ponents fight it out in a Darwinian manner to see which will best adapt and survive. Individual enterprises which survive in NASA or cities will continue to mutate and evolve in ways which frequently defy description, much less toplevel hierarchal management. The "products" of enterprises at this end of the management spectrum may be measurable only in terms of the human spirit. Urban examples of this kind of institution include New York's galaxy of fine restaurants, and the entrepreneurs of Hong Kong. Nothing could be more Darwinian than the survival of individual gourmet restaurants-heaven forbid that they be taken over by a chain. Likewise the net effect of Hong Kong's entrepreneurs has been an extraordinary economic "takeoff" for that city, which has provided a remarkably effective solution to the mayor's problem of absorbing a continuing influx of refugees. Hong Kong has survived as a city in very difficult social and political circumstances because of its rigorous economic system within which a yeasty ferment of entrepreneurial enterprises can compete for capital. No charismatic czar of business development is elected to switch capital and manpower from plastic toys to transistor radios.

An example of a NASA activity appropriately managed by "Darwinian Discipline" is the science of astrophysics. Here also is a rigorous intellectual discipline within which individual professors select new research areas and publish their results for critical anaylsis. The most exciting and productive men attract the brightest new graduate students, and astrophysics moves on into new theories and new fields. Hierarchial control by a czar of astrophysics, or anything resembling this in NASA's support of university programs, would be disastrous.

There are many obvious ramifications of these rather abstract observations which cannot be developed further in this brief paper. The principal point is that the urban manager, like the NASA manager, must consider carefully the wide diversity of activities that must be orchestrated within the total urban complex or space system. The institutional architecture of each component of the total system must be selected from the spectrum of management-from "Digital Discipline" to "Darwinian Discipline," from Consolidated Edison to Le Pavillon, from Project Apollo to astrophysics. Structural changes must be introduced with changing technology and social trends.

For example, the thousands of "old law" tenements in Harlem built to house sweatshop immigrant workers more than half a century ago are utterly obsolete in this age-rehabilitated or not, rent-controlled or not-as are the disgraceful neighborhoods in which they stand. The job of replacing them is before us. What are the important human values, urban goals, and public expectations here? What new institutional patterns can best achieve the various objectives? What resources will be required over what period? How can the contributions of universities, industry, and government be organized? What approach from the "spectrum of management" is best for each component? How will the required new scientific understanding be acquired through theory and experiment? What technological advances should be fostered and utilized? As the work progresses, how are the experimental results to be fed back to the action controllers? Here is an urgent urban management problem worthy of the nation that conquered the moon. Obviously the job cannot be managed like Apollo, but I believe that NASA's broad experiences in space-age management do have applicability.

Thus, in NASA and in cities the nature of the work to be accomplished varies widely; both the NASA manager and the urban manager must seek the best institutional architecture for components within the total complex. The appropri ate choice from the spectrum of management often changes with time. For example, an urban transit system, garbage removal service, or cable TV system might best be operated by competing private companies or a single company under franchise during one period, be run by the city using municipal employees at another stage, set up as a non-profit corporation or authority at a third time, and at a fourth time let out to support-service contractors under periodic competitive bid. Technological change will alter the relative desirability of these approaches as, for example, bus transport replaces electric street cars, electric disposals replace garbage cans and trucks or radiating TV links replace cables. Few cities today have the managerial structure and resources to take early advantage of technical opportunities, much less to foresee new possibilities and deliberately bring about needed technical advances applicable to urban systems. This is anachronistic in these times, and can only lead to deteriorating services and soaring budgets. The new federal Department of Housing and Urban Development is seeking to rectify this.

What does this condensed and somewhat abstract discussion mean to the urban manager grappling with the immediate problems of his city? Several significant points might be made from our NASA/urban management comparisons:

First-many of the most important activities in the city cannot and should not be managed in the "Digital Discipline" sense of that word. The urban manager, like the NASA manager, can and should directly manage only a limited part of the complex interacting human enterprise for which he has responsibility. For the important remainder he must structure a "Darwinian Discipline" system to encourage essential contributions from industry, from universities, and from the entrepreneur, the free wheeler, the scientist, the brilliant innovator, the gifted teacher, and other committed individuals. In no other way can execellence be achieved in the French chef and astrophysicist, the Broadway producer and spacecraft designer, who, with thousands of other individuals, set the quality of urban and space enterprises. Perhaps the most difficult task we have is to conceive and establish the appropriate institutional architecture to achieve this. The greatest single achievement of the space age may have been the formation of NASA; the rest followed as the energies and talents of America were released and given direction.

Second-it is in the nature of the job for the high-level public adminstrator to help define and articulate goals in the public interest. If there is to be any consensus of social values and goals in a city, they must be based on the urban manager's understanding and leadership of the city's amorphous and frequently conflicting forces. From his understanding of the environment, the urban manager can decide realistically what he can manage and where he can lead, identifying those areas of activity which need to be moved toward a different management approach, and effecting the required changes. Nothing could be more difficult, but changes must be made.

