STATEMENT OF DR. WILLIAM O. BAKER, PRESIDENT, Mr. BAKER. Good morning, Mr. Chairman. Once again, if you would like, we would be happy to enter your full statement into the record. Mr. BAKER. Thank you, sir. We are reporting today the position of the panels of the National Academy of Sciences, National Research Council, which are invited annually by NBS and the Department of Commerce to review the scientific and technical work at the Bureau. This has been done since 1959 by these groups. There are about 6 of them in major review capacities, and many subpanels, involving more than 200 people who are expert in the whole range of science and technology covered by the Bureau and who represent a whole range of American enterprises: universities, Government agencies, and, very especially, industry. We have submitted in our prepared statement conclusions of that group in current reviews. We feel the need for NBS is more compelling than ever in its 75-year-plus history. We have remarked in our notes for you the way it has and continues to contribute to the strength of industry and of other scientific and technical enterprises. I put it that way because NBS has a very large and important constituency among the scientists and engineers of the United States. This extends through many other activities such as particular industries, particular institutions: universities, educational systems, and the like. It's clear from your perceptive exchanges with the witnesses already today, Dr. Baruch and Dr. Compton, that you are especially aware of the challenges to our economy and industry that we are finding now and are aware of the role the Bureau may play in them. I might take the next few minutes, rather than reviewing the prepared statement, to pick a case which may be particularly timely and indicate how the judgments of these Panels are applied to the affairs of the Bureau and how we believe they are useful in your assessments of how the Bureau should be supported in its role in our national resources. Namely, as Dr. Baruch has said, the Institute for Computer Science and Technology, the activities in the Bureau that are concentrated on the mastery of computers and of automations, is an area where a major increase in funding has been recommended. This is in full accord with the studies of the panels of the past several years. One of the reasons for those recommendations from the Panels has been that we felt that American industry as well as Government and other enterprises not only had a world leadership in the use of automations, but could enhance the productivity in our ecnomy most effectively by that means better than by any other means that we know. This means, as you know, is already closely associated with many of the specific high-technology industries that are leaders in the country. Dr. Compton's whole realm of automotive technology is a very heavy and skillful use of computers, of automations for machine-controls, and the rest. In the field of electronics, we find such advances-that I could not have reported even last fall-as a single silicon disk here, containing 2.8 million transistors on this one disk of single crystal silicon, which has a whole series of completely functional computer memories on it. There are 142 memory sites there, capable of 2.3 million bits of memory. Now, it's not only that this technology provides America with a strong leadership strong leadership challenged, as you pointed out, by other countries such as Japan, but nevertheless a very strong leadership in the creation of these kinds of resources for automations. But also, the creation of these resources itself requires an exercise of automatic machinery and of skills in production which are beyond anything we have seen before. To come to the Bureau's part, we can simply report that it is a source of authentication, of standardization, of measurement skills, from the most scientific to the most technological, that are absolutely essential to this kind of productivity and this kind of industry. For example, here the dimensions that are significant in these circuits are dimensions of hundred-millionths, verging on billionths, of a meter, whereas a few decades ago-in fact, not more than one or two-relatively small subdivisions of a meter were what you had to worry about in measurements in industry and in technology generally. So we have come many orders of magnitude beyond what was long thought to be essential in producing a piece of hardware for the American economy. Now, the Bureau of Standards is vital and is the world leader in the measurement schemes and the understanding of how to determine those parameters. But I wanted to pursue a little further your theme of what the Bureau's role properly is in the broader context of assuring industry progress widely. The Institute for Computer Science and Technology is a good example. We have said these automatons are the basis for major industrial advances around the world today, events of all kinds : steelmaking, shoemaking, as well as for computers and electronics themselves. The Panels advisory to the Institute for Computer Sciences and Technology in the Bureau are convinced that a major role remains in that Institute and in the Bureau to contribute to this advance in automatons in our country. It is the following kind of mission, in order of importance, and things which are not being done adequately anywhere else in the country or anywhere in the world. The first involves the software engineering and quality control. It may interest you