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role is neither to promote nor to discourage development or application of any particular technology but rather to help determine whether or when it may make sense to have some form of Federal Government participation.

Although OTA's assessments are not specifically designed to recommend spending reductions or increases, or identify areas where costs will probably be higher than originally estimated, and though OTA does not intend to claim direct or sole credit for the following examples, OTA reports and assessments during fiscal years 1982 and 1983 identified that:

By upgrading ten enroute computer centers of the FAA National
Airspace System, rather than buying all new hardware now, an
expenditure of $186 million could be avoided. This estimate, a
one-time saving, is based on an FAA report to the Congress.
By creation of a "trust fund" for high-level radioactive waste
management activities paid for by nuclear utilities, $230 million of
Federal funds could be saved in 1983, with similar annual savings in
the future. This would be achieved through a transfer of costs from
Federal funding to funding based on user fees. OTA also showed that
it is possible, by prompt action, to avoid most of the projected
requirements for costly "away from reactor" intermediate storage.
Increasing price competition in the purchase of health insurance and
delivery of medical care has the potential to slow the rise in
medical care expenditures. Reducing the rate by only 5 percent, for
example, could save up to $2 billion each year.

By making public and private investments in energy conservation in
buildings more cost effective and allowing DOE's Conservation
Program to concentrate on areas where private investments fall short
of optimal investments in efficiency, annual fuel savings to
building owners or occupants of up to $30 billion could result.

A plan to deal with an extended disruption of oil supplies from
foreign sources could lead to an efficient and effective response to
such an emergency. In that event, as much as several billion
dollars could be saved by the Government in costs that would
otherwise likely be needed to meet the emergency.

Licensing reform in the conventional nuclear power industry could
contribute to several billion dollars in savings through more
efficient licensing, reduced likelihood of nuclear plant shutdown,
and more cost-effective reactors (e.g., standardized, smaller
plants). These savings would likely accrue mostly to the private
sector, although Government savings could result from a reduced role
in licensing and oversight.

By providing more complete, accurate, and timely criminal history
information that would otherwise be available, a computer-based
national criminal information system could potentially improve the
efficiency and effectiveness of certain criminal justice decisions,
resulting in cost savings at the Federal, State, and local
government levels.

Based on OTA's Cost-Effectiveness Analysis case study on Respiratory Therapy, the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association has announced plans to provide its member plans with guidelines to eliminate unnecessary use of respiratory care. The Association estimates that implementation of the guidelines could save its members hundreds of millions of dollars annually.

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The deforestation that is likely to occur without appropriate technologies to sustain the resource base could seriously undermine the economies of tropical nations. If it continues unabated, deforestation could result in decreased fiscal integrity of tropical nations in debt to the U.S. Government and to U.S. banks. If the tropical forest resource base can be sustained, savings could result from eliminating some of the need for foreign assistance (both disaster relief and technical development assistance) that might otherwise occur.

Many of the issues on which OTA works, however, are particularly difficult in terms of providing detailed cost-benefit analyses and opportunities for cost savings and cost avoidance, since it is sometimes impossible to assign increased costs or cost savings to society, the environment, health, or human well-being that result from primary and secondary impacts of technological developments. For example:

In OTA's assessment of effects of transported air pollutants,
reasonably accurate cost calculations were developed for reducing
the major sources of air pollutants; but the resultant benefits to
the environment (forests, water, etc.) and human health, although
unquestionably large, could not be measured so precisely. One
reason for this is that the benefits are more widely diffused than
are the costs of control. Nevertheless, OTA's analyses in this area
have provided Senate and House committees with the most reliable
estimates possible within the state of the art about the costs and
benefits of emission controls how they are distributed state by
state and how the benefits accrue to different affected parties.
In OTA's assessment of the potential effects of development on
America's wetlands, it is relatively easy to estimate the benefits
of converting a wetland to some other use such as agriculture,
housing, or lumbering. Keeping the wetlands in natural states can
certainly have major benefits, such as control of floods and
pollution; but these benefits are more difficult to quantify.

Relation of OTA Work to Legislative Activities

The options for Congress that are identified in OTA reports frequently result in the identification of opportunities for cost savings or avoidance, but sometimes they may highlight the problems in making such estimates. They may also point out technical merits and/or shortcomings of technologies or technological systems. This information is used by committees in their legislative and oversight deliberations. The information on pages 63-72 reports on current assessments and legislative areas relevant to those studies.

Activities

From October 1, 1981 to date, OTA has delivered (or is in the process of printing) 25 formal assessment reports. Twenty-nine assessments are in

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progress, with an estimated 20 to be completed in FY 83. It is estimated that 15 new assessments will be started during FY 83, including three projects that have already started in this fiscal year.

In addition, during FY 82 and to date, OTA delivered 4 assessmentrelated Technical Memoranda and 11 Background Papers. Background Papers and Technical Memoranda will continue to be produced to provide backup to OTA reports and also meet the timing and special needs of Congress. (See pages 22-32 for details.)

As an integral part of carrying out assessments, OTA provides briefings, testimony, intermediate results of and follow-on analyses to completed OTA assessments, and other expert advice to committees in ways matched to their specific needs and the Congressional agenda. These activities are generally limited to areas where committees view OTA as having relevant expertise due to current or past work. (See pages 87-97.)

