Cooperative Stewardship Managing the Nation's Multidisciplinary User Facilities for Research with Synchrotron Radiation, Neutrons, and High Magnetic Fields (1999) / Chapter Skim
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4 Cooperative Stewardship Model
4 Cooperative Stewardship Model
Pages 40-53
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From page 40... ...
Because the life sciences are largely outside the traditional missions of most stewards and because many of the new users require more facility and staff support than the traditional users, this growth has raised questions about the identity of the appropriate stewards and sources of funding for the facilities. Financial constraints have also impeded funding for state-of-the-art instrumentation at the neutron facilities, so much so that some neutrons produced by the cores may not be optimally used (BESAC, 1993~.
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From page 41... ...
Responsibility for the experimental units, including the training and support of new users, could also reside with the steward; alternatively, it could reside with the sponsors of the experimental units, the partners, which could be either other government agencies or organizations in the private sector. For synchrotron radiation facilities, the core includes the storage ring, the injector, and the buildings that house the facility; for neutron sources it includes 2Facility operating budgets are dominated by fixed expenses; a relatively small proportion of the budgets is discretionary spending, which affects the services users care most about.
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From page 43... ...
This means that management responsibility for the design, construction, operation, maintenance, and upgrading of the core of that facility rests with the steward. Additional stewardship responsibility extends to general policy issues, such as user agreements, intellectual property rights, performance evaluation, and safety training for users, as well as the coordination of strategic and financial planning with partner agencies.
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From page 44... ...
FUNDING RESPONSIBILITIES Financing multidisciplinary user facilities, like managing them, has two components, one concerned with the core of the facility and the other with the individual experimental units. The key to the success of the stewardship model is the adequacy and stability of funding of the steward for support of the core facility (as well as any beamlines it chooses to support)
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From page 45... ...
In view of current budget constraints and the growing divergence between the scientific interests of the steward agency and the scientific users, this is a growing risk to financial stability. Cost-Sharing Methods Cost-sharing arrangements between the steward and partner agencies for support of the core facilities is the next preferred mode.
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From page 46... ...
If Congress is not fully educated on the funding of the steward and partner agencies, it may use the potential availability of alternate funding sources for facility core construction and upgrades to diminish core support for the steward agency, thus exacerbating the problem. A more complex cost-sharing arrangement would be for the steward and partner agencies to share in the support of core operations and maintenance.
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From page 47... ...
The resulting budgetary uncertainties could, at best, impede rational planning for the upgrades and enhanced instrumentation and, at worst, risk facility shutdowns. INTERAGENCY RESPONSIBILITIES The complex and evolving management and financial relationships between steward and partner agencies discussed above demonstrate that issues associated with the continued successful operation of user facilities can no longer be satisfactorily addressed with existing stewardship models.
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From page 48... ...
· Monitoring trends in science, instrumentation, and user demographics; recommending any changes in facility capabilities and funding; and identifying needs of potentially underserved scientific user communities. The working group would regularly review all facilities from a national needs perspective instead of the current process, which typically considers only the facilities of a single steward agency.
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From page 49... ...
· Periodically reviewing user support and training needs. While such reviews are ongoing at the individual facilities and in individual steward agencies, the working group would provide a forum for considering these factors from the perspective of changing user demographics and responsibilities of the steward and partner agencies to assure adequate staffing and training.
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From page 50... ...
For non-DOE facilities, user agreements have evolved consistent with the general usage of the host institutional To enhance the usage of the national facilities, increase the flexibility of users to use the available resources of all facilities, and simplify negotiations, the stewards should require their facilities operators to have consistent and simple user agreements. The next step would be for the stewards to require the transferability of a satisfactorily executed user agreement between comparable facilities under their stewardship.
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From page 51... ...
The policies and regulations governing intellectual property rights at DOEowned facilities originated in the 1954 Atomic Energy Act, as amended, and the 1974 Federal Nonnuclear Energy Research and Development Act.l5 The Atomic Energy Act vested all intellectual property in the Atomic Energy Commission except where the commission deemed it appropriate to waive its claim.l6 Subsequent legislationl7 enacted to encourage use of the national laboratories provided a blanket waiver to all users under certain conditions.l8 Exactly what constitutes these conditions, which include weapons research and national interest, and where the determining authority lies are themselves unresolved in DOE. The waiver itself is subject to several restrictions, one of which reserves to the government "a nonexclusive, nontransferable paid-up license to make, use, and sell each subject invention .
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From page 52... ...
2. Finding: As the size and disciplinary diversity of the scientific user community have increased, the programmatic heterogeneity and demands for funding have often grown beyond the scientific expertise and budgets of the steward agencies.
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From page 53... ...
Recommendation: Steward agencies, facility management, and the facility user communities should reexamine and modify their user agreements to achieve maximum simplicity, uniformity, and portability.
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