Startup: Setting the Agenda in OTA’s Early Years

Peter D. Blair

Chapter 4 in Congress’s Own Think Tank: Learning from the Legacy of the Office of Technology Assessment (1972–1995), 2013, pp 41-49 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract OTA began carrying out formal technology assessments in 1974• 7he procedures for organizing and executing them were refined significantly over the agency’s history. Over time most OTA assessments were initiated by the leadership of congressional committees, although the organic legislation provided other means, including a short-lived attempt to create an “OTA Priorities” list. The urgency of the congressional agenda ultimately hastened a marginalization of the role for TAAC, originally designed as a means for providing external input on the design of prospective technology assessments, as well as essentially abandoning one of the original aspirations of the agency’s designers—assessments focused on long term, early warning of the implications of technology change. In the course of the very first of several OTA assessments, the culture of the agency became such that assessments would articulate the strengths and weaknesses of alternative policy options, often in great detail, but would seldom put forward specific policy recommendations.

Keywords: Technology Assessment; Policy Recommendation; Climate Technology; Congressional Committee; Committee Leadership (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:stachp:978-1-137-35905-6_4

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.palgrave.com/9781137359056

DOI: 10.1057/9781137359056_4

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Science, Technology, and Innovation Policy from Palgrave Macmillan
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().