How to revolutionize Washington with 140 people.

• Author: Shuger, Scott
• Position: Office of Technology Assessment

How to Revolutionize Washington with 140 People

Although probably nobody at the Pentagon would admit it, their much-prized Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) may have already been shot down. Not by a particle beam. Not by an antisatellite pellet-warhead or a space mine. But by OTA--hardly a space-based techno-marvel--just Congress's Office of Technology Assessment, very much ground-based in a red-brick neocolonial at the corner of Pennsylvania Avenue and 6th Street S.E.

As part of its mandate to keep Congress apprised of emerging and future technologies, OTA undertook a study of SDI, focusing especially on the system's technical feasibility and survivability. Contrary to much of the rhetoric we'd been getting from administration partisans and military men ever since Ronald Reagan's 1983 speech first broached the idea of the system, OTA's principal findings were: 1) Even under the most generous assumptions about our deployment and Soviet counter-moves, the contemplated wonder system "might destroy anywhere from a few up to a modest fraction" of attacking Soviet ICBM warheads (emphasis added); 2) The system might be able "to protect successfully a useful fraction of certain sets of U.S. military targets" (emphasis added); 3) Certain types of nuclear anti-satellite weapons available to the Soviets in the 1990s "pose a significant threat" to SDI and "might prevent full system deployment and operation altogether"; 4) "There would be a significant probability (i.e., one large enough to take seriously) that the first (and presumably only) time [SDI was]...used in a real war, it would suffer a catastrophic failure [emphasis added]....The relatively slow rate of improvement in software engineering technology makes it appear unlikely to OTA that this situation will be substantially alleviated in the foreseeable future."

If you live beyond the Beltway, chances are you haven't heard much about OTA on Star Wars or on anything else. And although OTA's criticism of SDI was literally page one news in D.C.--"Hill Agency Challenges Reagan Vision" was the Post headline--most Washingtonians likewise haven't the foggiest notion. Hardly anybody anywhere knows that it is one of the few government bodies succeeding at something worthwhile.

The range of topics OTA takes on is astounding. The office's publications include:

"Wood Use: U.S. Competitiveness and Technology"

"The Border War on Drugs"

"Displaced Homemakers:Programs and Policy"

"Technology and Handicapped People"

"World Petroleum Availability: 1980-2000"

"Issues in Medical Waste Management"

"Automation of America's Offices"

"Energy Technology Transfer to China"

"Do Insects Transmit AIDS?" (Very unlikely, says OTA.)

The study OTA did on the validity of polygraph testing concluded that despite widespread industrial use of the devices, they were highly unreliable for employee screening. This report was cited frequently in the House and Senate hearings leading to last year's federal ban of most polygraph testing in the private sector.

A few years back, in its studies of the decisionmaking processes in high energy-consuming industries, OTA discovered that although such firms will accept very long payback periods for product development and other investments, virtually all of them were limiting their energy-conserving investments to those achieving payback within three years. In short, the agency proved that the then-available available 10 percent industrial energy tax credit had virtually no influence on corporate conservation practices. Upon receiving this information, Congress dropped that tax credit.

With only 140 employees, OTA is one of the smallest agencies in Washington--John Gibbons, OTA's director, jokes that "the Botanical Gardens are smaller than we are, but that's about it." Yet despite producing reports with a press run of only a few thousand copies, OTA's findings often reach a surprisingly wide audience. Within a recent six-month period, for example, an OTA report on infertility found its way into such diverse publications as Harper's, Hippocrates, Self, Ms., Parenting, and Glamour.

OTA's work is important because most of the great national concerns dominating the front page since about 1970 have had significant technological dimensions. You want to know how to deal with acid rain, nuclear war, a...