needs, all Americans should have access to basic weather information and forecasts necessary to plan their day-to-day activities, plant their fields, or operate their boats safely. The National Weather Service should provide a baseline set of services to that end. So we add:

6-Public. Basic weather information and forecasts. These products can be generated by the same local offices necessary to maintain the national severe weather warning system. Local vagaries and nuances of topography, geography, and population make dramatic differences in the way weather develops and how it is reported. This implies that localization is critical to providing accurate and timely warnings of dangerous conditions.

Finding the right balance between localization for warning quality and centralization for efficiency has been a difficult process for the National Weather Service, but, clearly, local human knowledge is the most critical component of a warning system. But, to the private side we add:

2-Private. Specialized forecasts and information. Those people, companies, and industries that can afford and would benefit from more detailed analysis or forecasts should pay for it.

Public/private example

And there is a roll for a public/private partnership. An example is in the Florida Keys where there is concern about the quality of the marine forecasts since the National Weather service office in Key West was significantly downsized. The government in the Keys might consider hiring a private forecaster to provide detailed boating information for the good of the local economy.

It should continue, however, to be a function of the National Weather Service to coordinate a system of warning boaters of dangerous conditions, set the standards and format for those warnings, and review and analyze severe weather that does

occur.

You would not want a private forecast service issuing a Hurricane Warning for the Keys. It would cause chaos.

Technology transition

One final area of concern. The National Weather Service is in the middle of the transition of using technology as old as the 1950s to the new 1990s systems. This transition has been painful and is incomplete. The modernization is not only designed to improve the ability of the system to provide warning of dangerous weather, but also to make the system more efficient. It is not fiscally logical to interrupt that transition too severely. The old system involved people at every turn. The new one automates many functions. I believe the modernization should be completed and then a review be initiated to realize the most benefit from the new systems.

Chairman ROTH. Thank you, Mr. Norcross.

I will just ask a few questions and then we will follow up with some written questions. Mr. Knauss, I think in your testimony you said that NOAA should be scrubbed but kept whole. As you know, I am sympathetic to that suggestion. Are there any areas of NOAA you believe could be eliminated, downsized, or privatized?

Mr. KNAUSS. I think the speakers on both sides of me have mentioned one area; namely, NOAA does provide a certain amount of specialized forecasts for special interests, such as frost forecasts for farmers in Florida and these kinds of things. I do not think this is a NOAA function. I think that generalized forecasts is NOAA's responsibility. Specialized forecasts are not.

I would also point out that NOAA has tried for some years to reduce the number of weather stations. When I was in NOAA we thought, and I suspect my successor still thinks, that we can provide adequate forecasting information as needed within the United States and by the public with a lot fewer weather stations. Perhaps somewhat larger weather stations, but a lot fewer.

We had great difficulty-Mr. Chairman, it is almost as difficult to close down a weather station as it is to close an Army base. Chairman ROTH. I think that is true.

Mr. KNAUSS. So in that sense I would turn this one back to you, sir. I would think that we would need help from Congress in being able to reduce the number of weather stations. That would save not a lot of money, but it would save tens of millions of dollars each year. It all begins to add up. So those are two areas I would think of immediately.

Chairman ROTH. What about the NOAA corps?

Mr. KNAUSS. The primary role of the NOAA corps in terms of charting harbors and this kind of thing is an essential function of Government. Whether at the end of the 20th century it is necessary to have a uniform corps to perform that function I think is now an open question. When I was in NOAA, Mr. Chairman, we were trying to establish an experiment; to have a certain amount of that work done by a private company to find out if it could meet the standards that we had in NOAA, whether they could do the work as cost effectively as we were doing it.

I think that experiment is now being conducted. It may indeed be possible that this work can be done-I am certain this work can be privatized. If that is the case then maybe there is no need for the continuation of the NOAA corps.

Chairman ROTH. Could the research be consolidated with similar research in other agencies such as EPA? Let me just follow that up with a final question. Could any grant programs be eliminated?

Mr. KNAUSS. One can do an extraordinary amount of research, and generally speaking the more fundamental research one does the more one learns about the world. I think it is just a question of how much this country feels it can afford. You cannot eliminate all of it. I am not saying you buy it by the yard but certainly the more you do, the more we learn. Clearly, because of the work we have done recently on hurricane forecasting, fundamental research, we are now better at it than we used to be and hopefully we will get better.

