the professional training and engineering combined with postal knowhow, so we are now ready to give the Postmaster General and the entire Department the support it needs in order to move forward rapidly in research and development.

One of the other items we would like to mention, since the GAO has issued their report to the Congress, is the use of engineering support service on a contract basis. This has been gradually decreased each and every year.

As a percentage of our total effort, starting with 1961 we had approximately 112 employees that were engineer service support activities, primarily draftsmen associated with the construction and building program. This effort has been relatively constant. At the present time we have about 115, but in relation to a total civil service staff of 148 in 1961 to our present civil service staff of 299, you see that it has decreased considerably. The emphasis on research and development as spelled out in the funds appropriated and the funds obligated in table 1 of the statement I would like to call to your attention, because contrary to the impression mechanization funds have been appropriated and not spent, we would like to point out the R. & D. funds that have been appropriated that do have carryover capability or no fund limitation, page 7, table 1, of PMG's presentation, all funds appropriated for research and development have been spent for research and development.

In each year the appropriations, starting with 1961 through 1966 have been accompanied by an equal and equivalent obligation with one exception, and that was fiscal year 1963, at which $6 million was carried over. That is the only carryover. It has remained a single carryover each year but this year we are in fact and have already to date expended that amount of money.

Mr. OLSEN. Let me interrupt you there. How much R. & D. money is in engineering for construction of buildings?

Mr. HARRIMAN. Approximately $3 million of the $12 million annual appropriation is in engineering of buildings. This represents $2 million for engineering support services that I just referred to. One hundred people on contract plus approximately $1 million for salaries of our construction engineering activity within O.R. & E.

Mr. OLSEN. So how much is purely research?

Mr. HARRIMAN. By the National Science Foundation definition, who looks to our activity each year, of the $12 million appropriation, $6 million is truly research and development after you take out salaries, retirement, construction engineering, civil service benefits, and so forth.

Mr. OLSEN. By the same definition, would you know how much is research in NASA?

Mr. HARRIMAN. NASA has a different base. I can refer to the National Science Foundation, where their activities are spelled out. Where ours runs about 50 percent available for R. & D., by their definition, NASA runs about 85 percent. I had one other conclusion that we would like to pass on to you today. The Postmaster General has referred to it, but I would like to emphasize it again. We have spent more money for contract research and development by the definition that you have just used since Postmaster General O'Brien became Postmaster than we have spent in any given year for the past 4 years. We will expend, during the remaining time between now and

July 1, the remaining $5 million of the $18 million we had at the beginning of the year. As a matter of fact, we have more approved findings and determinations than we have funds for the remaining of this fiscal year. This means that Deputy Postmaster Belen and Postmaster General O'Brien will have to become selective in the actual contracts we award between now and July 1, because we will, in fact, run out of money.

Mr. BELEN. I did want to put in the record a comment concerning the additional scientific position that your bill would provide. We are in a very intensive search for top scientific talent. We have three 313 positions. You would double that. Three Public Law 313 positions were vacant as of a little while ago, but they are committed. We have some people coming aboard. When they are identified, I know you will be pleased with the type of person we are getting.

Second, we are working into the plans of one of our large new facilities on a new research and engineering laboratory. I know that the members of the committee have had a chance to go to our O.R. & E. laboratory here in Washington which is totally inadequate. It is in a real old building, but we have to run our postal laboratory where live mail is available and where that mail won't be delayed as a result of our having an opportunity to work with it. It is going to be in this general area that we will need these people to help staff the R. & D. laboratory and to help supervise it at the headquarters level. Mr. OLSEN. Could you give us some idea of the cost of this bill? Mr. BELEN. I really looked on this bill as a bill that would bring about a great deal of savings.

Mr. OLSEN. For the record, will you put the amounts of money in? Mr. BELEN. Yes. One Assistant Postmaster General at $27,000. Two executive level 5 positions; we already have one of those so we would be adding one and that would be $26,000.

Mr. OLSEN. For each?

