STATEMENT OF DR. JEROME B. WIESNER, DIRECTOR OF THE OFFICE OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, BEFORE THE SENATE SUBCOMMITTEE ON REORGANIZATION AND INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP65B00383R000200010029-0
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 12
• Document Creation Date: December 15, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 10, 2004
• Sequence Number: 29
• Publication Date: September 21, 1962
• Content Type: STATEMENT

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STATEMENT OF DR. JEROME B. WIESNER,
DIRECTOR OF THE OFFICE OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY,
BEFORE THE SENATE SUBCOMMITTEE ON
REORGANIZATION AND INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATICNS
Friday, September 21, 1962
Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee:
I am pleased to appear before your Committee to discuss the
subject of scientific and technical information. We appreciate the
interest your Committee has shown in scientific information and the
many constructive summaries contained in its publications. You have
focused in a direct way upon a central problem concerning the Govern-
ment's scientific and technological activities --effective communication
of technical information in a rapidly mounting research and development
effort.
A number of Federal agencies have a long tradition of activity in
scientific and technical information: the Department of Agriculture,
Bureau of Standards, Smithsonian Institution, Library of Congress,
among others. As a relative newcomer, the Atomic Energy Commission
has organized a most extensive scientific and technical information pro-
gram. The NASA is establishing an information program commensurate
with the size of its R&D and its statutory responsibilities to make the
results of its research generally available. Representatives of several
agencies are here to report on their agency activities, progress, and
future plans.
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Although the Federal agencies have long dealt with the needs for
scientific and technical information in carrying out their missions, the
problem has taken on new dimensions requiring concerted action at the
Presidential level. This is the result of the rapid growth of government
research and development to the point where a majority of the scientists
and engineers are engaged in government-financed work. The R&D is
growing in complexity and sophistication as well as in magnitude. All
of this is taking place during a period of international stress and great
demands on our national resources, requiring careful husbanding of
time, funds, and scarce technical manpower. Thus, scientific and
technical information in government has become a national problem and
can no longer be considered on an agency-by-agency basis.
The Executive Branch has been carefully considering these
questions; and is doing something about them. Although the Committee
is' generally aware of the organizational steps that have been taken, I
would like to comment briefly on the efforts to come to grips with the
technical information problem on a government-wide basis.
The Office of Science Information Service was established in the
National Science Foundation as the result of a study under the President's
Science Advisory Committee in 1958. This Office has operated to pro-
mote the development of better techniques for handling scientific
information and to improve existing methods for disseminating scientific
information. In March of 1959, the Federal Council for Science and
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Technology was established to enable more effective planning and
administration of Federal scientific and technological programs. At the
same time, the NSF was directed to provide leadership in coordinating
the scientific information activities of the Federal Government. The
NSF has made considerable progress in its efforts to improve the
dissemination of scientific information. But it has achieved only
limited success in developing a coordinated national scientific informa-
tion system, since it has no administrative authority over other agencies..
Agency-wide coordination is being achieved through the Federal Council
for Science and Technology. In May 1962, the Council agreed that a.
high-level focal point of responsibility would be established in each
agency to integrate and elevate the status of science information functions
within their management. At the same time, the Council established a
committee on scientific and technical information to develop government-
wide standards and assure compatibility between agency systems. The
committee is chaired by Dr. Brockway McMillan, Assistant Secretary of
the Air Force for Research and Development.
During the past year a panel of scientists and engineers under the
President's Science Advisory Committee has been hard at work on a
study of the entire national scientific and technical information problem.
The work of the panel was aided by a full-time task force staff which
labored several months last spring to advise me on the organization and
coordination of the scientific and technical information activities of the
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Government to best serve the needs of different management levels.
The most recent action to strengthen the Government's ability to
guide the scientific and technical information activities of the many
Federal agencies was the Congressional action barely three months ago
to establish the Office of Science and Technology in the Executive Office
of the President. This Office, under my direction, is providing the
President with full-time staff support for the coordination of Federal
science and technology functions. It is responsible for providing policy
guidance in the matter of scientific and technical information, but it does
not have authority to impose central direction and control. The Office
has a professional staff member devoting full attention to this field.
Similarly, the Director of Defense Research and Engineering will shortly
engage, for the first time since the creation of that office, a person
having major responsibility for scientific and technical information at
the OSD level.
