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Hot off the presses: “Science, Technology, & Democracy: Building a Modern Congressional Technology Assessment Office”
This new report entitled “Science, Technology, & Democracy: Building a Modern Congressional Technology Assessment Office” just dropped from Harvard Kennedy School’s Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation. We think this is extremely timely and important given the state of the world and the great need for far-reaching US public policy on science and technology […]
GAO to do some OTA work
On Jan 29, The Government Accountability Office (GAO) announced the launch of a new Science, Technology Assessment and Analytics (STAA) team to provide Congress with "thorough and balanced analysis of technological and scientific developments that affect our society, environment, and economy." GAO had announced its intention to set up this new STAA team back in […]
Science and Congress
Take a few minutes away from politics and read this fascinating article! One would think that Congress would want to have good solid scientific advice and not have to rely on think tanks or the Executive Branch agencies for an understanding of complex scientific issues. Well, in 1972 Congress passed and President Nixon signed a […]
Congress has information, needs more knowledge
New America Foundation's Open Technology Institute (OTI) has released a new report that The U.S. Congress lacks "shared expert knowledge capacity" and that has "created a critical weakness in our democratic process." The report says that Congress depends on outdated and in some cases antiquated systems of information referral, sorting, communicating, and convening."
- Congress' Wicked Problem [announcement and summary]. This paper does not put forward a simple recipe to fix these ailments, but argues that the absence of basic knowledge management in our legislature is a critical weakness. Congress struggles to make policy on complex issues while it equally lacks the wherewithal to effectively compete on substance in today’s 24 hour news cycle. This paper points out that Congress is not so much venal and corrupt as it is incapacitated and obsolete. And, in its present state, it cannot serve the needs of American democracy in the 21st Century.
- Congress' Wicked Problem, Seeking Knowledge Inside the Information Tsunami, By Lorelei Kelly, New America Foundation, (December 2012). [PDF, 6 pages] This paper distinguishes between information and knowledge: Members of Congress and their staff do not lack access to information. Yet information backed by financial interests and high-decibel advocacy is disproportionately represented. Most importantly, they lack the institutional wisdom that can be built via a deliberate system that feeds broadly inclusive information through defined processes of review, context, comparison and evaluation of the implications for the nation as a whole. Concurrently, Congress also needs more expert judgment available to it during the policymaking process, which, for the purposes of this paper, means a focus on development of knowledge.
A New Push for the Office of Technology Assessment
Some good news for those who value public policy based on well informed science, "the possibility of reconstituting OTA itself is gaining new momentum."
- A New Push for the Office of Technology Assessment, by Steven Aftergood, Secrecy News (May 12, 2010).
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