eliminating dangerous excess stockpiles of weapons plutonium in both the United States and Russia. The group''s report represented the first-ever agreement by senior Russian experts on the key nonproliferation conditions for cooperation that the United States had proposed, and on the concept of following a two-track approach in both the United States and Russia— using some of its plutonium as reactor fuel, but discarding some of it as waste. The report induced Russian President Boris Yeltsin to sign a decree establishing a high-level Russian interagency task force (the first such interagency group in Russia on any topic) to decide Russian policy on excess plutonium, and to begin preparing for the negotiations with the United States that the report recommended. The report was also welcomed warmly on the U.S. side: the group''s September 1996 interim report had played a key role in shaping the U.S. decision to pursue a two-track approach, and in shaping the U.S. approach to cooperation with Russia in this area. President Clinton called the final report an "excellent basis for further progress" and asked the group to reconvene in early 1998 to review progress in implementing its recommendations and suggest further steps.
Following the completion of the Holdren-Velikhov report, and with the background of their comprehensive review of programs to control fissile material, Holdren and Bunn briefed U.S. Secretary of Energy Frederico Pena on key next steps to be taken in U.S.-Russian nuclear security cooperation in preparation for his first trip to Russia, in July 1997. They also briefed Deputy National Security Adviser James Steinberg and John Holum, Director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, on both the Holdren-Velikhov report and the CISAC report on the future of U.S. nuclear weapons policy. Holdren and Bunn also briefed Undersecretary of Energy-designate Ernest Moniz at length on the key fissile material control issues likely to face the Department of Energy during the second Clinton term.
In an effort to find an effective means to continue pressing for expanded U.S.-Russian cooperation to serve their mutual nuclear security interests from outside the government, Bunn joined a group of U.S. and Russian former officials and leading experts in the newly established Russian-American Nuclear Security Advisory Council (RANSAC). RANSAC''s first meeting, in Moscow in May 1997, brought together the leaders of a half-dozen of Russia''s most sensitive "closed cities"--including the directors of both of Russia''s nuclear weapons design laboratories, one of whom is a member of RANSAC— with Russia''s First Deputy Minister of Atomic Energy and U.S. experts to brainstorm about the possibilities for cooperation in converting Russia''s nuclear weapons complex to civilian pursuits. As a result, RANSAC prepared a far-reaching set of recommendations for new steps to support conversion and to prevent economic catastrophe in Russia''s secret nuclear cities. This led to the first-ever endorsement of joint work on nuclear complex conversion by the Gore-Chernomyrdin Commission at their September 1997 meeting.
Lecturer Dorothy Zinberg also continued to work on issues related to the future of Russia''s nuclear scientists, following on her participation in the National Academy of Sciences committee that produced the 1996 report An Assessment of the International Science and Technology Center. The report strongly recommended continued support for the Nunn-Lugar program as a crucial means of aiding the transition of Russian weapons scientists to civilian work have played a key role in protecting the program''s budget.
In the civilian area, Managing the Atom Director Jennifer Weeks authored the only available in-depth analysis of the policy issues surrounding the question of whether the United States should implement an agreement allowing exports of nuclear reactors to China— expected to be a central focus of President Clinton''s October 1997 summit meeting with Chinese leader Jiang Zemin. The implementation of this agreement, which was negotiated in 1985, has been blocked because no president has been able to certify that China was not helping clandestine nuclear weapons programs of countries posing proliferation risks, and that China had an effective system for controlling its nuclear exports in place, as required by law. Weeks''s article, published in Arms Control Today, reviewed the U.S.-Chinese negotiations on this subject and China''s recent nonproliferation record in detail, and concluded that successive administrations had succeeded in making substantial nonproliferation progress with China, and that China was close to the point at which it would be possible and desirable to implement the agreement. Subsequently, Weeks was asked to testify before the House Committee on International Relations in its review of this issue, and to make recommendations for potential legislation to address it.
