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Suggested Citation:"A P P E N D I X C PROJECT SUMMARY." National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, and Institute of Medicine. 1999. Evaluating Federal Research Programs: Research and the Government Performance and Results Act. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6416.
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Page 55
Suggested Citation:"A P P E N D I X C PROJECT SUMMARY." National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, and Institute of Medicine. 1999. Evaluating Federal Research Programs: Research and the Government Performance and Results Act. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6416.
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Page 56

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A P P E N D I X C PROJECT SUMMARY The Government Performance and Results Act (“the Results Act”) requires all agencies to set goals and to use perfor- mance measures for management and budgeting in order to encour- age greater efficiency, effectiveness, and accountability in federal programs and spending. Development of plans to implement the Act has been particularly difficult for agencies responsible for research activities supported by the federal government because of the difficulty of linking results with annual investments in research. The Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy (COSEPUP) of the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, and Institute of Medicine will conduct a three part study that will seek to ♦ Dialogue with federal agencies, oversight entities, the research community, industry, states, and those in other countries to identify and analyze the most effective approaches to assessing the results of research. ♦ Help the government determine how federal agencies may better incorporate and coordinate their research activities in their strategic plans and performance plans to improve the manage- ment and effectiveness of research programs. > This would include a determination as to what can be reliably measured and the best mechanism for doing so; 55

EVALUATING FEDERAL RESEARCH PROGRAMS what cannot be measured; an evaluation of the extent to which a common analytic paradigm(s) could be used across agencies for assessing the results of extramural and intramural research programs and training and education of the scientific and engineering workforce; development of such a paradigm if feasible; and develop- ment of implementation principles and guidelines that could assist Congress and OMB in their review of agency’s performance plans. ♦ Work to develop mechanisms to evaluate the actual impact of implementation of the Act on agency programmatic decisions and on the practices of research, identify lessons learned from implementation, identify best practices that could be used by other agencies or programs, and determine the most effective way for Congress and OMB to use the results of these plans. It will test out those mechanisms to the extent feasible during this timeframe. 56

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The Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA), passed by Congress in 1993, requires that federal agencies write five-year strategic plans with annual performance goals and produce an annual report that demonstrates whether the goals have been met. The first performance reports are due in March 2000.

Measuring the performance of basic research is particularly challenging because major breakthroughs can be unpredictable and difficult to assess in the short term. This book recommends that federal agencies use an "expert review" method to examine the quality of research they support, the relevance of that research to their mission, and whether the research is at the international forefront of scientific and technological knowledge. It also addresses the issues of matching evaluation measurements to the character of the research performed, improving coordination among agencies when research is in the same field, and including a human resource development component in GPRA strategic and performance plans.

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