Congress's own think tank: Learning from the legacy of the Office of Technology Assessment (1972-95)

In 1972 the United States Congress established the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) as a small analytical agency to become better informed about implications of new and emerging technologies. OTA’s principal products—technology assessments—were designed to inform congressional deliberations and debates about issues that involved science and technology dimensions but without recommending specific policy actions. OTA's unique governance by a bicameral and bipartisan board of House and Senate Members helped ensure that issues the agency addressed were tightly aligned with the congressional agenda and that assessments were undertaken with partisan and other stakeholder bias minimized. For 23 years OTA completed reports on virtually all science and technology subject faced by the Congress until the agency's annual appropriation of funds to operate was eliminated in 1995 as one of a series of budget austerity measures. This paper recaps the OTA experience and recent efforts to fill the gap since OTA's closure.