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In recent years, federal oversight of public expenditures
has sought to integrate performance and budgeting. Notably,
the Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) was
passed in 1993 “in response to questions about the value
and effectiveness of federal programs” (GAO, 1997, p. 11).
GPRA and other mandates have led agencies to develop
indicators of program performance and program outcomes.
The development of indicators has been watched with keen
interest by Congress, which asked the National Research
Council (NRC) for a series of reports using quantitative
indicators to evaluate the effectiveness of applied energy
R&D. The first such report took a retrospective view of the
first 23 years of R&D programs sponsored by the Department
of Energy (DOE) on fossil energy and energy efficiency.
That report found that DOE-sponsored research had netted
large commercial successes—such as advanced refrigerator
compressors, electronic lighting ballasts, and emission
control technology for flue gas desulfurization (NRC, 2001).
Other programs, however, were judged to have been costly
failures in which large R&D expenditures did not result in
a commercial energy technology (NRC, 2001). A followup
NRC committee was assigned the task of adapting the
retrospective methodology to the assessment of the future
payoff of continuing programs (NRC, 2005a). The present
report continues the NRC’s investigation of R&D outcome
indicators and applies the benefits evaluation methodology
to six DOE R&D activities. The report further defines indicators
for environmental and security benefits and refines the
evaluation process based on the experience with the case
studies. |