The National Forum on Science and Technology Goals

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9412417 Hadden This project will examine ways to expand participation in the selection and ranking of national goals for national science and technology policy. It will organize and sponsor a one year process to initiate and institutionalize a national forum on science and technology goals, with participation from a broad cross-section of the United States population and representation from groups not traditionally part of science and technology policymaking, including nonexpert citizens. This project will develop a mission statement, governing structure, and set of procedures for making decisions, including how decisions will be made about who will be asked to participate. In order to identify, develop and sponsor specific programs, the national forum must have a structure, a set of procedures that allow for orderly and fair decisionmaking and a clear sense of how participants will be chosen and recruited. Answers to these questions entail critical choices about values that will be reflected in the national forum's character and mission. There are three phases of work in this year. The first phase will set up three committees corresponding to the three questions to be answered: mission, structure, and participation. These committees will be made up of people from an "interim governing council," twenty members of which have already committed to the project. The committees will each develop proposals that will be delivered to all participants. The complete interim council will meet for three days in Austin, Texas, to come to conclusions about the committee proposals. The last phase will be dissemination of results to professional, scientific, technical, business, trade union, academic, and public interest groups, government officials, and the scientific and technical press. At the end of this process, the national forum should be ready to start one or more trial programs. ***