Performance Measures for Federal Programs in
Environmental and NaturalResources R&D

Last revised October 1, 1998 (research conducted during 1994)
The Science and Technology Policy Institute developed a template for choosingperformance measures for evaluating federal investments in environmental scienceand technology R&D. The institute's analysts worked with the interagencysubcommittees of the NSTC Committee on Environment and Natural Resources (CENR). For this project, the institute participated in meetings of the CENR Subcommitteeon Biodiversity and Ecosystem Dynamics (SBED) and the Global Change ResearchSubcommittee as they developed their 1995 strategy and implementation plans.

Based on their work with the CENR subcommittees and a literature review,institute researchers accessed both government and industry practices forchoosing performance measures and milestones for their R&D programs. Theinstitute used this information to design a hierarchical template forsubcommittee members to use when developing milestones and performance measuresfor federal environmental R&D investment as they developed strategy andimplementation plans. One of the main focuses of this template was how to choosedifferent performance measures to help balance the many different environmentalR&D needs and program types including: basic research vs. more applied researchor development, near term vs. long term research and the risk and uncertaintyposed by different environmental problems.

Part of this effort was documented in the report:

Performance Measures for the Federal Investment in Environmental andNatural Resources Research and Development, Robert J. Lempert, Beth E.Lachman, Susan Fuhs, N. Darius Sankey, RAND/DRU-1179-CTI, 1995.

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