Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy Policy and Global Affairs Division	500 Fifth Street, NW Washington, DC 20001
	www.national-academies.org/cosepup

Workshop on OMB’s Program Assessment Rating Tool, Federal R&D Programs, and the S&E Research Community

The National Academies’ Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy (COSEPUP) is convening a one-day meeting on Wednesday, May 26, 2004, to discuss the U.S. Office of Management and Budget’s Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART), Federal R&D Programs, and the Science and Engineering Research Community.

COSEPUP has been deeply involved over the last decade in issues related to the federal investment in science and technology and the evaluation of federal research programs. Its reports in these areas have focused on the need to ensure the quality, relevance, and leadership of U.S. scientific and engineering research through both the budget process and program evaluation. These issues are now also central to the implementation of the U.S. Office of Management and Budget’s Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART) with regard to federal research and development (R&D) programs.

As a means for educating the scientific and engineering research community about PART and discussing the proper role of a large stakeholder group such as the S&E research community in the PART process, COSEPUP is convening this meeting which will feature speakers from the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, the General Accounting Office, and Federal research agencies. Presentations and the discussion to follow will focus on such questions as:

• What is the PART and how is it applied to federal R&D programs?

• Is there a commonly agreed to set of questions that can be asked about the effectiveness of R&D programs? Should questions vary by type of R&D program (basic, applied, development)?

• Do the questions asked of R&D programs by PART address the relevance of the research to important national priorities, the quality of the research being performed, and the impact of programs on U.S. leadership in key fields of science and engineering research?

• What indicators or measures of inputs, outputs, and outcomes are appropriate for answering PART questions? What sources of information do agencies draw on to answer questions posed under PART and what is the validity and reliability of that information?

• Are formal program evaluations, expert review (by federal advisory committees, committees of visitors, or similar bodies) and international benchmarking appropriate and useful sources of information and comment on R&D program effectiveness?

• How does the PART process relate to agency plans and performance under GPRA? How do Federal R&D programs coordinate PART with the implementation of OMB’s R&D investment criteria?

• How do the results of the PART process influence the administration’s annual budget proposal? In what other ways are PART results useful and used?

• What is the appropriate role of the scientific and engineering research community—as an important stakeholder—in the PART process?