Agencies fail to comply with technology-transfer law

Several federal agencies are not complying with a two-year-old law that aims to improve the transfer of technologies developed with federal funding to the commercial sector, according to a new General Accounting Office report.

The 2000 statute requires agencies to submit, with their annual budget requests, reports to the Commerce Department and the Office of Management and Budget detailing their technology-transfer activities.

GAO investigated nine agencies with internal research budgets of at least $500 million and found that most had failed to file their reports to Commerce and OMB with their fiscal 2003 budget requests.

Many of the reports filed late were incomplete or inaccurate, according to the report (GAO-03-47).

GAO recommended that the Commerce Department clarify its guidelines for what should be included in the reports and that OMB develop procedures considering the information in those reports during the budget process.