Third-even when a city activity is capable of being directly managed in a "Digital Discipline" fashion it is still important to select the appropriate form of institutional architecture for the job. It is essential to define specific objectives and goals and to relate the resources required to each area of management activity. The planning-programming-budgeting technique, though no panacea, can be helpful here. Objectives should serve as targets for achievement and not be treated as fixed and immutable commitments. Objectives (like NASA's moon landing) are vital, however, for two purposes:

1. They provide a vital focus and communication tool for continuing discussion among the many forces at work in the urban environment. Through this discussion the objectives themselves can be flexibly altered and upgraded with changing conditions and available resources.

2. Goals are also a necessary prerequisite to the use of the powerful tools of systematic management which are being demonstrated and further developed now in business and government.

A vital consideration in creating the appropriate institutional architecture for complex management tasks is a realistic appraisal of the resources required to achieve the goals, and the creation of appropriate organizational mechanisms for close control of these resources. This organizational mechanism will probably have to be innovative in terms of its level and placement in the city structure and the nature of its authority. Much more attention must be paid to experimentation, communication, organizational interactions, and real-time feedback of results, rather than to line operating authority alone.

Fourth-a fatal flaw in a complex human enterprise operating in the modern environment of technical and social change is to freeze its institutional architecture. "Horse and buggy" institutions and jurisdictional boundaries must be overhauled and updated. We must get on with this task even without a guiding theory. We should also get to work on a useful social theory. It had better be one which not only permits, but encourages experimentation and feedback in the mechanisms of urban management, and which allows for failures in the experimental process. Almost everything that happens in a city happens to all its citizens. It is perhaps fortunate that city residents are inevitably becoming more concerned and involved. This provides the urban manager with a "sputnik-like" opportunity to marshal public concern now into a new commitment to an urban renaissance in America. As with the space program, new federal and local management institutions must be created based on the realities of today's metropolitan areas. Major resources must be administered under close control, orchestrating the best talents of universities, industry, and government to apply the great power of modern science, technology, and management.

Meanwhile, America should continue to forge ahead boldly in space. Our new space achievements will further spur us on to create here on the good earth tomorrow's great new urban society.

Dr. PAINE. Let us now turn to the processes by which these benefits are obtained.

7. INFORMATION FLOW PROCESSES

NASA has taken the lead in developing positive new processes for the documentation and transfer of scientific and technical information to those who can use it. Our technology utilization program documents innovations from all NASA centers and industrial contractors which may find use in a wide range of other applications. To date, over 18,000 individual technology items have been so identified, with over 3,000 documented in our widely used "Tech Briefs”—of which 38 million have been sold and distributed.

WALL STREET JOURNAL ARTICLE

This program is described in greater detail in appendix 1 and in a recent Wall Street Journal article, which you may wish to include in the record.

Senator CANNON. That will be made a part of the record. (The article referred to above follows:)

[From the Wall Street Journal, Mar. 27, 1970]

SPACE FALLOUT: DATA BANKS CONTAINING NASA RESEARCH FRUITS HELP MANY COMPANIES; RESEARCH OF $35 BILLION EFFORT AVAILABLE AT A LOW COST; LOCKHEED, LITTON USE FILES; BUILDING A BETTER OSCILLOSCOPE

(By A. Richard Immel)

William Ferwalt runs a seven-man company that makes oscilloscopes on the Nez Perce Indian Reservation in Idaho. He wants to know everything he can about oscilloscopes, so last fall he paid $190 for a computer search of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's technical data bank.

For his money, he got the fruits of five years of oscilloscope research done by Bendix Corp. under Government contract. The data included hitherto overlooked techniques for building a special type of instrument.

Mr. Ferwalt expects to parlay his $190 into $100,000 in sales, thereby doubling his company's business over the next several years.

Ferwalt Inc. is one of an increasing number of businesses taking advantage of the $35 billion spent on research for the nation's space program. The companies get their information at any of six data dissemination centers designed to open NASA's extensive technical data resources to private industry.

600,000 DOCUMENTS

The first center was established seven years ago at Indiana University. Since then, centers have opened at the universities of Connecticut, New Mexico, Pittsburgh and Southern California and at North Carolina Science and Technology Research Center. The centers are financed by NASA and the money coming in from clients.

By NASA estimate, the data centers bulge with nearly 600,000 research documents; 6,000 documents are being added every month. Much of the data is generated by a clause in NASA contracts that requires companies to report to NASA any inventions and technology developed in the course of their Government work. But the data bank taps other sources, too, including the Department of Defense research files and professional journals and technical papers from around the world, including Communist countries.

Although the benefits are most striking for small companies with little research capability of their own, such large firms as Litton Industries and Alcan Aluminum are paying $1,000 to $5,000 a year to use the data banks. Even giant

Lockheed Aircraft, a major aerospace contractor, is finding it can get some technical information faster through a dissemination center's computers than from its own voluminous research library. For several years, Lockheed has been going to the center at the University of Southern California to keep up with new techniques in metal welding and nondestructive testing.