STPP Assistant Director Bunn also focused on the potential links between civilian and military nuclear technologies, serving as the U.S. representative to an IAEA panel on civilian management of weapons-usable separated plutonium, in preparation for a major global International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) symposium on the future of the nuclear fuel cycle. Bunn also delivered an invited paper for that symposium outlining the key issues facing the U.S. plutonium disposition program and the rationale for the U.S. government''s opposition to plutonium reprocessing. That paper will be published in an IAEA edited volume in the fall of 1997. Similarly, Bunn served as rapporteur for an international conference on improving security for nuclear materials worldwide. The discussions at that conference provoked IAEA Deputy Director-General for Safeguards Bruno Pellaud to redouble the IAEA''s effort to strengthen international standards for protection of weapons-usable nuclear material against possible theft.
Bunting Institute Science Fellow Allison Macfarlane, on leave from her position as Assistant Professor in the Department of Geology and Earth Systems Science at George Mason University, led Managing the Atom''s initial work on nuclear waste management. Macfarlane investigated the progress of the proposed U.S. Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository (including visiting Yucca Mountain for a review of the site and discussions with key program personnel), and analyzed the implications of proposed legislation mandating construction of an interim above-ground spent fuel storage site near Yucca Mountain. At the same time, Macfarlane undertook an in-depth examination of the pros and cons of glass and ceramic waste forms for immobilization of excess weapons plutonium, concluding that for this mission, ceramics would be the superior choice. Macfarlane presented these results at a major conference on management of trans-uranic elements, where she was able to argue the merits with key participants in the U.S. government''s plutonium immobilization program. Subsequently, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, leader of the U.S. plutonium immobilization effort, selected Bunn as chairman of a peer review panel of senior experts to review the work that had been done on glass and ceramic waste forms, which also recommended pursuing the ceramic approach— a recommendation the Department of Energy ultimately accepted.
Director Weeks is leading Managing the Atom''s initial work on democratic participation in nuclear decision making, focusing on an in-depth assessment of recent steps to increase openness and declassify information at the U.S. Department of Energy. This work is scheduled to lead to major conference presentations and publications in the fall of 1997.
This initial work was funded by generous support from the Alton Jones Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation, as well as funding from BCSIA''s International Security Program (much of it from the Carnegie Corporation) for Managing the Atom''s work on military nuclear activities, and funding from the STPP endowment.
For the coming year, Managing the Atom plans a wide range of projects in all three of its targeted areas, from assessments of the costs and risks of plutonium reprocessing to a workshop on the impact of increased utility competition on the U.S. nuclear industry. Having established some of its initial directions, Managing the Atom is also working to build strategic partnerships with workers at other institutions, including groups in the United States, Japan, Korea, and other countries.
II. Energy R&D for a Greenhouse-Gas Constrained World
The mission of the Project on Energy R&D for a Greenhouse-Gas Constrained World is to characterize the gaps between the energy R&D programs now in place and those that one would want to have in place in the United States and in other major greenhouse-gas-emitting countries, in order to position the world to pursue deep reductions in emissions of carbon dioxide if it should be decided to do so.
Notwithstanding current uncertainties surrounding the pace and probable consequences of climate change from greenhouse emissions, prudence requires having in place an energy R&D portfolio adequate to the task of expanding the array of technological options available for reducing those emissions at the lowest possible economic, environmental, and social cost. The kinds of energy R&D needed to meet the greenhouse-gas/climate challenge would also help address most of the other challenges facing the global energy system. Yet both public and private energy R&D have declined precipitously in the United States and many other countries in recent years, exacerbating the prospects that the world will be forced to cope with the problem of climatic disruption without having developed technological options that could greatly reduce the costs and impacts of doing so.
The initial focus of the project has been on the United States, Western Europe, and India— key energy-consuming regions representing different perspectives from the developed and developing worlds. The project has gathered in-depth data both on the energy challenges facing each of these areas and on the public and private energy R&D being done to meet these challenges. In addition, the project is working closely with the Harvard China Project, a university-wide, multidisciplinary research program on energy use and environmental protection in the People''s Republic of China, conducted cooperatively between Harvard and several Chinese research institutions. The Energy R&D project will soon expand its focus to cover other key areas of the world. Like Managing the Atom, the Energy R&D project brings in expertise from throughout the Belfer Center— including particularly close collaboration with the Environment and Natural Resources Program— and with other programs at Harvard and beyond.
