Senator NELSON. If you have any material which you think may be valuable for the record, we would appreciate it if you would send it to us. The record will be open for 10 days after the hearings have concluded. Dr. RAMO. Thank you very much. Senator NELSON. I thank you very much for a very fine presentation. Dr. RAMO. Thank you. (The material referred to, subsequently submitted by Dr. Ramo, follows:) SUPPEMENTAL STATEMENT OF DR. SIMON RAMO, VICE CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD, TRW, INC., CLEVELAND, OHIO In addition to this broad discussion on the subject, I would like to describe, in detail, a few specific projects in which TRW is involved. I believe these activities are of the type this Bill contemplates utilizing to a greater degree. HEALTH Edmonton Health Sciences Centre This $100 million medical center is being developed by the Province of Alberta, Canada. The six-year project will involve the design and construction of ten buildings, in the development of a major medical complex that will provide patient care, education and research. In a project of this magnitude and complexity, systems analysis is an essential tool to aid in planning, evaluating alternatives, and preventing schedule slippages. TRW is also designing a fully integrated communications-logistics-data handling system, so that ultimately anything that moves-information, supplies, etc.-in the complex will do so as part of this system. Our systems analysis effort should reduce construction costs, provide continuing review and examination of alternatives, optimize such factors as site location, and identify-in advance-potential delays or other problems. Our design and information systems effort is expected to lead to substantial reductions in operating costs over the life of the complex, and to enable operating efficiencies never before realized in a medical center of this type. Regional Medical Program This federal program evolved from the deBakey Presidential Committee on Heart Disease, Cancer and Stroke. The program contemplates methods for making available on a broad basis the medical excellence that now exists within the nation's medical schools and related teaching hospitals. The program is federally funded, but administered on a regional basis. We are under contract to the Northern New England Region, with the University of Vermont as its centroid. Our role is to provide analytical and technical support and to work with local and regional agencies as the "engineering member-ofthe-team," to plan and implement the regional objectives. This activity demonstrates one method of employing engineering innovation towards the solution of civil or social problems. Our engineers are working together with regional and local representatives of the medical profession, hospital administrators, public health authorities, and educators, to create a harmonious ensemble that can bring to play all the resources necessary to a frontal attack on the nation's three killer diseases: heart, cancer and stroke. Department of Defense Hospital Feasibility Study Several months ago TRW completed a hospital systems study for the Department of Defense-in which we were teamed with Beckman Instruments and the architectural/engineering firm of Daniel, Mann, Johnson & Mendenhall. Purpose of the study was to examine the feasibility of applying advanced engineering techniques to the operation of existing military medical facilities, and to the design of future military hospitals. Feasibility was established; the studies clearly demonstrated that significant operating cost reductions could be realized through the employment of the systems approach in the initial design of a medical facility. Automated Medical Examination Systems Another happy marriage of engineering and medical profession is in the making with the advent of the speedy, inexpensive-but comprehensive-medical examination. Here again, the application of advanced engineering technology can lead to a systems design and improved methods of integrating the various subsystems, so that the product will be a superior means of providing medical examinations and a more effective method of utilizing the latest advances in medical diagnosis. TRANSPORTATION High Speed Ground Transportation (Northeast Corridor) The problem of moving people within the so-called "Northeast Corridor" is one of the nation's most critical transportation problems. The Office of High Speed Ground Transportation (HSGT), which will be an element of the new Department of Transportation, has contracted with TRW to perform analytical services and technical support, leading to the system definition of an optimum High Speed Ground Transportation System for use in the densely populated corridor between Boston and Washington, D.C. Under this program, we will analyze the various subsystems and provide technical syntheses that will permit the HSGT office to select the system that will best meet the intercity transportation requirements. Our engineering analysis will be supported by specialized research and cost studies, as necessary, to assure the successful completion of the project. Airline Transportation Problems Although TRW's participation in the solution of the numerous airline problems is still relatively minor, this is an area in which advanced technology is essential to help overcome the congested airport situation, airline scheduling, flight separation, and terminal-to-city ground transportation. Work is progressing on technical solutions to these technologically-caused problems. These solutions will involve such advanced techniques as the employment of communications satellites for relaying voice communication between aircraft and ground, improved air traffic control systems, and the development of computer scheduling techniques. URBAN SYSTEMS California Land Use Information System TRW