One of the proposals in the bill before us is that NOAA close down its coastal ocean research and turn that over to EPA. When I was in NOAA I had to look three layers down below Bill Reilly, the head of EPA, to find a non-lawyer. Research does not get wellserved in EPA. They are a regulatory agency. The scientists in that organization get jerked around-we used to talk about they had to deal with the pollutant of the month. That is not a way to either attract and keep good scientists or to insure that good science is done.

So if you are going to close down coastal ocean research in one agency or another, I would respectfully suggest you close it down in EPA and keep it in NOAA, sir.

Chairman ROTH. Thank you, Mr. Knauss.

Mr. Comarow, let me ask you, the discussion, as you know, of trying to consolidate the number of Cabinet departments somewhat along the line of what the Ash Council recommended many years ago, and Mr. Panetta when he was a congressman made some similar suggestions. A number of us have taken a look at that approach. One concern that is expressed, in fact I think it was expressed earlier here this morning, that is if you try to consolidate all these you are just going to build a huge bureaucracy that is less effective, more cumbersome than what we have now. A lot of people

will refer to the Pentagon; that you built this huge new bureaucracy in the Department of Defense and then you continue the three services.

I wonder what your answer to that is. Is there some means-you certainly can make an argument that it is desirable to have like activities together in some kind of a grouping. But if you merely end up creating a new hierarchy with many more layers of bureaucracy, you are not achieving what the private sector has been able to do. Certainly, the Government is not the private sector; we all understand that. Is there some way of creating offices that would be small and more effective and would enable you to group them along the lines of the Ash recommendation?

Mr. COMAROW. It is a very tricky business, Mr. Chairman, and there is no simple answer. The Ash Council was extremely aware of the dangers which you have just pointed out. One of the principles which I referred to in my testimony today was that there must be some assurance that the functions to be housed in a single agency not only belong together but that the package can be managed efficiently. If you go crazy with just grouping similar functions, you can indeed create an agency or a department or an organization which is very hard to manage.

All that organizational theorists and practitioners can do is recognize that danger, be extremely aware of it and alert to it, and ensure that it does not happen. Our best judgment was that we did walk that line carefully and that we stopped short of create eight unmanageable monsters. But all a good organization can do, Mr. Chairman, is make it easier for good people to work, and a bad organization makes it harder. That is it. Anybody who gives you grandiose promises of great advantages to reorganization probably has not been through the process.

Chairman ROTH. Mr. Smith, as you pointed out, weather related data collection is a highly complex, technology-driven process. There is tremendous public investment. You have raised some intriguing questions, how to divide the management roles and property rights between Government and commercial. Can you offer any specific criteria that would help define these areas, which would have implications in other Government functions?

Mr. SMITH. It is an important question because it is, in effect, the infrastructure for the emergency warning, hurricane warning that Mr. Norcross spoke about. So it is very important from that element. I think it is a Federal role. I think most people that are involved in weather-related issues, Government or private, believe it is a Weather Service role or a Federal Government role.

I think the only criteria you can come up with at this point is the technology. The technology is always changing and I think that the issue, even whether or not it is a Federal Government role, should be looked at in 10 years. Looking at it now it clearly is a Federal Government role.

The criteria? I think if a private sector company-if one comes along that is willing to do data collection-that private sector should not face competition from the Government, that private sector company. I think that is the best criteria that at least we can present at this time.

Chairman ROTH. Would you have any comment on that, Mr. Norcross?

Mr. NORCROSs. There is a fundamental rule of computers and that is garbage in garbage out. I think that the criterion, as I said before, for determining between what should be a public and private role is, you do not want to let the profit motive get in the way of the quality that you need at the beginning of the process.

While the National Weather Service employs many private people and organizations to gather the data currently, and the privatization of that process is continuing, the analysis of that data and the standards set for that data still are set by the National Weather Service. And it is a very finely-tuned standard to be sure that the input to the computer is correct so that the output, which is used to make forecasts and to provide enough advance warning time is as good as we can get.