Since early 1997 the Energy R&D project has been heavily focused on supporting a national study of U.S. energy R&D strategy requested by President Clinton through the President''s Committee of Advisers on Science and Technology (PCAST). STPP Director Holdren, a member of PCAST, was asked to form and lead a 21-member panel to conduct the study and make recommendations on an energy R&D portfolio commensurate with the energy and environmental challenges of the next century. (The request stemmed from a set of PCAST recommendations on science and technology policy priorities for the second Clinton term, of which Holdren was one of the principal drafters.) The Panel''s report went to the President on schedule at the beginning of October 1997.
Working closely with Holdren, Research Fellows Ambuj Sagar and Paul de Sa provided essential research support for this study, developing detailed data on past trends in government and private-sector support for energy R&D, on the panel''s working group on current energy R&D efforts, and drafting much of the chapter in the final report describing current and past energy R&D programs in this and other countries.
In connection with his work on this report and related aspects of U.S. policy for addressing the climate-change challenge, Holdren has met repeatedly with the most senior officials of the U.S. government, including President Clinton, Vice President Gore, Secretary of State Albright, Secretary of Energy Pena, Secretary of Commerce Daley, Secretary of Interior Babbitt, Council of Economic Advisers Chair Yellin, and a wide range of other officials in the government. Holdren was also one of the key organizers of the scientists'' statement on climate change, which represented the consensus of hundreds of leading scientists that the science pointing to a serious threat from man-made climatic disruption was solid enough that action had to be taken to reduce greenhouse emissions. In July 1997 Holdren was the wrap-up speaker in a roundtable discussion of climate science with the President and Vice President in the East Room of the White House. Subsequently he was asked to chair the panel on the science of climate change at the White House Conference on Climate Change scheduled for early October. It now appears inevitable that an increased focus on energy R&D, based on the likely recommendations of the PCAST report, will be a central part of the Clinton administration''s policy on responding to climate change.
In addition to supporting the PCAST study, Energy R&D project staff and affiliates continued their groundbreaking work on the links between energy R&D and climate policy with a broad range of activities during 1996-97. Before the PCAST study began, Holdren wrote an in-depth assessment of the energy R&D issues to be published in the forthcoming volume Investing in Innovation (described below). The chapter describes both the strengths and the weaknesses of current U.S. federal energy programs, and makes suggestions for reform, previewing some of the likely conclusions of the PCAST study.
Sagar and de Sa collected detailed data on U.S., European, and Indian public- and private-sector energy R&D over time, with Sagar traveling to India for several months in the spring of 1997 for in-depth interviews with Indian energy policy officials and climate scientists. This work is expected to lead to a series of publications during the 1997-98 academic year. Sagar and de Sa were also key participants in a major conference cosponsored by the World Bank and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy on international energy and greenhouse gas emissions, and were selected to prepare the conference''s final report and recommendations, which are forthcoming as a World Bank publication. Sagar also participated in the Global Environmental Assessment Project (see ENRP section), focusing specifically on India''s climate assessment activities and policymaking.
STPP''s support for the PCAST study was funded by a grant from the U.S. Department of Energy. The other work of the Energy R&D for a Greenhouse-Gas Constrained World Project has so far been funded by the STPP endowment.
In the coming year, the Energy R&D project, building on the base of its work on the PCAST report, plans to expand to cover additional areas of the world and begin publishing sets of data on energy R&D strategies and targeted recommendations for strategies to better meet the greenhouse challenge. The completed PCAST report will provide an excellent base from which to build, allowing the project to focus on critical areas identified in the PCAST effort— such as further work to identify the potential of specific energy technologies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the future.
