Federal Research

The National Academy of Sciences, a private nonprofit institution, provides scientific, engineering, and medical advice to federal, state, and local governments; private industry; and nonprofit groups. In fiscal year 1997, the federal government provided about 85 percent--or $145 million--of the Academy's funding. Committees that give advice to the federal government are generally subject to the Federal Advisory Committee Act of 1972. Congress passed the legislation because of concerns that such committees were proliferating without adequate review, oversight, or accountability. Among other things, the act requires that most meetings be open to the public and must be attended by a federal official. In response to Academy efforts to obtain legislative relief from the act, Congress excluded Academy committees from the definition of "advisory committee" and added a new section 15 dealing with Academy advisory committees. That section precludes an agency from using the Academy's advice or recommendations unless certain information is made available to the public--notice of committee appointments, minutes of closed meetings, copies of final committee reports, and the names of external reviewers of draft reports. This report (1) discusses why the Academy sought relief from the act, (2) describes the Academy's committee procedures for providing advice to the federal government, and (3) discusses the Academy's implementation of the new requirements for providing information to the public.

GAO noted that: (1) according to Academy officials, the Academy sought relief from the act for a number of reasons; (2) central to its concerns was the Academy's ability to maintain sole authority in appointing committee members and to conduct its work independently from sponsoring agencies' influence; (3) in addition, the Academy opposed opening deliberative meetings on the grounds that such an action could stifle open debate and could impact the Academy's ability to recruit committee members; (4) finally, the Academy was concerned about the amount of time and expense to perform the administrative requirements of the act, which could render the Academy unresponsive to the government; (5) prior to the enactment of the amendments, the Academy developed a number of procedures governing its committees' activities, including project formulation, committee selection, committee work, report review, and the release and dissemination of reports; (6) according to Academy officials, these procedures are intended to help ensure the integrity of advice provided to the federal government; (7) for example, committee selection includes procedures for identifying conflicts of interest and potential bias of committee members; (8) the committee work phase provides an opportunity for some public participation, and committee reports are reviewed by an Academy review committee before they are released to the sponsoring agency and the public; (9) in response to section 15, the Academy developed a web site to increase public access to current project information, however, GAO found that some descriptive information on current projects was not always posted in a timely manner and was not always complete; and (10) during this audit, the Academy addressed these problems and developed additional written guidelines regarding the posting of committee information as well as additional quality assurance procedures.