Back before the Gingrich revolution and the 1994 elections, a well-respected institution helped Members of Congress do their jobs more thoughtfully. It was the Office of Technology Assessment, or OTA. In somewhat the same mode as the Congressional Budget Office, or the Congressional Research Service of the Library of Congress, OTA was on call to give Congress non-partisan, objective and expert advice on policy matters having a significant scientific or technological dimension. It provided a much-needed antidote and counterweight to the ideology, bias and cant that can too often affect policy-making.
Perhaps for that reason, the new Republican majority in 1995 saw fit to disband OTA – but on the stated pretext of saving money. Heaven only knows how much money the country might in fact have saved over the last 15 years if OTA had been there to help inform good technical decisions and debunk misguided and often expensive policy myths.
The proportion of congressional decisions that depend on scientific and technical information and judgment has only grown in the intervening years. Just think about anything from spending on controlled nuclear fusion R&D, to upgrading the air traffic control system to GPS-based technology, to the dependence of the health care system (and health care reform) on expensive (but not always cost-effective) technology.
Most pertinent to the theme of this part of the CNE website is the inseparability of good environmental policy and a policy-makers’ understanding of science and technology in whatever the area – climate change policy, clean water policy, endangered species policy, wetlands policy, and so on. And so my suggestion for a significant (if maybe not the ‘greatest’) opportunity we have to advance conservation in the nation would be to reinvent OTA as OT&EA – the Office of Technological & Ecological Assessment – explicitly linking these aspects of policy-making at the Capitol. Making objective scientific analysis readily available to Congress with its own dedicated staff could only reinforce the arguments and bolster the forces for good stewardship.
David E. Skaggs
David Skaggs served twelve years in Congress as U.S. Representative from the 2nd Congressional District of Colorado. He is now the Executive Director of the Colorado Department of Higher Education (CDHE). Prior to his position at CDHE, Mr. Skaggs was executive director of the Center for Democracy & Citizenship at the Council for Excellence in Government.