III. Information Infrastructure
The information revolution increasingly penetrates every aspect of daily life around the globe, affecting everything from national security to personal privacy, from economic competitiveness to democratic participation in governance. The Information Infrastructure Project (IIP) is designed to identify key issues and guide responsible policy in this critical and fast-moving area. Established in 1989, IIP brings together insights and capabilities from STPP, the Kennedy School''s Center for Business and Government, and Harvard Law School. This Project has provided a neutral, interdisciplinary forum in both Cambridge and Washington for addressing a wide range of emerging policy issues relating to information infrastructure, its development, use, and growth. The IIP convenes experts from government, industry, and academia, and draws on the perspectives and insights of policymakers, managers, economists, lawyers, political scientists, and technologists in pursuit of its mission to advance the understanding of emerging issues in information infrastructure policy.
Under the energetic leadership of its new Director, Deborah Hurley, IIP has continued to grow and take on increasingly challenging— and crucial— information issues, with an accelerating pace of conferences and publications.
In September 1996 IIP organized a major international conference on "Coordination and Administration of the Internet," cosponsored with the Commercial Internet Exchange Association (CIX), the International Telecommunication Union, and the Internet Society. The conference was a tremendous success, and led to the publication of a major book, Coordinating the Internet, edited by former IIP Director Brian Kahin and IIP Associate Director James Keller (MIT Press, 1997). The book examines means to provide the increased coordination necessitated by the Internet''s explosive growth while maintaining the virtues of its free-flowing and decentralized character. The topics covered range from collecting Internet statistics to the sprawling problem of domain names, which affects the commercial interests of millions of companies around the world. As the book makes clear, the policy and technical issues surrounding the Internet are inextricably intertwined.
The year''s second major conference, in October 1996, focused on how best to get people connected to the information superhighway. Papers addressed technical options from wireless networks to using existing power lines for transmitting information, and policy issues facing governments from the local to the national level. "The First Hundred Feet: Options for Internet and Broadband Access," was cosponsored by the Department of Energy, the White House National Economic Council, and the Freedom Forum. A volume of the same title, edited by IIP Director Hurley and Associate Director Keller, is forthcoming from MIT Press.
In November 1996 another IIP book, National Information Infrastructure Initiatives: Vision and Policy Design, was published by MIT Press. Despite the global nature of the information revolution, most policies for information are developed at the national level, reflecting local economic, social, historical, and political circumstances. Presenting the results of a January 1996 conference cosponsored by the Global Information Infrastructure Commission, the book provides a comparative assessment of the broad range of national policies related to information infrastructure, through a dozen national case studies and studies of regional and international initiatives that push and pull on national policies.
The following month, IIP published "Manufacturing Partnerships in the Digital Environment: Best Practices in CALS Implementation," a final report of an IIP research project sponsored by the Cleveland Advanced Manufacturing Program and the U.S. Department of Defense. Continuous Acquisition and Life-Cycle Support (CALS) is a joint government/industry strategy to reengineer current paper-based business processes with highly automated and integrated acquisition and logistics support processes based on digital data and documents. This project examined CALS implementation in several specific cases of manufacturing partnerships, drawing lessons for better ways to integrate information flow across a manufacturing supply chain.
In January 1997 IIP, in partnership with the Harvard Law School''s Center for Law and Information Technology, the Council on Library Resources, and the Coalition for Networked Information, sponsored a major conference on "Internet Publishing and Beyond: Economics of Digital Information and Intellectual Property." How digital information is priced and controlled on the global information infrastructure— the incentives to provide information— will have a fundamental effect on the quantity, quality, and types of information that will be produced, and on who will have access to that information. Hence the meeting looked in-depth into the difficult questions of how to price information on networks and on how to protect intellectual property in an environment of omnipresent Web-posting. A new volume based on this meeting, edited by Deborah Hurley, Brian Kahin, and Hal Varian, is forthcoming from MIT Press in early 1998.
Also in January, the IIP book Borders in Cyberspace: Information Policy and the Global Information Infrastructure, edited by Brian Kahin and Charles Nesson, was published by MIT Press. Based on a January 1996 conference cosponsored with the Institute for Information Technology Law and Policy at Harvard Law School and the Global Information Infrastructure Commission, this volume examines how national differences in law, public policy, and social and cultural values are affecting, and being affected by, the global information infrastructure and the new practicality of instantaneous transmission of information across national boundaries.
