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Introduction
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)—recognizing that
information and insights gained through continual examination of practices for
organizational assessment are useful for decision makers at organizations across the
federal, industrial, academic, and national laboratory sectors—recently requested that the
National Research Council (NRC) organize a panel to review best practices in assessment
of research and development (R&D) organizations.1 In response, the NRC established
the Panel for Review of Best Practices in Assessment of Research and Development
Organizations. The panel was charged to consider means of assessing the following, in a
manner that satisfies the requirements of NIST to perform effective assessments but also
identifies assessment methods that can be applied selectively to other R&D
organizations:
Technical merit and quality of the science and engineering work
The adequacy of the resources available to support high-quality work
The effectiveness of the agency’s delivery of the services and products
required to fulfill its goals and mission and to address the needs of its
customers
The degree to which the agency’s current and planned R&D portfolio supports
its mission
The elements of technical management that affect the quality of the work
The extent to which the agency is accomplishing the impact it intends
The agency’s flexibility to respond to changing economic, political, social,
and technological contexts
As one means of data gathering, among others that the panel is performing toward
development of a final report of its findings, the panel organized a planning committee
for a workshop on best practices in assessment of R&D organizations. The workshop
was conducted at the Keck Center of the National Academies in Washington, D.C., on
March 19, 2012.
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Appendixes A, B, C, and D in this report present, respectively, the agenda of the workshop, a list of the
attendees, and biographical sketches for the planning committee and panel members and for those who
made presentations at the workshop.
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This report has been prepared by the workshop rapporteur as a factual summary
of what occurred at the workshop. The planning committee’s role was limited to
planning and convening the workshop. The views contained in the report are those of
individual workshop participants and do not necessarily represent the views of all
workshop participants, the planning committee, or the National Research Council.
The workshop addressed the broad subject of best practices in assessment, with a
focus on elucidating two key aspects of organizational assessment: (1) evaluation of the
technical quality of an organization’s R&D work and (2) assessment of the effectiveness
of the organization in addressing its mission and the needs of customers and stakeholders.
Appreciating the importance of individual differences across organizations, the
committee set as a desideratum for the workshop the identification of a variety of
assessment questions and methods for addressing them, which might then constitute a
tool kit of assessment questions and methods that could be tailored for application by
individual organizations.
During the morning session of the workshop, six distinguished individuals each
provided a presentation. The collective expertise of the presenters, listed below in the
order of their presentations, spans the management of R&D activities within
congressional, federal, industrial, and academic environments (see their biographical
sketches in Appendix D). The audience of workshop participants consisted of
approximately 100 representatives of organizations within those sectors (see Appendix B
for the list of participants).
James H. Turner, Counsel and Director of Energy Programs at the Association
of Public and Land-grant Universities, and former chief counsel to the U.S.
House of Representatives Committee on Science and Technology;
John C. Sommerer, Head, Space Sector, and Johns Hopkins University
Gilman Scholar, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory;
J. Stephen Rottler, Chief Technology Officer and Vice President for Science
and Technology, Sandia National Laboratories;
William F. Banholzer, Executive Vice President and Chief Technology
Officer, The Dow Chemical Company;
Roy Levin, Distinguished Engineer and Managing Director, Microsoft
Research, Silicon Valley; and
Gilbert F. Decker, Consultant, former Assistant Secretary of the Army for
Research, Development and Acquisition.
During the afternoon session of the workshop, attendees formed seven separate
groups, six of which included one of the morning presenters. Each group discussed best
practices in assessment, with attendees sharing their insights and experiences. At the
conclusion of the workshop, a rapporteur from each of the groups provided a brief oral
summary of the group’s discussion.
Chapters 2 and 3 of this report provide, respectively, summaries of the morning
and afternoon sessions of the workshop. In Chapter 2, the workshop rapporteur, James P.
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McGee, director of the NRC’s Laboratory Assessments Board, summarizes each of the
six presenters’ talks. In Chapter 3, the questions raised by the discussion groups are
organized according to elements of the statement of task of the Panel for Review of Best
Practices in Assessment of Research and Development Organizations.
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