MEMORANDUM FOR Board on Assessment and its Panels
From: Robert E. Hebner
Acting Director
Subject: 1998 Charge to the National Research Council Board on Assessment of NIST Programs
Welcome to NIST. Thank you in advance for your contribution of time and effort to the technical review of our Measurements and Standards Laboratories. The experiences and insights you bring to the National Research Council (NRC) Board on Assessment of NIST Programs review process are valued by me, the NIST Laboratory Directors, and our staff scientists. Your reports are used by NIST management in carrying out our Laboratories' mission to promote the U.S. economy and public welfare by providing technical leadership for the Nation's measurement and standards infrastructure, and assuring the availability of essential reference data and measurement capabilities.
Measurements and standards are playing an increasingly important role in our Nation's economic future as it enters an era of the global electronic marketplace. A market that links measurements to acceptance of products and services, and requires information technology standards for interoperability, is driving U.S. industry to demand state-of-the-art measurement services and standards. A key component of NIST's plan to meet this challenge is the Facilities Master Plan. This ambitious undertaking, focused on new construction and major renovations, is urgently needed to maintain and strengthen NIST's world-class facilities that are critical to ensuring its continued technical leadership nationally and internationally.
This year marks the first full year of government-wide implementation of the Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA). For GPRA, peer review is a valued component of the process for measuring the performance of the NIST Measurements and Standards Laboratories. NIST feels that the present NRC review process of its laboratories, by its independence and high level of technical oversight, is well suited to this task. Since the final report of the Board on Assessment addresses the broad
spectrum of NIST's Laboratories, from missions of the individual Laboratories to assessment of individual technical programs, these reports are essential to our assessment of performance of the laboratories as an entity.
In the statement of work NIST asks the Board on Assessment to assess the technical quality of the Measurements and Standards Laboratories with a focus on:
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the technical merit of the laboratory programs relative to the current state-of-the-art;
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the degree to which the laboratory programs conform to their mission;
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the effectiveness with which the laboratory programs are carried out and the results disseminated; and,
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in so far as they affect the quality of the technical programs, the adequacy of the laboratories' facilities, equipment, and human resources.
I thank you again for contributing your time and expertise to this technical review. It is a vital part of our overall management process. We look forward to your report.