The 1996-97 year also saw the development of an exciting new approach to linking policymakers and scholars to key sources on information policy— the IIP "Information Policy Gateway." The gateway— now up and running on the IIP Website, though still in a beta-test version— provides a structured database of links to the most important networked resources on a wide range of information policy issues, with summaries of each resource, and the capability for keyword searches of the entire database, allowing users to rapidly zero in on the best sources for the information they need.
Major sponsors of IIP''s work include the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, AT&T, Bellcore, Hughes Electronics, IBM, the U.S. Department of Energy, NYNEX, Time Warner Cable, Advanced Network and Services, the National Science Foundation, EDS, and Motorola.
IV. Science and Technology Policy for Competitiveness, Sustainability, and Security
Science and technology permeate virtually every aspect of modern life. When government policies designed to promote scientific and technological innovation succeed— as in the case of the U.S. aerospace industry, to take but one prominent example— the result can be dramatic economic gains, major environmental improvements, or dramatic improvements in military capabilities. Indeed, economic growth in the developed world now comes primarily from technological change. Where public science and technology policies fail— as in the case of the 1970s-era U.S. effort to develop synthetic fuels, for example— the result can be the waste of billions of dollars, or the inability to achieve economic, environmental, or security goals. Hence the question of how government can best foster the innovation needed for economic competitiveness, sustainability, and security is an absolutely critical one, and it continued to be a central focus of STPP''s work in the 1996-97 year.
A principal focus of this work during the year was a major effort, undertaken at the request of the Clinton administration, to assess the Clinton-Gore technology policy initiatives and provide a bipartisan framework for evaluating the proper roles of government and private industry in developing and supporting new technologies. This effort led to a major national conference on "Evaluating the Clinton-Gore Technology Initiatives," held in November 1996, and cosponsored by STPP, the Competitiveness Policy Council, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. That conference led to a far-reaching policy paper, Investing in Innovation: Toward a Consensus Strategy for Federal Technology Policy, which offered a six-point framework for a bipartisan approach to government support for technological development. The approach outlined in this paper has had considerable influence on policymaking in both the administration and the Congress, and was quoted in the press as "the hottest technology policy property on the Hill." A book based on the project, also titled Investing in Innovation and edited by Branscomb and Keller, is forthcoming from MIT Press, and will offer chapters addressing each of the major areas of science and technology policy of the last several years.
At the same time, STPP''s work on policy for innovation retained its comparative perspective, with Branscomb and other program participants actively engaged in cooperative studies of the government''s role in shaping technological development with colleagues in both Korea and Japan. During 1996-97 Branscomb''s book, Korea at the Turning Point: Innovation-Based Strategies for Development, coedited with Young-Hwan Choi, was published by Praeger. It presents 15 essays on innovation and Korean development, including models for development drawn from Japan, Taiwan, Brazil, and European countries. In addition, Branscomb extended his previous work on innovation in Japan with the establishment of the project on "Universities and Science-Based Industrial Development," in collaboration with Japanese researchers.
During 1996-97 STPP Assistant Professor David Hart completed his book, Forging the "Postwar Consensus": Science, Technology, and Economic Policy in the United States, 1921-1953,which will be published in 1998 by Princeton University Press. Hart''s study examines a critical period of change in federal science and technology policy, tracing the post-World War II developments that have been widely examined to their little-known pre-World War II antecedents, and connecting them to the larger issues of American political development. Hart shows that U.S. policymakers have long been interested in and concerned about the impact of science and technology on economic growth and have hotly debated the government role in enhancing that impact. In intriguing ways, the technology policy debates of the 1980s and 1990s can be seen as continuations of debates that were begun in the 1920s and 1930s, but that were overshadowed by the Cold War.
Also during this year, longtime STPP affiliate Lecturer Dorothy Zinberg continued her work on the maintenance of the human and institutional resources essential to innovation, focusing particularly on the changing role of research universities. A new publication, "Revolutions Real and Virtual: Science, Cyberspace, and the University," is in press from the Swedish Council for Planning and Coordination of Research. Zinberg also authored a regular column on science and technology policy issues in the London Sunday Times; the column is syndicated by the New York Times News Service.
