Reflections on 50 years of policy advice in the United States

2018 ◽  
pp. 73-90
Author(s):  
Laurence E. Lynn
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Policy Advice

Flying Blind: The Rise, Fall, and Possible Resurrection of Science Policy Advice in the United States

2004 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henry Kelly ◽  
Ivan Oelrich ◽  
Steven Aftergood ◽  
Benn H. Tannenbaum
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Science Policy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Policy Advice

scholarly journals Spies and the Virus: The COVID-19 Pandemic and Intelligence Communication in the United States

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ana Maria Lankford ◽  
Derrick Storzieri ◽  
Joseph Fitsanakis
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Strategic Communication ◽  
The United States ◽  
Policy Advice ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Intelligence Community ◽  
White House ◽  
The Us ◽  
The World ◽  
Novel Coronavirus

This paper introduces a crucial parameter to the novel coronavirus response in the United States, by shedding light on the early-warning role of intelligence agencies. It argues that the intelligence components of the federal government's Biological Defense Program offered actionable forewarning about an impending pandemic in the years leading to the COVID-19 outbreak. Yet, almost from the opening stages of the pandemic, senior US government officials, including President Donald Trump, have repeatedly claimed that the virus “came out of nowhere” and that “nobody saw it coming.” We show that these assertions contradict more than 15 years of pandemic preparedness warnings by intelligence professionals, and disregard the existence of intelligence-led federal pandemic response strategies of every US administration in our time. However, rather than simply placing blame on the White House for discounting these warnings, we advance a conceptual analysis of what many in the US Intelligence Community view as a critical breakdown in strategic communication between intelligence professionals and key government decision-makers. This study agrees with those who suggest that the White House disregarded its own pandemic experts. However, it also posits that the means of strategic communication employed by intelligence experts to alert the White House to the threat were unproductive. These alerts were communicated largely through the President's Daily Brief, an archaic, and ineffectual method of communication that is not designed to facilitate the kind of laser-focused, unequivocal exchange of information needed when potentially catastrophic threats confront the world. This study suggests that the Intelligence Community must implement more direct, immediate and conclusive methods of communicating intelligence to decision-makers, and should seriously consider creating a new line of products that addresses existential challenges to national security. Lastly, we contend it is time to re-evaluate existing rules that prevent intelligence analysts from offering advice on policy. Although we agree that intelligence professionals should refrain from providing policy advice on routine matters, we question the value of preventing these highly knowledgeable experts from communicating strategic policy advice to decision-makers when it comes to threats of a catastrophic nature, which may prove potentially existential for the US, its allies, and the world.

Reflections on 50 years of policy advice in the United States

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laurence E. Lynn
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Policy Advice ◽  
American Government ◽  
Rational Analysis ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
Systematic Analysis ◽  
Non Profit ◽  
Analysis And Evaluation ◽  
Lyndon Johnson

In 1965, U.S. President Lyndon Johnson directed all federal departments and agencies to use a Planning-Programming-Budgeting System (PPBS) to ensure that their annual budget requests were based on the systematic analysis of and justification for their policy and budget recommendations. From America’s earliest days, its political leaders have sought policy advice from experts. In this chapter, Johnson’s mandate will be shown to have been path-breaking in that it initiated the gradual institutionalization of policy planning, analysis, and evaluation at all levels of American government. Policymakers can now draw on the intellectual resources not only of their own organizations but, as well on those of universities, think tanks, consultancies, and non-profit organizations. Rational analysis has not displaced political calculation in policymaking, but it has greatly improved the bases on which public policy is made and implemented in the United States. The challenge to the policy analysis profession now is to vitality, unintellectual diversity and originality, and political relevance that are the basis for the respect it has earned over the years.

Party Strength in the United States: Some Corrections

1975 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 641-642 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul T. David
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Party Strength

Correlative microscopy in distrubuted (client/server) computing environments: tools for catalyzing the rapid dissemination of information about the cell biology of the human prostate

1995 ◽  
Vol 53 ◽  
pp. 682-683
Author(s):  
A. Hakam ◽  
J.T. Gau ◽  
M.L. Grove ◽  
B.A. Evans ◽  
M. Shuman ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cell Biology ◽  
Tissue Bank ◽  
The United States ◽  
Prostate Adenocarcinoma ◽  
Correlative Microscopy ◽  
Client Server ◽  
Critical Elements ◽  
Transplant Organ

Prostate adenocarcinoma is the most common malignant tumor of men in the United States and is the third leading cause of death in men. Despite attempts at early detection, there will be 244,000 new cases and 44,000 deaths from the disease in the United States in 1995. Therapeutic progress against this disease is hindered by an incomplete understanding of prostate epithelial cell biology, the availability of human tissues for in vitro experimentation, slow dissemination of information between prostate cancer research teams and the increasing pressure to “ stretch” research dollars at the same time staff reductions are occurring.To meet these challenges, we have used the correlative microscopy (CM) and client/server (C/S) computing to increase productivity while decreasing costs. Critical elements of our program are as follows:1) Establishing the Western Pennsylvania Genitourinary (GU) Tissue Bank which includes >100 prostates from patients with prostate adenocarcinoma as well as >20 normal prostates from transplant organ donors.

Digital image acquisition, processing, and analysis in a polymer microscopy laboratory

1994 ◽  
Vol 52 ◽  
pp. 454-455
Author(s):  
Vinod K. Berry ◽  
Xiao Zhang
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Image Analysis ◽  
Digital Image ◽  
Image Acquisition ◽  
Image Transmission ◽  
The United States ◽  
Quantitative Image Analysis ◽  
Quantitative Image

In recent years it became apparent that we needed to improve productivity and efficiency in the Microscopy Laboratories in GE Plastics. It was realized that digital image acquisition, archiving, processing, analysis, and transmission over a network would be the best way to achieve this goal. Also, the capabilities of quantitative image analysis, image transmission etc. available with this approach would help us to increase our efficiency. Although the advantages of digital image acquisition, processing, archiving, etc. have been described and are being practiced in many SEM, laboratories, they have not been generally applied in microscopy laboratories (TEM, Optical, SEM and others) and impact on increased productivity has not been yet exploited as well.In order to attain our objective we have acquired a SEMICAPS imaging workstation for each of the GE Plastic sites in the United States. We have integrated the workstation with the microscopes and their peripherals as shown in Figure 1.

Silence of the Land: On the Historical Irrelevance of Territory to Congressional Districting and Political Representation in the United States

2001 ◽  
Vol 15 (01) ◽  
pp. 53-87 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Rehfeld
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
House Of Representatives ◽  
Political Representation ◽  
The United States ◽  
Representative Government ◽  
Congressional District ◽  
Congressional Districts ◽  
Communities Of Interest

Every ten years, the United States “constructs” itself politically. On a decennial basis, U.S. Congressional districts are quite literally drawn, physically constructing political representation in the House of Representatives on the basis of where one lives. Why does the United States do it this way? What justifies domicile as the sole criteria of constituency construction? These are the questions raised in this article. Contrary to many contemporary understandings of representation at the founding, I argue that there were no principled reasons for using domicile as the method of organizing for political representation. Even in 1787, the Congressional district was expected to be far too large to map onto existing communities of interest. Instead, territory should be understood as forming a habit of mind for the founders, even while it was necessary to achieve other democratic aims of representative government.

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