Everybody recognizes the problems differ from applying the concept to defense systems or using it in NASA or for purposes of developing a system to make a moonshot, but the question is whether you can use the concept, the idea, as applied to the solution of social problems, and I take it that you agree that it can be ■

Mr. Barber. That is correct.

Senator Nelson (continuing). Even though there are some imponderables in this area that there are not in others. I would assume you could break it down at least into two general areas.

One question is, how do we do better what we already are doing, and the other question is, how do we evaluate whether what we are doing is what we ought to be doing.

There is not any question but what the first part is a lot simpler than the second part. We can, for example, institute a program planning budgeting system in a department or agency and evaluate the efficiency, the performance of that agency. We can do a cost accounting, so to speak, a personnel performance cost accounting.

Thus you can do a performance cost accounting to test the utilization of personnel or the utilization of space or the effectiveness of the performance of the job that is assigned to that department.

These problems, it seems to me, are relatively easy problems to subject to the concept of systems engineering.

There are lots of problems like that where you just take an operation and do an analysis of it to see how you can do better what you are already doing. However, it is one thing to do an evaluation to determine how effectively and efficiently the school is being run from the standpoint of space utilization and utilization of teachers' time, supervision of work and movement of kids from one class to another.

It is quite another thing to apply the sj-stems engineering concept to the question of whether or not what you are trying to do in the school system is really very good, and what the alternative is.

The reallv tough question in education is how do vou motivate the child?

If you have a really good school system, the children would lie motivated on their own to do what we now try to push them to do. We have not done much of a job in the evaluation of that problem.

You mentioned something about pollution in your remarks. This is another question. I assume you would agree that there would be no problem—not that there would be no problem—but the concept of systems engineering could be applied to the whole question of atmospheric pollution, of air and water, that you could make an evaluation of what all the problem areas are, where all the pollutants are coming from, and alternative methods of disposing of or neutralizing the pollutants, and the cost factor. Systems engineering could be applied to that problem, could it not?

Mr. Barber. Yes. ^^^^^g/gM

Senator Nelson. And the next question would \~>e how you would solve it. and that irm'- nto the political area, which is quite an

other problem.

Have you rej^l

Mr. Barber. _

Senator Nei fl be*') ivith either one of them.

We drafted one in my office, and the Republicans subsequently drafted one on the House side. Do you have any suggestions as to how we might improve these bills in order to implement the idea of using systems engineering?

Mr. Barber. Let me say I think both bills would be useful, but my general feeling is that to strengthen the bill on public commission, to permit it even two or three demonstration programs, would make it far more effective than it is now.

I think as it presently stands these bills would provide the means to educate the public, but the key factor as I observe it in our society is whether there is a market, whether there is somebody motivated to build something that serves the public interest and finds it profitable and useful.

I think our task here is to aline private interests with the public interest, and I think that it is possible to do so.

So if the bill on the public commission could be modified to permit a limited number of demonstration programs chosen by the commission, I think it would be a very powerful instrument, far more powerful than the limited amount of funds that would be required to do it.

Senator Nelson. In the bill that we drafted the Secretary of Labor was authorized to make grants to private and public institutions for demonstration purposes. Our draft did authorize the grants to private groups though we did not try to enumerate them or list them.

Mr. Barber. I am afraid we are not communicating. I understand the grants were permitted for systems analyses on various studies, but what I am attempting to convey is that there is a distinction between public education, public reporting and programs of this kind, which I consider to be basically sound which educate the public, and a program in which there actually would be a two- or three-block area that would be dramatically changed, or one in which a school system was dramatically improved—in other words, something outside the intellect and the printed page, in the outside world, that was improved dramatically—a demonstration of excellence and hope.

Then people would begin, not only in the slums, but American corporations and investment houses would believe that this Government was going to take the steps necessary to create dramatic innovations in the public sector.

At the moment, in my contacts with industry, people believe first that it is technically possible, and second economically sound but, third, they don't believe anybody in the Government is going to be able to bring about the managerial changes that will bring about this kind of creative growth.