Funding for STPP''s work in these areas is provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation; the Competitiveness Policy Council; the Japan Foundation Center for Global Partnership; and the Science and Technology Policy Institute of the Ministry of Science and Technology, Republic of Korea.
V. Science and Technology Policy Processes
The ways decisions get made often have an enormous effect on what decisions get made; hence STPP has maintained a long-standing interest in the processes for science and technology policy decision making. In 1996-97 several Belfer Center participants in the Investing in Innovation project advanced critiques of U.S. science and technology policy processes. Assistant Professor Hart wrote a critique of the changes in the White House decision-making structure for technology policy initiated in the Clinton administration, arguing that the new structures for managing interagency issues did not live up to the goals that had been set for them, and making suggestions for reform. Branscomb advanced a new typology for analyzing R&D spending, offering a set of alternatives to the conventional categories of "basic research," "applied research," and "development." Branscomb''s concept of "basic technology" has begun to gain wide acceptance in policy circles. STPP Director Emeritus Harvey Brooks and Postdoctoral Fellow Lucien Randazzese analyzed relations between the U.S. government and the academic community. Hart also prepared a broader review of "Government Organization: Implications for Science and Technology Policy," which will be published in 1998 by Pinter as a chapter in Science, Technology, and Governance, edited by John de la Mothe.
VI. Continued Commitment to Teaching
Training the next generation of science and technology policy scholars and policymakers is a core commitment of the STPP program. Science, Technology, and Public Policy is one of the key Policy Areas of Concentration (PACs) offered to Masters in Public Policy students at the Kennedy School. Students with this concentration can take not only courses labeled as science and technology policy, but related courses from the environment program, the security program, other schools at Harvard, as well as other universities in the Boston area. Moreover, the courses offered in this PAC are of interest to a broad range of students beyond those focusing specifically on science and technology policy. These courses are not restricted to students with strong backgrounds in science and technology (S&T); people who work at the intersection of S&T with public policy in the "real world" come to this intersection with a wide variety of backgrounds, and KSG graduates with many different specializations and job descriptions are likely to encounter interactions between science, technology, and public policy in some phase of their work. Indeed, the array of contemporary challenges and opportunities involving the interaction of S&T with public policy— AIDS, energy, genetic engineering, global environmental change, industrial ecology, the Internet, nuclear weapons, telecommunications, toxic substances, transportation, and more— command the attention and understanding of every educated citizen.
STPP''s teaching, research, and writing has two primary orientations. The first entails the study of the processes and methods by which public-policy decisions about S&T or involving S&T get made. This focus includes: attention to the methods used by analysts of science, technology, and public policy issues to compare alternative courses of action; the means and institutions through which policymakers obtain S&T advice; how public and private interests and decision making about these matters interact; and exploration of how scholars study the interactions of S&T with policy. The second orientation entails the study of particular issues where the interactions of S&T with public policy raise difficult and important problems. Such issues include: nurturing technological innovation systems for industrial productivity and competitiveness, for national defense, and for environmental sustainability; developing national and international energy strategies; managing nuclear-energy and nuclear-weapons technologies; shaping and administering the evolving global information infrastructure; and determining the appropriate levels of public support for basic science and for S&T education, among many others.
During the 1996-97 year, Assistant Professor Hart taught the introductory STPP survey course, "Science, Technology, and Public Policy." Lecturer Zinberg continued to take the lead in teaching the seminar for students working on their Masters'' theses in science and technology policy. Professor F. Michael Scherer taught "Technology, Innovation, and Economic Growth," exploring how technological change affects the economy and how economic incentives and managerial decisions in turn affect the rate and direction of technological change. Branscomb, Hurley, and Kahin, with faculty from the Harvard Business and Law Schools, collaborated in offering a seminar on "Internet Business Strategy, Law, and Policy," examining strategic choices in different Internet-related industries that illustrate the interplay of business objectives with legal principles and public policy. STPP Director Holdren taught "Designing and Conducting Science and Technology Assessments for Policy," in which he introduced students to methods for designing, conducting, and communicating interdisciplinary assessments of policy-related issues at the intersections of science and technology with societal concerns. In May 1997 IIP, together with the Harvard Business and Law Schools, sponsored a four-day executive seminar on "The Exploding Internet: New Game, New Rules," where senior managers, lawyers, and policymakers explored the Internet''s complex infrastructure and its global business, political, and social transformations.
