Department of Science: An Idea Whose Time Has Come?

Bringing together the federal government’s science programs into a single Department of Science is not a new idea. With the current climate for change, and the nation poised on the threshold of the twenty-first century, is it an idea whose time has come? House Science Committee Chairman Robert Walker (R-PA) thinks so.

On June 28, Walker held the first in a series of hearings on restructuring the federal science enterprise. He claimed that the current system is obsolete, fragmented, duplicative, and full of entrenched interest groups. A single entity overseeing the majority of the federal research effort, Walker said, would allow for better long-range planning and prioritization, increased cooperation, and greater efficiency. Walker’s proposal would incorporate NSF, NASA, NIST’s core programs, NOAA, EPA’s science programs, USGS and the Patent and Trademark Office, as well as the research functions of the energy and commerce departments. Health and defense research programs would be excluded, for fear of their “eating alive all other research areas.”

In the 103rd Congress, Walker cosponsored a bill to create a science department with George Brown (D-CA), currently the committee’s ranking minority member. But Brown expressed some reservations, and cautioned that a new department should not be “an orphanage for [programs] cast adrift as their parent agencies are dismembered.”

George Keyworth, former science advisor to President Reagan, testified to a growing erosion of trust between the American public and the science community. He attributed this gap to scientists’ sense of entitlement, attempts to preserve the status quo in the face of changing circumstances, and a recent shift in emphasis from basic research to technology. He felt that a science department might win back the nation’s trust, by enabling priority-setting across science disciplines and requiring greater accountability. Asked by Tim Roemer (D-IN) why a number of other former science advisors, as well as the current one, did not concur on the notion of a science department, Keyworth replied that their views, like his, probably oscillated from time to time.

Former Rep. Don Ritter agreed that a Department of Science would provide a national focus and vision for science funding, and make “more coherent use of what we have.” While admitting that establishing a new department would result in some loss of diversity of funding sources, he argued that diversity could be maintained through other, non-federal sources. Henson Moore related his efforts, as Deputy Energy Secretary during the Bush Administration, to improve the coordination and vision of DOE research, to consolidate the DOE labs, and to expand DOE to a new Department of Energy, Science and Technology. He warned of the political pitfalls of such attempts.

Keyworth thought that the new department’s focus should be on basic research and education of new talent, and criticized government-industry partnerships for enhancing competitiveness. Brown responded that there is an ideological dispute within Congress over federal involvement in applied research and technology development. Joseph Spigai, Director of the University of Maryland Engineering Management Program, argued that it is difficult to separate basic research from applied, and believed that including both in a single department would help smooth the transition from one to the other. Moore agreed that there was a valid federal role in applied research of national benefit that, if left to the private sector, would never get done. Walker questioned whether “one-stop shopping” for research funding would result in a loss of good ideas. Moore stated that a well-run research plan funds competing ideas at an early stage, which would be easier to organize if all research was funded under a single organization.

Most of those present agreed that if there ever was a propitious time for such a reorganization, it is now. The chairman of the Basic Research Subcommittee, Steven Schiff (R-NM), said he was “becoming convinced " that a single science department was a good idea. He also advocated having science funding consolidated under the jurisdiction of only one congressional appropriations subcommittee in each chamber. Walker plans to continue the discussion in future hearings, but none have yet been scheduled.