Mr. BELEN. For one; because we already have one. You are adding three Public Law 313 positions that will be ranked between $21,000 and $25,000, so the cost is insignificant compared to the benefit we expect to get out of the better leadership and the better position in which this would place the R. & D. program-about $120,000 total. But if they don't produce many times that in significant benefit to the Department, why, we will certainly be surprised. Mr. OLSEN. I think we all agree that this is a very modest amount, but I think for the record when we go to the floor we should have the figures so that we are not charged with creating some new expensive bureaucracy. We are very much in agreement with you. Do you have anything more?

Mr. HARRIMAN. I would like to also submit for your consideration the very good response that we have had over the past 5 years from private industry. We issued a "challenge to industry" back in 1961. As a result of it, over 900 companies have submitted ideas, pieces of equipment, or suggestions to the Department as suggestions from industry that we could test and evaluate and make part of our mechanization package all research and development programs in the future. We have gone over the results of this recently with the Postmaster General and we are very pleased with the cooperation which both the Office of Research and Engineering and the Bureau of Facilities has received from private industry.

Lastly is the educational program which we have had going. Approximately one-third of the total professional staff of O.R. & Ê. does attend evening courses of one type or another in one of the universities around town. I point this out as being important because in the rapidly moving area of electronics and mechanization it is stated by the National Science Foundation that one becomes obsolete in his field in 10 years if he has not been back to school for a refresher course.

Lastly, the three-tenths of 1 percent which is the total amount being requested if we use the $16 million for fiscal year 1967 is in comparison to industry as a whole in the United States, which runs about 4%1⁄2 percent of their total budget for research.

In the aviation and missile industry they run 26 percent of their total budgets for research and development. The Department of Defense spends about 15 percent of its total budget for research and development. Ours is three-tenths of 1 percent.

Mr. OLSEN. Thank you very much. Mr. Belen, do you have anything more?

Mr. BELEN. No, sir. We are ready for questions.

Mr. OLSEN. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Illinois.

Mr. DERWINSKI. Mr. Belen, I don't anticipate this bill will have any trouble. I think the Congress is aware that the Post Office faces growing problems and this at least in a small way would be our means of cooperating, but in addition to being aware of the Post Office problems, we are also aware of the attitude of the public or the complaints of the public about postal service.

As the chairman indicated, to range a bit beyond the subject matter of the bill, I would like to ask about that Reader's Digest article which emphasized the Chicago post office. On a number of committee tours we have taken of the facility in Chicago, we have been told by the supervisors of their problems with the personnel: breakdown in discipline and unusually troublesome personnel complications.

Do you envision that you would be able to strengthen performance procedures in huge post offices, such as Chicago?

Mr. BELEN. Certainly not as a result of this bill. This doesn't apply to that.

Mr. DERWINSKI. I realize that. That is why I am going beyond the bill.

We

Mr. BELEN. They have some very real personnel problems. have 654,000 employees as of now. One of the significant things that people have to recognize is that as a result of the retirement bill we had a high number of retirements. We had 180,000 acquisitions and about 100,000 separations over this past time. When you add that up, about 1 in every 5 employees of the 654,000 is new this year. A lot of these employees may be having their first work experience. Along with other things we have some real training problems. It has brought about a large use of overtime. We have had some real delays in the daily mail showing up due to the fact that there is difficulty in getting employees to serve that Sunday tour. If you don't get that mail ready Sunday for the carrier at 6 o'clock Monday morning you are missing that Monday delivery and it turns out that Friday's mail that you might get Saturday and certainly expect Monday is missed. Because of that, that becomes a very real problem.

There was some misunderstanding I think on the part of employees with respect to their responsibilities, to have them show up. Absenteeism just isn't tolerated.

I will tell you as far as our employees generally, when I start out in the morning and I see a terrific snowstorm going over the whole country, I realize it is impossible to see that 180,000 carriers are on the street.

We have no real morale problems and I am really proud of our boys. I really am.

Mr. DERWINSKI. Now getting back to the subject matter of our discussion this morning, do I understand the Postmaster General to say that you are going to make a complete review of your leasing program? Is that part of your just where does that fit in your plans?

Mr. BELEN. We maintain you can't take expensive money equipment and put it out in the middle of the field someplace. We have had some very disturbing experiences in putting some of the equipment into existing buildings where you have to shore up the floor and it doesn't fit. Philadelphia is one. We had a problem with parcel post damage and things of that sort. The Reader's Digest article certainly highlights it.