There were also a number of courses on science and technology policy subjects or taught by STPP-affiliated faculty that carried an STPP label. Professors William Clark and Frederick Schauer taught "Experts, Expertise, and Public Policy," exploring the role of experts in the policy process and the implications for democratic governance of deferral to experts. Hart taught a course on "Technological Innovation for Economic Growth: Policy and Politics," exploring the various tools governments have used to promote technological innovation. Finally, Holdren and Lecturer Henry Lee taught "Designing and Managing Energy Systems," introducing students to energy technology and policy, including engineering, economic, environmental, and institutional issues in the development and selection of energy options in industrialized and developing countries.
Publications
Books
Alik, John, Lewis M. Branscomb, Harvey Brooks, Ashton Carter, and Gerald Epstein, Beyond Spinoff, published in 1997 in Chinese in Beijing (originally published in Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1991)
Branscomb, Lewis M. (chair), The Unpredictable Certainty: Information Infrastructure through 2000, Computer Science and Telecommunications Board (Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1996)
Branscomb, Lewis M. and Young-Hwan Choi, Korea at the Turning Point: An Innovation-Based Strategy for Development (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1996)
Branscomb, Lewis M. and James Keller, eds., Converging Infrastructures: Intelligent Transportation Systems and the National Information Infrastructure (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1996)
Branscomb, Lewis M. and James Keller, eds., Investing in Innovation: A Research and Innovation Policy for America''s Future (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1997)
Branscomb, Lewis M. and Fumio Kodama (cochairs), New Strategies for New Challenges: Corporate Innovation in the United States and Japan, Office of Japan Affairs, National Research Council (Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1997)
Hurley, Deborah and Hal Varian, eds., Internet Publishing and Beyond: The Economics of Digital Information and Intellectual Property (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1997)
Jones, Megan, David H. Guston, and Lewis M. Branscomb, Informed Legislatures: Coping with Science in a Democracy (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1996)
Kahin, Brian and James Keller, eds., Coordinating the Internet (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1997)
Kahin, Brian and Charles Nesson, eds., Borders in Cyberspace: Information Policy and the Global Information Infrastructure (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1997)
Kahin, Brian and Ernest Wilson, eds., National Information Infrastructure Initiatives: Vision and Policy Design (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1996)
Articles and Book Chapters
Branscomb, Lewis M., "Computers and Society," Encyclopaedia Americana (Danbury Conn.: Encyclopaedia Americana, 1996)
Branscomb, Lewis M., "From Technology Politics to Technology Policy," Issues in Science and Technology, Vol. 13, No. 3 (Spring 1977)
Branscomb, Lewis M., "Social Capital: The Key Element in Science-Based Development," Ann. N.Y. Acad. Sci., Vol. 798 (December 18, 1996)
Branscomb, Lewis M., "State and Federal Technology Relationships in the United States and Brazil (Annex 1)," in Lauritz Holm-Nielsen, Michael Crawford, and Alcyone Saliba, eds., Institutional and Entrepreneurial Leadership in the Brazilian Science and Technology Sector: Setting a New Agenda, World Bank Discussion Paper 325 (Washington, D.C.: International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, 1996)
Branscomb, Lewis M., "Technology Policy: Resolving the Ideological Confusion," The Bridge, Vol. 27, No. 2 (Summer 1997)
Bunn, Matthew, "The Case for a Dual-Track Approach— and How to Move Forward from Here," Nuclear Materials Monitor (Landsdowne, Va.: Exchange Monitor Publications)
Bunn Matthew, "Eliminating Excess Plutonium Stockpiles: A Dual-Track Disposition Strategy," Strategic Comments, Vol. 3, No. 2, (March 1997)
Bunn, Matthew (executive secretary),