In your letter of invitation you asked that I address myself principally
to the question "Where do we go from here and what does my Office pro-
pose to do to speed improvements in scientific information systems? ".
We are dealing with a matter of great complexity from technical and
administrative standpoints. More than 35 government departments and
agencies carry on scientific and technical information activities. Each
agency must tailor its activities to its mission under separate legislative
authority. Their management structure and organization differ. Not
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only must the technical information activities of these many activities
be brought into harmony but they must be carefully related to the well
developed private activities in this field. The studies by your Committee
staff have provided a most useful input for considering these complex
problems. However, in my view, it is necessary to move rapidly ahead
with the planning and actions designed to strengthen government-wide
management of scientific and technical information activities if we are
to make the necessary progress in solving the specialized problems
identified by your Committee. There is general agreement that the
Committee has put its finger on an important problem, but there are
some differences of view as to its severity at present. There is no
difference of view that the problem is growing increasingly severe and
that we need to mobilize our efforts to develop a comprehensive plan of
action and the agency organization to carry it out; a plan and organiza-
tion designed to satisfy top management as well as the bench scientist
and engineer. Having essentially completed these major studies and with
the organizational steps that have been taken, the stage is now set for
the development of such a plan. The creation of the Office of Science
and Technology permits the exercise of leadership and initiative
necessary to handle a technical management problem of this magnitude
and complexity. I intend to make a major effort to identify needed
improvements and see that they are rapidly brought about.
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With these general remarks, I would like to comment on the nature
of the problem and the opportunities for improvement as I see them.
Two simple, but essential points have emerged from our studies.
First, scientific information is an integral part of research and develop-
ment. Second, to cope with the ever increasing flood of technical
information, all those connected with R&D--government agencies,
technical societies, and individual scientists--will have to devote more
thought, effort, and resources to technical information than in the past.
Solving the technical information problem will not, in itself, solve
the problem of R&D management, Too often, good information handling
is confused with good management. Good information is necessary for
good management; but good information does not necessarily imply good
management. For example, I do not agree with claims that inadequacies
in the information system are principally responsible for inefficiencies
in weapons systems development. Where deficiencies have occurred, they
have been attributable much more to shortcomings in individuals --in their
sophistication, their knowledge, possibly their education--than to faults
in our information system. Make no mistake about this point. The
number one deterrent to more efficient management of Federal scientific
and technical programs is a shortage of an adequate number of outstand-
ing scientists and engineers with management experience. There are
many reasons for this, including the fact that the national effort in these
fields Is growing faster than the supply. In this period of short supply,
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government salaries are inadequate to compete with other employers and
consequently less than a proportionate share of the most able people are
attracted to government employment.
Nor does more information automatically mean better information.
We are already deluged with a flood of documents. The principal need
is not improvements in mechanical retrieval systems, though better
automation is desirable. W e need a way of switching information, not
documents, to the user in as discriminatory manner as possible. The
user should be informed, not overwhelmed.
Often the entire burden of information handling is placed on the
documentation community- -on the librarian and the automatic retriever,
This overlooks the fact that information is not documents--that a pile of
documents on a manager's or researcher's desk is of little use; it is
information that he needs. As the volume of information grows, it will
need to be transferred more and more through the mediation of a highly
skilled, highly trained scientist or engineer who can sift, review,
compact, and digest the information contained in reports and put the
information into a form that can readily be used.
The development of information scientists will require more effort
on the part of everyone connected with R&D. We will need to encourage
and kindle the interest of some of our best scientific talent for this work.
This will involve some diversion of scarce, high quality technical
manpower to the information task; but it will greatly enhance the
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effectiveness of the entire scientific and engineering community. Such
information scientists should be located where research and development
is going on--big government laboratories or contracting establish-
ments--at specialized information centers. The over-all information
system of the future will have many specialized information centers as
its central switching devices. It will transmit suitably packaged informa-
tion from the central depository, operated either by the technical society
or by the Government, to the individual user. One could liken this to
the Legislative Reference Service of the Library of Congress. A related
facet of this problem is the need to train scientists and engineers to
make more effective use of the information available to them. We
should encourage the technical schools and universities to develop more
effective education in this aspect of technical work.