Interagency Coordination

Coordination of activities with GAO, CRS, and CBO continues to be productive, with regular exchanges of information about new projects, cooperation on current projects, and general mutual assistance. As mandated by the Senate Report (97-573) on Legislative Branch Appropriations 1983, in which "the Committee directs that these four agencies submit to the Committee by March 1, 1983, a consolidated proposal recommending a course of action to insure that duplication is eliminated," OTA is working closely with representatives of the sister agencies to establish such a course of action to further improve the mechanisms of interagency coordination.

Every effort continues to be made to fully utilize information and resources obtainable from outside sources, not only in the legislative branch but also in the executive branch and throughout the private sector. OTA works particularly closely with the National Academies of Science and Engineering, the Institute of Medicine, and the National Science Foundation in this regard. (See pages 98-102 for more details on FY 82 interagency coordination.)

PROGRAM OUTLOOK

During the coming decade, the Nation must face the challenge to demonstrate that human inventiveness, nurtured by an economic and political system that encourages innovation and productive risk-taking, can enable us to move ahead toward our individual and national goals. The opportunities for science and technology to be used to improve our economy, defense, health, and environment are many. The benefits, of course, do not come without costs and difficult tradeoffs. OTA's job is to help Congress understand the nature and extent of the opportunities, how to reduce the risks and unwanted impacts, and to help sort out the appropriate roles for the public and private sectors.

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In times when investment capital for R&D was more readily available, the Nation could afford to follow several promising paths simultaneously. Now, with the imperative to cut public costs, more difficult choices have to be made, including not following some admittedly promising paths. This fresh imperative means that careful analysis is a crucial input to decisionmaking because the potential cost of being even a "little wrong" is so high.

The next several decades will almost certainly be an extremely vexing, complex, and challenging time for all humanity. We face a period of social and technological transition of rapid and immense proportions -- a moment in human history which, if we make the right moves, could result in great new opportunities and stability. Alternatively, we could move with breathtaking speed to dashed hopes and a vastly lower vision of what humankind can become. The transition, and we are now in it, includes a number of components, among which are the following:

1) We face the eventual exhaustion of bio-geochemically enriched raw
materials, including fossil energy and minerals. This fact,
complicated by rising demands around the world, requires us to
shift toward a resource supply/demand system that is sustainable
over the long run. We are presently using up fossil fuels a
million times faster than the rate at which they were produced.
The world's people are now faced with not only diminishing hopes
for improvement of environmental quality but also with the real
possibility over the next five decades of planet-wide climatic
changes due to human activities.

2) The world, especially the developing nations, faces a growing
imperative to hasten the transition from a fast-growing population
to a stabilized population better matched to the resource base.
The present worldwide production of goods and services would
support about 800 million people at the current U.S. standard of
living. That is four times fewer people than the present world
population, which in turn will nearly double again by the early
part of the next century. And present production of food and other
resources, however inadequate, may already exceed long-term
sustainable production levels.

3) We face a broadening of the need for governance from tribal to
national and national to international in scope. We still only
dimly see how to achieve such a broadening, but there is a clear
need to do it out of mutual self-interest, such as prevention of
nuclear war.

Alvin Toffler underscored in Future Shock the physical and cultural problems associated with a high rate of technological change. Our efforts to deal with energy problems, whether they focus on conservation or supply, have shown that any major change, if it is not to have devastating consequences, requires several decades to accomplish.

At the present time, we have no satisfactory analytical methods to project ahead even within the time frame directly relevant to current policy decisions. For example, the lead time required to build a large new electrical powerplant is greater than our present ability to forecast the need for that plant by the time it is built.

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Turmoil in the Middle East, partly in response to interjections of wealth, technology, and women's rights, has also sharply reminded us that people can tolerate or accommodate social change only at a limited rate. Perhaps our traditional measures of progress, so focused on the rate at which we consume resources, needs refurbishing. It is not a new thought.

Our hopes for the future now lie substantially in the esoteric world of nuclei, atoms, and molecules. It is a world that few are privileged to understand, yet all are increasingly affected by it. We witness a growing complexity of technology, fierce international competition that did not exist in earlier times, and a widening distance between developments of scientific and technological knowledge on the one hand and understanding of our citizens on the other. This combination of circumstances creates a critical need for thoughtful and dispassionate analysis and information transfer to citizens and particularly to Members of Congress. OTA has become a unique institution to do this work, by virtue of its strictly bipartisan structure and its carefully developed procedures to tap and then to integrate national wisdom. OTA's job is to continue to develop such information and to directly assist Congress in its various needs for interpreting it.

OTA has compiled an illustrative list (see page 73) of subjects that are representative of the kinds of new assessments which we may be asked to undertake. This list was drawn from a much longer group of subjects which has come to OTA's attention via its own work, the literature, interactions with Members and staff of Congress, and from peers outside government. Even if no additions were made to the list and if our FY 84 appropriation request were honored, we would still be limited to carrying out only 18-20 of the kinds of studies listed. More detailed descriptions of the projected studies are also given (see pages 75-86).

Budget Level

OTA's FY 82 appropriation maintained the buying power of its FY 81 appropriation. The FY 83 level, however, did not maintain the buying power of FY 82 and will reduce (by three or more) the number of new projects the agency will be able to undertake compared to the previous year. In FY 84, OTA seeks to restore the buying power lost in FY 83.

OTA expects a significant increase in requests for new and follow-on assessments of critical concern to Congressional committees, many of which OTA will be unable to undertake under existing funding limitations. In addition, OTA expects a significant increase in Congressional demand for testimony, briefings, and follow-on work resulting from ongoing and completed assessments, a trend that began in FY 81.