A MAJOR MISCONCEPTION

In all, some 400 companies used the centers last year. That's up considerably from a few years earlier, but it is still far too small a number, NASA officials say. The nonprofit centers could easily handle work for thousands of clients, the officials say.

NASA officials caution that the data banks aren't the answer to every struggling businessman's dreams. "A big misconception we have to fight is that we're a grab bag of treasures," says an official. "We can only tell if an idea is feasible, if it can be done within the realm of costs. The idea has to be in the client's head before he comes to us."

A. Kendall Oulie, director of the center at Southern California, agrees. "What we're selling here is access-the use of computer and search capabilities," he says.

The centers employ a small full-time staff of engineers and clerical help and hire engineers and scientists on a part-time basis to sit down with clients and develop a computer search strategy. It is this personal attention that is at the heart of the centers' effectiveness, clients say.

PERSONAL CONTACT

"We have access to the same NASA tapes through Washington," says Horace Jacobs, a Lockheed official. But, he says, the data centers' advantage is that they assign a person or two to discuss and work with a scientist. "There's more personal contact."

Although it is possible to get a one-shot computer search similar to the one the oscilloscope maker got, the centers encourage clients to sign up for a full year's services, drawing against the retainer of $1,000 to $5,000.

The most popular service for clients is a retrospective computer search of the entire data bank, tailored to answer a client's specific question. For $190 the computer will spew out condensations of technical reports describing all the work that has ever been recorded in the data bank on that particular subject. Then, for another $300, the client can get a "current awareness" search each month, which keeps him up to date on new material being added to the bank.

For $80, a company with less specific needs can, order a "standard interest profile," a list of condensations printed up periodically by the centers on a wide range of topics of fairly general interest.

Clients say the service is often fruitful. Dart Industries, a manufacturer of housewares, plastics and drugs, says it is developing high-temperature coatings for its consumer cookware as a result of a retrospective computer search.

Company officials say they also consult the computer before making decisions about new ventures. "When we're probing new business areas for Dart we need a quick reading to find out if a particular technology" has consumer applications, says Joseph Ciarimboli, Dart's manager of technical planning. "So we go and get a quick computer readout."

The Dart executive admits, however, that he was skeptical at first. "It took us about a year to be convinced," he says, adding, "People in the field tend to think they're up on everything."

Dr. PAINE. This kind of transfer works as follows: for a small fee, an entrepreneur can have a computer search made of NASA's extensive technological data banks in his own field of interest, and can then apply the results within his company to develop new or improved products or services in a minimum time at low cost.

NASA INFORMATION SERVICES

NASA's information services are also available to schools and colleges, as described in appendix 3. An even more important effect of the space program on U.S. education has probably been the stimulus

it received to improve standards to meet the challenge of the space age. As the President's science adviser, Dr. Lee DuBridge has said:

One hundred years from now the new kind of knowledge attained in space research will surely have paid untold, unforeseen, and unexpected dividends. Already, the dawning of the space age had impelled Americans to seek to improve their schools. That alone may be worth the cost of all our space rockets.

NASA's greatest contribution to U.S. education, however, has undoubtedly been the information academic researchers have received from our direct involvement of the university community in the U.S. space program. What these scientists and graduate students learn in the pursuit of their research feeds back immediately into the teaching, publication and learning process, thus becoming available to the new student generation and technical community.

The 37 NASA-supported research facilities illustrated in appendix 4 have greatly helped our universities carry out their all-important work as full partners in the U.S. space program.

COMPUTER INFORMATION FIELD

NASA has also developed an effective mechanism to make Government-originated computer programs readily available to other potential users. This service, called Cosmic, is saving subscribers who pay for the service at least 90 percent of the cost of developing new programs for their particular applications. This important area is described more fully in Appendix 1.

Another effective capability we have developed in the computer information field we believe represents a breakthrough in international data exchange. Through its information-exchange agreement with the European space research organization, ESRO, NASA has established an American-European computer-based information storage and retrieval system for the international aerospace community.

Supplementing longstanding document exchange procedures with ESRO, the NASA/Recon system for on-line, remote-terminal access to aerospace literature is probably the most advanced in the world. From a central computer located in Darmstadt, Germany, this powerful system is serving scientists through remote terminals in Paris and Brussels; additional terminals are being installed to extend the network. All major NASA field centers also have terminals.

ESRO's use of the NASA/Recon system involves the processing of master machine-stored indexes regularly provided by NASA in return for ESRO's contribution of European aerospace literature in preprocessed form for automatic input to the central NASA scientific and technical information collection. This exchange relationship with ESRO is a unique element in NASA's wide-ranging international exchange program-involving nearly 300 governmental, academic, and research organizations in some 50 foreign countries. By providing machine-system linkages on an international basis, it furnishes the foundation for the development of further advances to serve the world aerospace community.