When you consider all the mail that is being generated in the cities of the east coast and we haven't had a new building there in 30 years, Boston is just getting a new building now. We have $70 million worth of construction starting in New York City. In Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Washington, with all this tremendous growth, we do not have any new facilities.

So we do feel, as a result of studies made, and I will ask Mr. Abell to give you more detail on it, that we ought to, when going into these major constructions, be able to decide should we lease it, construct it ourselves, or should there be a GSA building.

That second one, which is very important, that we should be able to construct a general post office building, we ought to be able to use that as part of the decisionmaking process and we have sent a bill down; it has been referred to another committee; it just came down and I would like to have Mr. Abell talk about that.

Mr. ABELL. You raised the question, Congressman, of whether or not we are going to review our total leasing procedure, and I might say that we have reviewed it rather carefully over the past several months; in fact, extending over a period of longer than a year. We have come to the conclusion that the leasing authority which we now have is a very important and valuable authority for us in constructing many of our buildings. We feel that there is also a need to have direct construction authority so that we could construct some of these buildings and own them, rather than lease them.

Now the question immediately raises itself as to why, under the Federal Public Buildings Act of 1959, we just don't go ahead as we have in the past and have these buildings constructed by GSA. I have no argument with GSA. Actually, I think GSA has done a very good job, in many respects, of providing us with the space we need. They have a tremendous job providing space for the Post Office and all other Federal agencies as well, however.

It is our belief that we now, more and more, need a special-purpose building that is not a general-purpose building of the type that was visualized when GSA was first in the construction business, and I think that with these large buildings, such as the Detroit post office

which was mentioned earlier, such as Operation Turnkey, so called, in Providence, such as the new post office which we badly need right here in Washington, D.C., these buildings have no requirement to be in the downtown area where you would normally have a courthouse. They might be over the railroad tracks, they might be out by the airport, they might be in any number of different locations, but just on location alone, our needs frequently do not jibe with the needs of other Federal agencies.

The mechanization that goes into these buildings requires long and careful planning, as Mr. Harriman mentioned earlier today. A tremendous amount of work goes into just the question of how best for the most efficient operation to place the exact sorting machines and the parcel sorting machines and letter sorters, and so forth.

Once we have pooled all the plans for one of these buildings together I don't think it is efficient to take our plans and send them to GSA and say, "OK, now your planners take over and you build us a building." I think we have done 90 percent of the work by planning, right down to working blueprints, and we ought to have the authority to just go ahead and build.

We would continue to cooperate with GSA in every respect where we are in a small building, an unsophisticated post office in a mediumsized town or small town, where other Federal agencies have a need, then we would all combine and have one Federal building which would, of course, be built by GSA.

Mr. OLSEN. Thank you very much, Mr. Derwinski.
The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Louisiana.

Mr. MORRISON. I have nothing.

Mr. OLSEN. The gentleman from New Jersey, Mr. Daniels.

Mr. DANIELS. I was wanting to hear Mr. Harriman speak about this educational program that the Department has installed. It was my thought, it came to my mind when the Postmaster General was speaking, that in view of the fact the Department was now embarking upon a very expansive program of modernization, new equipment, and some of this equipment is highly technical, I was wondering if the Department had given any consideration to establishing a school to train personnel to take care of the breakdown of any equipment, because this could foul up your operation very much and again result in the slow delivery of the mail.

Now I think that ought to be taken into consideration, that there should be a program of training of personnel to be able to handle, repair this equipment in the event of a breakdown, so I would like to hear from you, Mr. Belen, if you have any comment.

Mr. BELEN. Yes, sir. Through our maintenance group we do have technical training schools and it involves-which involves the maintenance of this equipment. It is all new and it is all a very necessary program. Undoubtedly we will have one involving the employees going into the new facility right near you, sir.

Mr. DANIELS. I just wanted to bring that up.

Mr. OLSEN. Thank you very much.

The Chair recognizes the gentleman from New Jersey, Mr. Krebs. Mr. KREBS. I don't have any questions, thank you.

Mr. OLSEN. Mr. Hanley?

Mr. HANLEY. I have no questions, thank you.