Senator Nelson. My guess is that in a proposed piece of legislation such as this one that a program that contemplated, say, a systems engineering analysis of some specific school problem or housing problem, and then also proposed to implement it with a good many millions of dollars to complete a demonstration program, would not pass the Congress at this stage in history. We are at the education stage, so to speak. If we could make some grants for studies to be done that might be acceptable to Congress. You might make grants to universities or groups of universities, for example, to train budget analysts and planners at the State and local level in the concept of systems engineering.

You would not end up making systems engineers out of them, but I I icy would end up understanding what the concept was.

That is one area in the educational side that you might do. You might go further and do some funding of actual educational programs to develop within an institution a department for training systems engineers.

You might make a grant to a city of a million people to do a systems analysis of the transportation problem in the city, but I do not think at this stage in history the Congress would be prepared, once the analysis had been made, to appropriate the necessary millions of dollars to rebuild the whole transportation system. But the analysis of a city of a million, or half a million or 2 million, the analysis of the transportation problem would pretty well fit another city of comparable size. Thus all other comparble cities would benefit from the evaluations.

In other words, there are all kinds of social problems, and they are fairly comparable in cities of comparable size, so we might be able to pass legislation that would make appropriations to do studies on specific kinds of problems in specific areas.

These are at least the limitations of what I have been aiming at in this legislation. Any bill that proposed to do more and make a large appropriation to pay for solving the problem once you have analyzed it wouldn't pass the Congress.

If at some subsequent date we found out that we had some real solution to some very serious problems it may be that Congress might come up with substantial matching funds to meet it.

But what. I am seeking to find out is the best approach to put some seed money into the area in order to develop some understanding of the concept of systems engineering and also to do some analysis of some problems around the country.

Who would make the decision as to what problems ought to be studied, and how would you approach it if you were drafting the bill?

Mr. Rarrrr. I am afraid I have not been too helpful, but I am quite concerned about this factor of expectations, and I think it is crucial because our society is a complex one, and it is the expectations of the people who are making these decisions that will affect their behavior.

Specifically, T am concerned about the following points: First, intellectually, the idea of systems engineering and programing and budgeting has become very fashionable in the past 1:2 to IS months, and I think we must realise there is a very real danger in this fashionableness, because it can rapidly develop*into an intellectual jargon which is a justification of the stains qua

I have seen evidence of this. People will take old programs and thev will generate what they call systems analysis programs, and in reality not a thing has been changed, and they merely have painted them- their old. obsolete programs—with a new jargon and tried to persuade the outside world that they are modern.

Yew might say it takes oiw to know one. and I have been a government bureaucrat (Wr years. A classic example. I can recall, and have seen this happen many times, \**s in the l&Vs was the Propeller laboratory at Wright Field. The Air Force changed its managenent many, many tnnes, and changed its procedures of reporting, but A« Propel Vr laboratory went on for y*ars and years and never changed its programs, long after the Air Force was made up primarily of jet aircraft. I think there is a very real danger that with an expansion of intellectual concepts, that that would become nothing more than a sheen on the status quo, and I think this is frankly the estimate of what I consider to be the most informed people in the country in this area who are making the investment decisions and the allocation of talent in our society.

I don't know whether they are right. I hope they are wrong, but until we are somehow able to break through to the point where political institutions and popularly elected officials will create a new framework for the conduct of public programs, I think they are going to be right.

Senator Nelson. I do not think there is any question but what education of the public and education of the governmental institutions is a necessary precedent to appropriate utilization of this concept, but that all takes time.

I can recall very well back in 1959,1960,1961, when I was Governor of Wisconsin and I was advocating and did create several regional planning commissions whose objective was to do precisely this, that in southeastern Wisconsin there was almost no interest in regional planning commissions, and there was a great suspicion among the counties that they would lose some of their sovereignty and rights.

