An agent, not a mole: Assessing the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy

This paper argues in favor of four criteria for assessing the performance of the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) within the Executive Office of the US President: trying to killing bad ideas (and sometimes succeeding), mobilizing expertise and confidence to support crisis response, ide...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inScience & public policy Vol. 41; no. 4; pp. 411 - 418
Main Author Hart, David M.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Oxford University Press 01.07.2014
Subjects
Entrepreneurs
Executives
Heads of state
History
Presidents
Public policy
Science
Science and technology
Science policy
Technology
Technology policy
U.S.A
United States
technology policy
U.S. President
science policy
United States
Office of Science and Technology Policy
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Summary:This paper argues in favor of four criteria for assessing the performance of the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) within the Executive Office of the US President: trying to killing bad ideas (and sometimes succeeding), mobilizing expertise and confidence to support crisis response, identifying new issues and developing presidential policy initiatives, and catalyzing and coordinating multi-agency science and technology activities, especially in response to presidential goals. These criteria are illustrated with episodes from OSTP’s history. They place OSTP in a variety of roles, ranging from disinterested broker of expertise to policy entrepreneur, but always as an agent of the President. Although a full assessment using these criteria may not be feasible due to data limitations, their identification is nonetheless valuable in order to spark scholarly debate and further research and to support planning by OSTP staff and their interlocutors inside and outside of government.
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ISSN:0302-3427
1471-5430
DOI:10.1093/scipol/sct061