In deciding how to deploy the resources of Federal agencies, we
need to keep in mind that each agency faces two rather separate, though
related problems. It must maintain an effective internal communication
system; and it must do what is necessary to aid the development of an
effective over-all government communication system. Further, the
government and non-government systems are interwoven, and the govern-
ment must pay close attention to the non-government systems if it wishes
to keep its own system effective. The government must assume
responsibilities toward those parts of the non-government systems that
do not overlap with its own, as well as those that do, simply because
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government has assumed such heavy responsibility toward research.
The tasks of the Federal agencies can, therefore, be summarized
in rather straightforward fashion as follows :
- First, the Federal agencies must clearly and consciously accept
responsibility for information activities that are relevant to their
missions. The technical and mechanical inconsistencies between agency
information systems --differences in format, in indexing, in compatibility
of abstracting, in initial distribution and the like--are matters which are
being handled by the NSF's Office of Science Information Service with
the guidance of the Federal Council for Science and Technology. On the
other hand, inconsistencies in the attitude of agency managers toward
information is another matter. As long as information is considered
important by some agencies and unimportant by others, some will have
an aggressive technical information system, others a weak one. All
agency managements must come to recognize that information is an
essential product of their agency's operation whether or not Congress has
so directed, and that the control and dissemination of information is a
vital part of research and development. Through the establishment of a
focal point of responsibility for technical information in each agency, a
highly placed official will see to it that information activities in his agency
are sensible and vigorous. This highly placed official must be a part of
the agency's research, not of its administrative management. His job
is to determine how much and what kind of information processing should
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be done. He would be expected to compare his agency's information
activities with those of other agencies, and would ensure proper handling
of the technical literature for which his agency is responsible. He would
identify needed research and development projects in scientific and
technical information relevant to the agency's mission. He must be
supported in this work by an adequate, high quality technical staff
versed in the problems of information handling,
- Second, each agency must maintain its internal system in effective
working order. The internal communication system is based on informal
technical reports. Suggestions for improving the handling of this report
literature should be considered, such as:
a) evaluating technical reports before they enter the internal
information system;
b) publishing critical technical review journals covering the
report and open literature, thereby extending the experience with
successful AEC journals to appropriate fields of primary interest to
DOD and NASA;
c) establishment of additional specialized information centers
handling publications and keeping abreast of all developments in its field.
The job of preparing state-of-the-art reviews and otherwise interpreting
the literature would be a responsibility of the specialized centers.
- Third, government-wide scientific and technical information
clearinghouses are needed to integrate the agency systems with each other
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ll -
and with the non-government information systems. Some of the needed
clearinghouses are in existence, but a general strengthening of these is
a) The Science Information Exchange will need to bring its
activities in the physical sciences up to the excellent standards of quality,
coverage and timeliness it has established in the biological sciences.
There are major difficulties in recruiting the professional staff for
indexing and proper handling of information in the physical sciences. It
is more difficult and time consuming to interest qualified scientists and
engineers in work of this character at the prevailing wages for this activity
than has been the case for biologists where it is possible to recruit
qualified women. The SIE has also experienced greater difficulty in the
physical sciences in acquiring current research data from government
agencies where considerable administrative work is required to transfer
it in a form adapted to SIE use. The Federal Council Committee on
Scientific and Technical Information has given first priority to the
problems of the SIE; and we are exploring the need for fiscal and
administrative measures to reinforce and strengthen its important work.
b) A national Technical Referral Service is being established
by the Library of Congress to direct inquiries to the proper depository
or specialized information center.
c) Additional attention will need to be given to timely govern-
ment report announcement and distribution and the strengthening of the
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Office of Technical Services to more adequately serve this function on a
government-wide basis.
In conclusion, I conceive the information system in the Executive
Branch of Government to be an interlocking system of agency systems kept
under surveillance by the Federal Council for Science and Technology and
operating under the policy guidance of the Office of Science and Technology.
While developing strong interconnecting agency systems, we must take
care that the government information systems not overwhelm the non-
government activities, particularly those of the technical societies which
are especially sensitive to the needs of the users. The process of
scientific communication with its long tradition of self criticism plays an
indispensable role. The existence of a healthy, impartial system of
scientific communication helps assure the country that the science it
supports is valid. The first scientific information panel of the
President's Science Advisory Committee insisted on an articulated,
rather than a centralized, scientific communication system to maintain
independent avenues of scientific criticism. It is my strong belief that
these considerations are still valid, and that the measures I have outlined
will help the government and non-government systems develop into an
effective interwoven instrument that is responsive to the changing needs
of our science and technology, but will assure the non-government
system a necessary freedom of action.
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