In a short time, after these commissions were created, they nave become very popular, and they are doing a systems engineering job of evaluating problems in the area in which they are involved. They are doing a very good job.

I appeared before every county board in the area, and some of them two or three times, to try to persuade them to join in a planning commission. The same with the planning commission in central Wisconsin, but now there is political acceptance, and now they are making substantial headway.

The same with programing, planning, and budgeting, which we started before the Federal Government in Wisconsin. There was great resistance by the bureaucracy, who did not want that kind of thing. It is a long way from being perfected yet, but the concept is beginning to be understood, and I think that is the stage we are at here in attempting to find out what is the best way to utilize some modest amount of seed money in order to start an educational program so that there is some understanding of the concept, and in order to do some demonstration projects to show what the utilization of the concept can in fact do. What we are trying to do is to get a modest bill drafted that will accomplish some modest steps in the right direction.

Mr. Barber. Let me, if I may, make a suggestion. Again going back to this question of expectation, because I agree completely with your view of the necessity for education prior to the voting of major funds: I think if the Congress of the United States indicated that perhaps 2 years from now it hoped to create a demonstration program, even that slight indication would be read very carefully by the people in this field, because there are already, as you are well aware, in the fields of medicine and education, tremendous corporate investments in which literally hundreds of millions of dollars are being allocated against research and development objectives and marketing objectives for markets that are 3 to 5 years in the future. I do not know whether this is legally possible.

It is not necessary that the money be available today. What is necessary is to convey to people the idea that within 3 to 5 years, which is the frame of thinking of most leaders in the private sector of our society, that the Government might try to make possible dramatic demonstration programs, the same way we have with SST's and other Federal programs.

Senator NELSON. I do not know that you would ever get Congress to say that something we do not understand now we will go full blast on 2 years from now, because I think the problem of understanding the concept exists in Congress as well as elsewhere in the country. So it seems to me that the point really is that if we could get some modest pilot projects going and some education programs going that it would develop on its own, because in my judgment, at least, the logic of the utilization of the concept is so compelling that it cannot be ignored.

It is not a new concept. The only thing new about systems analysis, I suppose, is that we now have machines that can help us analyze alternatives that you could not have done before without a massive number of mathematicians and planners.

So we have tools. The question is to train people in the utilization of the tools and educate people as to the efficacy of the concept.

I have thought that maybe some appropriation ought to be made available to the National Science Foundation to allow them to consult with private profit and nonprofit organizations, to allow them, in cooperation with private nonprofit and profit organizations, to evaluate how you ought to approach the problem and authorize them to make grants of various kinds as an experimental matter.

I appreciate your coming here. Your statements are very valuable and they are appreciated.

Our next witness is Emanuel T. Weiler, dean of the Krannert Graduate School of Industrial Management, Purdue University, and Daniel Alpert, dean of the Graduate School, University of Illinois, Urbana, Ill.

We are very pleased that you were willing to take the time to come here this morning and give us the benefit of your ideas on legislation.

I notice you both have prepared texts. You may present them by reading them or extemporizing, whichever way meets your purposes best. I would be happy to have either of you interrupt the other if you have an idea to add to the testimony. STATEMENT OF E. T. WEILER, DEAN, KRANNERT GRADUATE

SCHOOL OF INDUSTRIAL ADMINISTRATION, PURDUE UNIVERSITY; ACCOMPANIED BY DANIEL ALPERT, DEAN, THE GRADUATE COLLEGE, UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS

Mr. WEILER. I am E. T. Weiler, dean of the Krannert Graduate School of Industrial Administration at Purdue University. My colleague and associate in this statement is Dean Daniel Alpert of the University of Illinois Graduate College.

Dean Alpert is a physicist and has served in a major industry and the Manhattan Project before accepting academic appointment. Currently Dean Alpert is a trustee of the Institute for Defense Analyses.

I am an economist by discipline, a business consultant, and have served the Department of Commerce and the Federal Reserve Board.