bers should strive to emulate when establishing a panel.

Federal advisory committees lay at the heart of an age-old tension of how to inject scientific knowledge into the policy-making process. Congress or the Executive Branch can create committees to serve a number of different roles, and usually they are comprised of a mix of outside experts and government officials. Official committees are chartered under the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA), which provides the framework for their membership, operations, and oversight. With approximately 1,000 advisory committees operating for the U.S. federal government in any given year, they come with differing membership, goals, focus, and scoping.^a

There are “blue ribbon” commissions, typically created to provide some focused policy direction; standing committees, usually created by law, such as the now-disbanded PITAC, to provide high-level strategic direction; highly specialized committees providing detailed guidance on narrow technical problems, and countless other incarnations mixing these three areas. Of growing importance to the scientific community is a fourth type created under the National Academies. Congress and the administration routinely fund the Academies to bring together top technical and subject matter experts to provide recommendations on some of the most difficult policy issues. The Academies are becoming the scientific advisory arm of the U.S. federal government.

Advisory committees are created for a number of reasons. It is common for members of Congress, mired in difficult policy negotiations, to create an advisory committee to break political deadlock over a key issue. This effectively delays some difficult decision until a later date with an implicit promise the issue will be revisited when a report is issued. While this is a fairly common scenario, there are many others. Agencies can create committees to answer very narrow, highly

a According to the General Services Administration, there were 963 advisory committees operating under FACA during Fiscal Year 2008, see summary data at http://www.fido.gov/ facadatabase/ AgenciesList.asp.

it is common
for members of
congress, mired
in difficult policy
negotiations, to
create an advisory
committee to break
political deadlock
over a key issue.

technical questions; look to standing committees for high-level strategic advice; or get the perspective of many different groups before regulating an industry.

Given the variation in types of committees combined with the numerous circumstances motivating their creation, the different contexts in which advisory committees operate is infinite. But the ultimate goal for any advisory committee is to provide useful recommendations and have their advice be heard, considered, and acted upon. Answering what will make an advisory committee effective or not depends on many variables (including completely unanticipated external events), but our view is that some general, largely interconnected rules, can apply to most advisory committees.

Transparency. The mission and focus should be clear to members of the committee, to the staff or principles receiving the advice, and to the public. FACA and agency guidance outline the requirements for chartering a committee and the ground rules for public or private meetings, but there is more to transparency than open meetings and what is spelled out in official documents. Committee members should have a good sense of the goals of the programs they are reviewing, the key questions officials would like answered and, perhaps most importantly, whether those officials are willing to listen to the answers. Without such information committees can spend endless cycles looking for direction.

Access. Access encompasses a number of aspects from interacting with senior policymakers to support from lower-level staff. First, committee members should have access to dedicated agency staff to help with in-depth research. Key documents are often buried deep within a bureaucracy and can only be obtained by having a staff advocate on the inside. Second, since most members of advisory committees are volunteers, whether a committee has support from staff to draft reports can mean the difference between having a final product that is a comprehensive report or a basic PowerPoint presentation. Third, the committee should have the ear of policymakers that can make or help drive new policy directions. FACA requires that agencies appoint staff to oversee and attend meetings, and approve a committee’s agenda, but this engagement can vary widely from active participation of senior officials to pro forma staff attendance.

One particularly successful model has been the U.S. Department of Defense’s Information Science and Technology Board. These advisory committees typically have a narrow technical focus and, in choosing topics, have a fair amount of interaction with senior department managers. This level of engagement can lead to a potential trade-off between independence and success that is typical of many committees. As ISAT member Peter Lee from the Carnegie Mellon computer science department said, “While the input of DARPA program managers in the selection of study topics can be viewed as ‘ meddling’, it also means that ISAT studies have an unusually high ‘hit rate’, in the sense of influencing DARPA investment decisions, particularly in new programs.”^b

Understanding Political Context. The type of access a committee has often goes hand-in-hand with the political context in which it operates. These contexts cover a wide spectrum. At one end, the scientific and technical questions being asked are highly specific and the values of those asking for the report

b P. Lee. Guestrin, Goldstein, and Haigh present DARPA ISAT study. CS Diary, http:// www.csdhead.cs.cm u.edu/blog/2007/10/15/ guestrin-goldstein-and-haigh-present-darpa-isat-study/ (Oct. 15, 2007).