is currently under contract to the State of California to develop a regional improved land use information method. The project has the specific objective of providing the means for more effective sharing of information between departments within a government jurisdiction, and between jurisdictions. The project requires the determination of needs for land use data, the development of criteria to satisfy system requirements, and the design of a land use information system within the framework of the prospective federated information concept in the State of California. Then, using Santa Clara County (California) as the base, TRW will demonstrate the operation of the proposed system. Again, through the application of sophisticated engineering techniques, and with the aid of the big computer, we will be able to handle problems, and mountains of data in a manner that will vastly improve efficiency and reduce costs. Another example of the benefit of applying modern technology to governmentoriented problems. Law Enforcement Authorities in the law enforcement field say the only way they will be able to cope with the growing urban crime problem is through the employment of the latest technological advances, particularly in communications, electronics and information storage and retrieval. Take, for example, the deployment of police patrol cars and other emergency vehicles. We now know that a mobile system's efficiency can be improved threefold, through the use of modern communications, display devices and information systems. As I mentioned earlier, the Los Angeles Police Department hopes to solve some of its problems along these lines. Other police departments around the country are also exploring ways of obtaining more law enforcement at less cost, by utilizing advanced engineering techniques. WATER Ground Water Simulation TRW is currently under contract to the San Bernardino Valley Municipal Water District, in California, to perform computer simulations and analyses of ground and surface water flows in the San Bernardino Valley. The simulations will portray water distribution and movement, to assist municipal, industrial and agricultural users in identifying underground watercourses and locating potential sites for wells, etc. Another objective of this computer-based effort is to explore, analyze, evaluate. and present a range of possible plans for the coordinated use of ground and surface water resources to meet the increasing water needs of the area. Desalination For the Office of Saline Water (U.S. Department of Interior), TRW is studying membrane processes such as electrodialysis and reverse osmosis, to desalinate water economically. Information derived from our studies of the biological mechanisms of ion transport is expected to lead to the development of more efficient membranes capable of operation for prolonged periods and low temperatures, low pressures, and with minimal energy requirements. A systematic and comparative investigation of certain salt transport characteristics is also underway to determine the relationship between the divergent salt tolerance properties of these bacteria and membrane structure and function. As you can see from this varied activity, there are numerous places where systems engineering, information systems, electronics and other advanced technologies can make significant contributions to the solution of many of the problems facing us today. We think we speak from experience when we endorse this legislation; it will provide a mechanism to bring the nation's full technological resources to bear on its civil, social, biological and economic problems. Senator NELSON. We have one more witness, Dr. Robert Lekachman. Before we proceed with that witness, however, we will take a brief recess to give the reporter a moment to rest. (Whereupon a brief recess was taken.) Senator NELSON. We will now resume the hearing. Our next witness is Dr. Robert Lekachman, chairman, Department of Economics, State University of New York, at Stony Brook, Long Island. STATEMENT OF DR. ROBERT LEKACHMAN, CHAIRMAN, DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS, STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK, STONY BROOK, LONG ISLAND, N.Y. Senator NELSON. Doctor, we are very pleased that you would take the time to come here this morning and present your views to the committee. Mr. LEKACHMAN. I feel privileged to be with you, Senator. If it is your procedure, I will present the statement I have drawn up. Senator NELSON. That will be fine. Were you here during the presentation of the previous witness? Senator NELSON. I was going to say you could make any additional comments you wished to on that statement. You may proceed. Mr. LEKACHMAN. Thank you, Senator. As a social scientist, I naturally rejoice at the power of the techniques comprised under the heading of systems analysis. These are analytical tools which, as previous testimony to this committee has indicated, promise superior solutions to some of the increasingly serious ailments of an evermore crowded urban society-the problems of traffic management, waste disposal, crime control, and the like, which have proven only moderately amenable to the piecemeal, ad hoc, uncoordinated methods of current practice and tradition. An economist, in particular, finds himself in sympathy with the new approach because from its inception as a field of specialized study economics has been concerned with the efficient allocation of resources. Each society, including affluent America, perceives resources as scarce in relation to the almost infinite variety of ways in which they can be used. Hence, any technique which improves the efficiency with which a society uses its scarce supplies of talent and capital is blessed. Therefore, I endorse the legislation which Senator Nelson has introduced to promote public experiment