0.12 The bush-41 years: 1989-93  (Page 6/8)

Technology policy

Bromley was by no means the first to note that the “T” in both the Office of Science and Technology and the Office of Scienceand Technology Policy was often a distant second to the “S.” In an effort at improvement, OSTP issued a statement in September 1990 that noted the buildingblocks of a new national technology policy:

• a quality workforce that is educated, trained, and flexible in adapting to technological and competitive change;
• a financial environment that is conducive to longer-term investment in technology;
• the translation of technology into timely, cost-competitive, high- quality manufactured products;
• an efficient technological infrastructure, especially in the transfer of information;
• a legal and regulatory environment that provides stability for innovation and does not contain unnecessary barriers to private investments inR&D and domestic production. Bromley, op. cit. , 128.

Despite intense criticism and opposition from some in the White House, Bromley received considerable support from key membersof Congress. In 1991 Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), chairman of the Armed Services Appropriations Subcommittee, directed OSTP to establish a CriticalTechnologies Panel “drawn equally from the private sector and from within the federal government, that was charged with examining the critical technologiesthat had been prepared by the Department of Commerce, the Department of Defense, and various private organizations.” Ibid., 131.

The list of critical technologies identified by the panel were materials, manufacturing, information and communications,biotechnology and life sciences, aeronautics, energy and environment. Ibid., 265-66.

In 1992, Senator Bingaman introduced legislation creating a Critical Technologies Institute, providing resources and staffingthat would “make possible the long-range strategic planning for implementing the critical technologies in the industrial sector.”

Science and international relations

Like most senior physicists, Bromley had occasion to participate in frequent international conferences. As a measure ofhis standing with the international physics community, he served as president of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP) from 1984 through1987.

Well aware of the importance of international scientific initiatives, Bromley helped create the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Megascience Forum (now known as the Global Science Forum). Every three to five years the OECD’s Committee on Science andTechnology Policy (CSTP), which normally meets twice a year, holds a meeting at the ministerial level, bringing together the ministers of science from thetwenty-four countries that were OECD members in 1992. Bromley proposed creation of the Megascience Forum, where leading scientists could convene to discusslarge-scale scientific programs whose costs exceeded or at least strained the budget of any single nation. Ibid., 211. Bromley had hoped that the Forum would lead to international cost-sharing ofexpensive programs and facilities. While this hope never materialized, the Forum did provide a unique and useful venue for assessing the status of research in anumber of big science fields, for developing probable scenarios for the future, and for coordinating national and regional activities.