Report says federal program duplicates private sector efforts

A new government report charges that the controversial Advanced Technology Program is supporting some research goals that already are being conducted by the private sector and is using ineffective criteria for selecting which projects to fund.

In a report released by the House Science Committee late Tuesday, the General Accounting Office found that all three ATP projects it analyzed were aimed at achieving broad research goals similar to those being funded and pursued in the private sector. In 1988, Congress created ATP, which is administered by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, to fund high-risk research projects designed to produce broad benefits for commerce and society that may not be conducted by the private sector.

"Our retrospective look at the three ATP research projects showed that their goals were similar to research goals already being funded by the private sector," Gary Jones, the GAO's associate director of energy, resources and science issues, wrote in the report requested by the Science Committee and others.

The projects that the GAO studied were in sectors that make up 26 of the 38 ATP projects that have been completed. They included research aimed at developing an online system for recognizing natural or cursive handwriting without using a keyboard, a project to develop ways of increasing the capacity of existing fiber optic cable, and a biotechnology project.

For example, in online handwriting recognition, the GAO said several companies were attempting to achieve the same goal at the same time, such as Paragraph International, which worked with Apple on the plan.

The GAO also warned that the ATP may have a difficult time in the future avoiding similar problems based on some of the factors it uses in selecting projects, such as a requirement that project technical reviewers not be involved directly in the proposed research. The report argues that this makes it less likely that the reviewers would be aware of private sector research into the same area.

ATP has survived several Republican attempts to kill it. Science Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., said the report "finds ATP shortchanging taxpayers by using their hard-earned tax dollars to duplicate private sector research."

NIST spokesman Michael Baum said the GAO report is a "very crude and imprecise look at the question." He noted that the study only looked at whether the ATP projects pursued similar goals as private sector research and did not look at the methodology and techniques developed by the research. He also noted that in addition to pursuing high-risk research, ATP also supports projects that may produce beneficial results faster than would be achieved in the private sector.