with the new techniques and I look with anticipation at attempts in California, New York City, and elsewhere to apply the new tools on a scale large enough actually to alter and improve the urban environment. Nevertheless, it is extremely important to suggest some of the limitations of systems analysis as it might be applied to social and economic problems. If we are indeed on the verge of making extensive intellectual and financial commitments to a new mode of reasoning about public affairs, we need to be clear about what we can gain and also what we are unlikely to gain from the new outlook. Let me start wtih some of the issues of principle involved in placing quantitative values upon the social and individual preferences of ordinary citizens. Intelligent advocates of systems analysis are frank to concede limitations upon the capacity of their technique to assign numerical weights to some of the important variables in social or, for that matter, military problems. What they very properly prescribe is the measurement of the measurable, the identification of the unmeasurable, and the evaluation of what has been measured and what has resisted measurement by the appropriate decisionmaker whether he be the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, the mayor of New York, the chief of a local police force or, possibly, a member of a legislative body. Although the logic of this prescription is impeccable, the outcome is something else again. The temptation to misuse of the method is substantial. Since by hypothesis some elements of certain problems cannot be measured, an official or a businessman may reach his conclusions by ignoring in practice all considerations which do not yield to measurement. I may make the point clearer by recalling a familiar academic dilemma: How do we decide whom to promote to a tenure position in a university department? Almost everywhere formal policy stresses teaching, research, and service to the university as the prime criteria of evaluation. Few institutions, possibly none, will knowingly promote a researcher, however gifted, who is an utter catastrophe as a teacher. The rub is, how do we measure good teaching? By enrollments? High enrollments may indeed testify to enlightening teaching. Unfortunately, they may only signify that the teacher is an easy grader, an entertaining showman, or a dispenser of small assignments. 76-510-67- -7 Thus, it is that everywhere lipservice is accorded to teaching, the great unmeasurable, and conclusive actual weight is given to research, the great measurable. Numbers imply precision and certainty, the resolution of doubt, and the end of indecision. Unless we take care we shall imperceptibly move toward a condition in which numbers and techniques determine the kind and the quality of the decisions which we are capable of making. In this context it is relevant to ask how extensive use of systems analysis will affect the quality of our politics and the path by which we reach public decisions. If I may, I shall quote a portion of an evaluation of the automation commission report which I made in the May issue of Commentary magazine: Just as Robert McNamara has used cost effectiveness and program budgets to rationalize the $60-70 billion which the Department of Defense annually expends, we can apply cost-benefit and systems analysis to the programming of social spending. As a proposition this is exceedingly seductive. It amounts to a recipe for cool research rather than hot politics, orderly university training rather than untidy street demonstrations, and the forging of a consensus out of rational thought rather than out of conflict of ideologies and interests. Even if the picture misrepresents reality, one would like to believe that its central premise can be turned into a creative social myth of the sort which persuades people to behave in new ways. That is why it is a pity that so little in our recent experience or our immediate prospects lends plausibility to such a vision of orderly social change. As it hap pens, our technology has been quite adequate for a long time to reach certain social goals. *** We do not need systems analysis to send larger checks to welfare clients; nor are there any technical obstacles in the way of liberalizing training allowances, educational grants to the talented sons and daughters of poor families, and unemployment compensation payments. To put the matter baldly, systems analysis can unquestionably aid us in achieving ends upon which we are reasonably united as a society. Therefore, it is quite possible that in the next decade general public support for Federal auto-safety standards, effective control of pesticides, and genuine assaults upon pollution will permit important advances in rational techniques of social planning. These are environmental hazards which afflict everyone and if systems analysis, computer science, and cost-benefit analysis measurably increase the safety of the city and the countryside, we shall all have cause to be grateful to their exponents. But it is equally important to identify the kind of issues where conflict, not consensus, is likely because basic conflicts of interest or valuation exist. Of the many examples which might be offered, let me point to four. The first is the choice which we make steadily between tax cuts and increases in public spending. Federal taxes at current levels of gross national product are $20 billion lower each year than they would have been at 1963 tax rates. This is a sum which could have financed substantial increases in public employment, education, urban housing, and health care, as well as a generous negative income tax into the bargain. As a society we decided that increased private spending by the prosperous was a better use of additional Federal revenue than an enlarged program of benefits to the needy. |