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GAO-01-512R 1 (2001-05-09)

handle is hein.gao/gaocrptanen0001 and id is 1 raw text is: Accountability * Integrity Reliability United States General Accounting Office Washington, DC 20548 May 9, 2001 The Honorable John McCain Chairman Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation United States Senate The Honorable Bill Frist United States Senate Subject: Research and Development Funding: Reported Gap Between Data From Federal Agencies and Their R&D Performers Results From Noncom-parable Data In a January 2000 report, the National Science Foundation (NSF), responsible for disseminating science and engineering information, identified a $5 billion gap between the amount of money that federal agencies reported as research and development (R&D) support and the amount of money that the performers of the R&D work reported as spent in 1998. According to NSF, federal agencies obligated about $72 billion for R&D support in 1998, while the performers of federal R&D (including industries, universities, and other nonprofit organizations) reported spending about $67 billion. This reported gap, which was first identified in the 1980s, has created perceptions that data-quality problems exist or that performers are not receiving or spending all the federal R&D funds obligated to them. Legislation establishing NSF included, among its various responsibilities, the requirement to collect, analyze, and disseminate a variety of R&D data. NSF sponsors a series of surveys of federal agencies and R&D performers to collect data on the financial and human resources devoted to R&D in the various sectors of the U.S. economy. The results of these surveys are published in various individual reports, including NSF's biennial Science and Engineering Indicators report. Such data have been used as a barometer to help gauge the overall health and vitality of the nation's R&D enterprise. Because of concerns about whether Members of Congress can rely on NSF's data to fulfill their oversight and legislative responsibilities, you asked us to review the procedures for collecting and reporting federal R&D funding data. Through discussions with your offices, we agreed to determine why a gap exists between federal agency-reported data and performer-reported data. We briefed your staff on the results of our review on April 4, 2001, using the enclosed briefing slides. (See enc. I.) GAO-01-512R Research and Development Funding Gap

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