"Critical Upgrade: Enhanced Capacity for White House Science and Technology Policymaking: Recommendations for the Next President"

The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars has published a short document calling for the next administration to develop OSTP 2.0, an new and improved Office of Science and Technology Policy in the White House. Its major recommendations are:

• The President should appoint a nationally respected leader to be Assistant for Science and Technology. This individual should serve at the cabinet level. The appointment should be made early in the new Administrationalong with the appointments of heads of cabinet-level agencies.
• OSTP must be funded adequately, staffed fully, and integratedclosely with other policy-making bodies withinthe White House.
• Robust mechanisms to obtain advice must be established and maintained through the President’s Council of Advisors for Science and Technology (PCAST), the President’s Council on Innovation and Competitiveness, the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC), the National Academies, and a proposed new Federal-State Science and Technology Council.

The authors of the report (JENNIFER BOND, MARK SCHAEFER, ROD NICHOLS and DAVID REJESKI) have interviews a large number of people with intimate knowledge and long experience in U.S. science and technology policy, and have produced a thoughtful and useful report. I especially recommend the quotations that are liberally sprinkled through the document.

Read what others have said of the report:

• The American Institute of Physics
• The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers