We are here today as individuals to support the concept in the bills before you. We would like to see a national authority with the mission of reviewing proposed systems based programs and awarding, selectively, funds to the States, universities or other institutions, or organizations that could put them to use effectively in seeking out solutions to the pressing economic and social problems of our time.

The earlier witnesses before your subcommittee have made the case for the systems approach as a technique for problem analyses based on working experience in industry, government, and research organizations. The thrust of our comments today relates to the universities and how they might utilize systems techniques as they participate in the resolution of complicated, public problems.

As faculty members of land grant institutions, Dean Alpert and I have long been concerned about bringing the great competence of the universities into a more relevant relationship with the problems of the constituencies they serve. So has the leadership of the great universities in the Midwest been concerned.

The universities which are banded together for cooperative educational purposes in the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC) appointed a committee several years ago to examine the relationship of the universities to the growth of the Midwest's economy. Dean Alpert served on that ad hoc committee on economic growth, which I was pleased to chair. The committee evolved into the council on economic growth, technology, and public policy of the CIC. I continued on as chairman of the council, and Dean Alpert serves as vice chairman. Because it is the forum in which our universities have chosen to express and to articulate their concern, Dean Alpert and I shall draw upon the position of the council to document in part our views on the validity of the concepts in S. 430 and S. 467.

The council's basic paper proposed drawing upon the resources of the universities in multidisciplinary, problem-oriented research and action programs designed to contribute to the long-range productivity and social welfare of an urban and industrialized society.

The council has since adopted a position calling for a program of studies and systems analyses aimed at increasing understanding of the problems and potential which characterize midcontinent America. Such analyses would be oriented toward enhancing the means and capacity for aiding decision makers in devising action programs for regional growth.

While encompassing such social and economic issues as the control and availability of natural resources, the future character of transportation, and the nature of technological innovation in civilian industry, the analyses would also suggest alternatives for decisions that inevitably would involve human values and the political process. The systematic, broad gage study of regional problems is a natural extension of the many current investigations of social, economic and governmental issues being made on a local scale in the context of a single urban community or State.

Planning is underway for this experiment in which a consortium of universities would cause pertinent academic disciplines to interact on major socioeconomic problems through the common techniques of systems science. The task involves mastery of asking precise questions of the appropriate disciplines to obtain beneficial answers and feasible

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alternatives. It means coupling science-in the broad sense-with the social studies to develop viable policy end products.

Such a consortium would be a new departure. It not only would attempt to recruit working teams of problem solvers from the various disciplines, but it would gather the team members from two, three, or more great universities. It not only would try to order many knowns, unknowns, and variables in a small area, it would attempt to do that for a geographic region of several States. It would take the tenets of a technique demonstrated to be successful in the aerospace industry, revise them as necessary, and apply the resultant techniques to a complex net of social, economic, and governmental interrelationships.

We would be less than candid to suggest that the plans for a university-based systems attack on major social problems assure successful resolution. Certainly the problem are complex by virtue of existing interrelationships, in comparison to military and space requirements. Then too, the organization of academic personnel is challenging.

For as Henry Rowen of RAND-and some others has told this subcommittee in recent hearings, the universities traditionally have operated within disciplines, and "problems just don't come cut that way." Mr. Rowen went on to point out that more difficult than identifying the problems that need solving is the matter of workable institutional relationships, particularly in the university community.

We submit, however, that the great midwestern universities have recognized this problem and are examining alternatives for the development of effective institutional arrangements.

In addition to the end products of a technical and policy nature, a university-based experiment could contribute to the training of an increased corps of systems analysts, engineers, and managers. These professionals would carry their skills into business, industry, government, the not-for-profit research organizations.

The universities-as Simon Ramo of TRW, Inc., told you earlier this year-should be producing individuals who have hybrid training as "politico-econo-socio technologists" and whose job it would be to work in the field of interdisciplinary science or interdisciplinary social arrangements.

As the universities have provided the society's professional people in the past, they are now called upon to provide the new breed of social engineers as indicated by the distinguished witnesses before this subcommittee.

May we point out that the midwestern universities with which we are associated produce a substantial portion of the advanced degree holders in the United States from departments of great academic strength. A recent study by the American council of education, an assessment of quality in graduate education, shows that these midwestern universities contained approximately 30 percent of the "distinguished" and "strong" academic departments in the 106 major universities studied.

May we call to the Senator's attention the relevant and supportive position taken by the National Commission on Technology, Automation and Economic Progress. The Commission, whose Chairman was

President Howard R. Bowen of the University of Iowa, proposed last year that the Federal Government "experiment with the formation. of university institutes or interdisciplinary programs, adequately financed and fully integrated with the educational function of the university, which would serve as laboratories for urban problem analysis and resources for local communities that would want to use their advice and services."

One of the Commission members, Philip Sporn, in a separate comment, said he hoped "that recognition of the need and of their own responsibilities in our society will stimulate at least one or more universities and private foundations to undertake such a program on their own."

New regional institutions are developing, both intergovernmental and-in the Midwest-interuniversity. There is emerging a realization of the necessity for grasping problems regionally. To cite just two examples of that development in our part of the country:

The Upper Great Lakes Regional Commission has been formed under the regional economic development program in an effort to revitalize the economy of the northern tiers of counties in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan. The other is the Great Lakes Basin Commission recommended to the President by the Federal Water Resources Council under the Water Resources Planning Act of 1965. Both are examples of new institutional forms-cooperative enterprises involving groups of States and the Federal Government.

We believe that the university community can render substantial services to regional authorities by providing systems-developed plans and policies for their consideration and action.

A recent Brookings bulletin book review observed that some of the most difficult problems of intergovernmental fiscal relations arise where metropolitanwide action is stymied by organizational inadequacies or by the lack of "an objective basis for cooperative agreements among jurisdictions." The same might be said for jurisdictions within wider regions or areas. The review suggests that modern systems analysis can make contributions toward workable solutions of these problems.

Dean Alpert and I believe that legislation embodying the concepts in the two bills before you would provide some of the financial support needed to proceed in an orderly fashion with a systematic attack on major domestic problems. The method of operation proposed would allow the application of systems techniques by local and State governments, or by groups of States either through in-house capacities, or through the use of the talents of the private sector, the nonprofit research institutes, the universities or consortia of universities, provided the proposed projects had been duly evaluated by the national authority.

In 1965, before he joined the President's Cabinet, Dr. John Gardner said that it isn't anybody's business to think about the big questions that cut across specialties-the biggest questions facing our society. Dean Alpert and I believe that the universities are able and willing to address themselves to the "big questions." The kind of assistance envisaged by the legislation now before your committee would be of great help in the effort.

Dean Alpert is prepared to make some remarks, not of a prepared nature, which perhaps you would like.

Senator NELSON. Thank you very much.

STATEMENT OF DANIEL ALPERT, DEAN, GRADUATE SCHOOL, UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS, URBANA, ILL.

Mr. ALPERT. May I make some remarks, and I will use notes in this discussion.

Various witnesses at your committee hearings have set forth the validity and needs of the systems approach in the solution of many complex social, economic, and technological problems facing us as a nation, and the witnesses have also pointed out that the systems approach is not magic. It should not be oversold, or mismanaged.

I believe you have had some very impressive witnesses at these hearings, and that there may be little need for us to add specific examples of the use of this approach. I would prefer to address my attention to the possible mechanisms by which the Federal Government can optimize the uses of systems analysis and encourage its use broadly in local, State and regional areas.

How can you make it more likely that there will be a valid use of the systems technique?

The principal characteristics of a valid systems approach is that the problems are stated and approached with a minimum of arbitrary constraints. In reading the testimony before this committee, I was impressed with the fact that you have removed the constraint that the witness testify either for or against one version of the bill, or the legislation to support systems activity. In that sense, you have removed an important constraint, and your hearings have themselves constituted a systems approach to legislation.

I think it is interesting to comment that in this activity, you are the systems analyst. You have a problem, and it is a complex one, to formulate reasonable legislation; and you have a client for the study, your own committee and the U.S. Senate.

I think these three aspects are important components of systems analysis and management:

(1) The nature of the problem. (2) The nature of the client or sponsor of a study- -a client who can act upon the study is one of the important ingredients, and this will determine whether a systems analysis is ever put to use-and (3) the systems engineering analysis team, which I sometimes call a systems-analysis team, and sometimes a systems-architect team.

The nature of the problem is rather obvious to all of us. Both the client and the systems-analysis team must view the problem as complex. If the client thinks he knows the answer beforehand and can state the problem unambiguously, you might as well stop right there. The likelihood that he needs or could use a valid systems analysis is not very great. In other words, the problem is often implicitly stated, rather than explicitly stated the first time. Usually, after you have looked at the problem for a while, the nature of the problem has changed, and it should be restated.

This says something both about the client-sponsor and the systemsanalysis team. The client must be sophisticated and understand the

nature of the problem and the approach to the solution, at least at some stage of the game between the time the analysis is written and it is put into action.

May I hasten to add that not all studies have started out with a client at the beginning; and a classic example of this was the proposal to build an atomic bomb, which in a sense was done by systems analysts, a group of scientists turned engineers, who did not have a client. No one asked them to design a bomb; and they had to find a client by going, in that case, through Mr. Albert Einstein to the President of the United States, who designated a client.

The systems architect or systems analysis team must be good, it must be independent, it must be imaginative, and it must be practical. It has got to be tied in with the real world, and it is typically made up of a group of people from different specialties who have worked together as a team for some time. It is not necessary that the client and the systems analysis team report to different organizations. As a matter of fact, in modern industry you often have the systems analysis group and the systems management both reporting to the top management of the company. But if your long-range planning team is not independent of the operational part of the company, it is not too likely that valid analyses and counterplay between the systems planner and the client will take place.

In the public area, we have done it both ways. It is important that a client-sponsor, that is, a municipal government, have people who are sophisticated in the systems approach. In any case, whether they hire a study to be done on the outside or whether they carry it out within the organization-and you know, in the most successful areas of application, in the DOD and in NASA, both in-house and outside firms have been used in systems analysis-these characteristics, a knowledgeable client who can act on the basis of the systems analysis and an independent, well-knit analysis organization are necessary ingredients of a successful systems approach.

What happens if you have a good analysis team but you do not have a good client? Let us note parenthetically that, you can fail to have a client in many ways. If President Roosevelt had not listened to Mr. Einstein, there just would not have been a client-it would not have been possible for the group of scientists to engineer the Manhattan Project on their own. There are times when the client has prejudged the issue and wants someone to justify his decisions in technical terms, and you certainly do not expect to get very much out of that. And most likely in the present scene, particularly at the regional and local levels, if you had a good systems study it would be put on a shelf and collect dust in the absence of an able client.

For many of our problems, a client does not presently exist. As an example, take the situation where you have hundreds of separate school districts, each of which could use a valid systems analysis of its architectural problems, but none of them individually can afford either to pay for the anlaysis or, in some cases, to justify the capital investment that a joint client might afford.

And so in my use of the concept of client, and in my recommendation in this area, it seems to me that there are many situations in which municipalities are related in a larger megalopolis; but any one of them cannot individually carry through a study or act upon a study, let us