Gibbons Describes President Clinton’s Technology Initiative
As Assistant to the President for Science and Technology, Jack Gibbons is the Clinton Administration’s point man for science and technology issues. In several recent appearances, Gibbons discussed aspects of the White House’s Technology Initiative. As keynote speaker at an April 15-16 science and technology colloquium sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), Gibbons presented an overview of President Clinton’s plans for science and technology and their role in stimulating economic growth. Then, at a May 13 hearing of the House Committee on Small Business, Gibbons talked about how the plans relate to small and medium-sized companies.
Speaking before an audience of science policy types at the AAAS colloquium, Gibbons enumerated the goals of Clinton’s Technology Initiative: to stimulate long-term economic growth and create jobs; to make the federal government more efficient and more responsive to its citizens; and to reaffirm world leadership in science, math and engineering. The initiative is based on the notion, according to Gibbons, that technology is one of the principle “engines for [economic] growth.” This translates to increased funding for joint government-industry programs such as those within NIST to encourage development of high-risk generic technologies.
The Administration will look for “a greater degree of partnership with the private sector” in areas where public and private interests intersect-- for example, in clean car technology. “For too long,” Gibbons said, “government work in science and technology has been isolated from the private sector enterprise.” Emphasis will be placed on increasing the number and types of consortia and joint ventures available. The federal government intends to improve the nation’s information infrastructure, assist in workforce training, and “make a better seed ground” for innovation and investment by making the Research and Experimentation (R&E) Tax Credit permanent.
To strengthen U.S. preeminence in science, Gibbons said the White House intends to maintain a “resilient enterprise in basic science,” and equalize the balance of funding between military and civilian R&D. In addition, Gibbons vowed to work with federal agencies to “bring more coherence to the [R&D] enterprise.”
Gibbons also spoke of the imperative for international cooperation on large science and technology projects. Questioned about two of the nation’s megaprojects, the space station and the Superconducting Super Collider, he reported that the White House was “engaged in an attempt to keep them going.” He expressed concern that any redesign must “leave NASA with room to do things other than” the space station. Of the SSC, he said that Clinton “felt the best way to ensure its survival” and increase the chance for more international support was to stretch it out by several years. The Administration, he said, was “trying to modify the vector [of these projects] to match the political feasibility for them to survive.”
Testifying before the House small business committee, Gibbons had a chance to explain the role of small and medium-sized companies in the Technology Initiative. Committee chairman John LaFalce applauded President Clinton’s initiatives to target small companies, declaring that “By almost any measure, high-tech small businesses have been the star performers in the U.S. economy in recent years. They have been the fastest-growing segment of the U.S. economy by far. . . . Over the past decade, small businesses’ share of the nation’s scientists and engineers engaged in R&D has increased 150 percent.”
Gibbons, who has been involved in the start-up of several high-tech small firms, stated that special emphasis has been given to small businesses in President Clinton’s technology plan as creators of jobs. Because of job elimination in Fortune 500 companies, he said, statistics actually show that small businesses have been responsible for over 100 percent of the new jobs created in the private sector, as well as “one-half of the GNP, one-half of sales, and one-half of the people” in the U.S. economy.
Gibbons described the initiatives that are targeted to moderately-sized companies. In particular, the NIST Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) program is designed to facilitate access to the newest manufacturing methods and technology. NIST provides the following justification for the MEP budget request: “Small and medium-sized manufacturing companies are the backbone of the U.S. industrial base, contributing roughly 50 percent of the total value added to U.S. manufactured products, representing 85 percent of all U.S. manufacturing firms, and 75 percent of new jobs created each year.”
The Clinton plan endorses legislation passed last year to increase the Small Business Innovation Research set-aside, and the Small Business Technology Transfer set-aside, programs which provide grants to help small companies develop and commercialize technologies. Another component of the policy involves improving fiscal and regulatory policies to promote innovation and investment. Gibbons endorsed a permanent R&E Tax Credit, revised federal procurement policies to encourage use of new technologies, and the availability of patient capital for investment in new technologies.