So my concern would be that if we get the profit motive too deeply involved in data collection where compromises have to be made for the wrong reason-profits have to be shown-that we can end up jeopardizing the other end of the system, which is the lifesaving end of the system which is the conclusions that the computers draw from that data collection infrastructure.

Chairman ROTH. Mr. Knauss?

Mr. KNAUSS. Mr. Chairman, I agree with everything that has been said on that, and I would just like to add one note to my previous comments concerning the privatization of the charting of harbors and doing away with the NOAA corps. It is very critical that whoever does the charting of harbors, measuring bottom depths, obstructions, this kind of thing, that it has a Government stamp of approval on it, which I think means that even if it is privatized that there will have to be somewhere within the system the equivalent of a few NOAA officers overseeing the collection of that data and saying, yes, that does meet our standards.

So however you do it there will continue to be, even in the charting of harbors, a Federal responsibility of looking at that information and guaranteeing to the public that it meets the quality that they expect.

Chairman ROTH. Gentlemen, I appreciate your being here today. As I indicated earlier, we undoubtedly will submit some further questions to you. Thank you very much.

We have one more person, Mr. Edward Kwiatkowski, who is director of the Great Lakes Manufacturing Technology Center, and vice president, Cleveland Advanced Manufacturing Program. Please come forward, sir. I regret that there was a mix-up and appreciate your being here this afternoon.

TESTIMONY OF EDWARD KWIATKOWSKI, DIRECTOR, GREAT LAKES MANUFACTURING TECHNOLOGY CENTER, AND VICE PRESIDENT, CLEVELAND ADVANCED MANUFACTURING PROGRAM

Mr. KWIATKOWSKI. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, members of the Committee, I am Ed Kwiatkowski. I am vice president of the Cleveland Advanced Manufacturing Program, in Cleveland, Ohio, and executive director of the Great Lakes Manufacturing Technology Center.

I want to thank the Committee for the opportunity to come and speak to you today and testify in support of the Department of Commerce's extramural technology programs and in particular the Manufacturing Extension Partnership. I would like to thank the Committee for taking a leadership position on the Commerce Department's review and taking into account the importance of technology programs to the United States' ability to compete globally and provide high quality jobs in America.

Today I will speak briefly about one of the technology programs that truly works, has measurable results, has impacted jobs, and yet is relatively new by Federal standards. That is the Manufacturing Extension Program, which is managed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, which is aimed at increasing the global competitiveness of U.S. manufacturing small to mediumsized companies. The success of the Manufacturing Extension Program is built on regional and local technology centers like the Cleveland Advanced Manufacturing Program in Cleveland.

CAMP is a not-for-profit organization established by Cleveland business leaders in 1984 to improve the competitiveness of the region's manufacturers. Selected by the State of Ohio in 1984 as one of the first of seven Edison Technology Centers, CAMP accomplishes its technology research, development, and training missions in association with local universities and colleges. Chosen by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, NIST, in 1988 as one of the first Federal manufacturing technology centers, CAMP carries out its manufacturing deployment mission through a permanent professional staff.

CAMP concentrates on providing technical modernization services to the 14,000 manufacturing companies located in northeast Ohio and northwest Pennsylvania. The overwhelming majority of these companies are small and medium-sized manufacturers. Over 90 percent have less than 100 employees. Since the creation of the Great Lakes Manufacturing Technology Center at CAMP 6 years ago, it has provided a broad range of modernization and improvement services to over 2,500 manufacturers in the region.

The GLMTC's services, which are typical of the NIST MEP centers, encourage and assist small manufacturers in modernizing their business practices, their plant processes, and equipment, and in training their work force, thus improving their ability to compete effectively in global markets. The services encompass a range of manufacturer's needs including manufacturing engineering, business systems, and work force development.

Modernization activities are initiated by field staff engineers who visit the manufacturers, assess their needs, and help them start projects on to modernization. The GLMTC also employs a select group of technical experts who assist the companies by managing these improvement projects. In addition to our own staff, the GLMTC utilizes external resources at local universities, in the private sector, and other manufacturing technology centers.

In my testimony I would like to provide an overview of the scope, mission, and requirements of the MEP.

What is the Manufacturing Extension Partnership? The MEP is a national network of organizations that provide comprehensive, hands-on, technical support to modernizing small and medium