to know that although the programing of computers, generally known as software engineering, is a major technical activity in this Nation and around the world, there do not exist adequate quality controls. The quality assurance we happened in our industry to have introduced in the manufacture of products in the early 1940's and through the 1940's, which is now universal throughout the world in hardware production, has not been extended to software engineering or the production of software for automatons. Second, the security of computers as proprietary elements of government, industry, wherever, is demanding strong attention. Third, the network access controls, and the computer system accountability and audit ability and fidelity, and authenticity, are things that are not being dealt with in any part of industry adequately, although the computer industry has made a good start. It is necessary for an agency with the traditions of accuracy and objectivity of NBS to resolve the important issues there and to master that technical need. Further, it is clear-along the lines that Dr. Compton pointed out generally that the Bureau's mission is being spread too thinly and that the Bureau has not had the resources that are essential to do some of these absolutely essential jobs, such as this one on computer documentation, software standards, and quality assurance that I am talking about; it is clear that the deficiencies in the Bureau's work in this field up to date are very significant. The interface-matter of interface standards has struck our Panel as being the most serious; and Dr. Baruch has referred to this, that we are in this Nation developing a lot of fragmented computer systems, fragmented capabilities in industry and Government, that are not interconnected; and this doesn't have to be that way. We talk about combinations of government and industry and other resources in Japan-Japan, Inc., or whatever else in advancing new capabilities as a nation. Here we have an opportunity for magnificant national advances in automatons through all our components of the United States which we are missing by not having this transferability, this portability that Dr. Baruch talked about, and what we generally call interface standards. It is very much an appropriate mission for NBS. We mentioned software quality control, which our Panel thought was the next most essential thing for the Bureau to do. We mentioned software validation. Data standards, the actual formating of data upon which American industry and American Government must eventually depend, are needed. The automation and "manufacture" of data bases is not being standardize and made transferable in the form that is essential. It is almost as though instead of using a decimal system for arithmetic, we use three or four convenient and quite different bases. The standard programing language deserves much more attention; the computerized model development deserves a modest amount. That is something that is extremely useful, for these smaller industries that have been referred to as well as for the very large technological ones. By essential computer model development, industries can estimate markets, estimate the relationship of their products to the needs of this Nation, the consumer interest, and, of course, to their marketability. I hope this is a little example of the breadth of utility that a proper support of the Institute of Computer Science and Technology in the NBS can lead to. I could take your time to illustrate similar roles and functions in a variety of other industries, in a variety of the other sections of the Bureau's work, but it would come out rather similar to this. My real point of the report is that in the judgment of these citizens who worked on the panels for NBS, the enhanced funding that has been proposed is absolutely essential. And furthermore, to answer your query specifically, we believe that NBS in its present form, with its present leadership and the action that has been taken in this Senate to assure that leadership, will manage effectively the resources that are being requested and will manage effectively the meeting of some of these technological needs. I should add that in the opinion of the panels, while we have not looked deeply into the proposed reorganization-there hasn't been time we judge these things by results and not by postulates. Nevertheless, the feeling is that there will be a very ample and very compelling mission for the Bureau in the main organization roles of the National Measurements Laboratory, the National Engineering Laboratory. We believe there is a basis for the concerns that Dr. Compton has expressed about whether there are really appropriate resources for other things. However, we will be anxious to report on that as the new organization evolves. I believe, Mr. Chairman, that we have summarized the current findings of the panels but we would be very glad to expand on any of these or to explicate them. Senator STEVENSON. Thank you, Dr. Baker. You have an opinion, you say, on the reorganization plan? Dr. BAKER. We really do not have much of an opinion. Senator STEVENSON. You do not? Dr. BAKER. No. We will seek to judge that and react on it in terms of the outputs, as we do annually. And it is really too early to see how this new arrangement is going to go. Senator STEVENSON. You probably heard Dr. Compton suggest that $13.4 million was a rather large increase for the Bureau to swallow for implementation of the Brooks Act. Do you disagree with that? Dr. BAKER. We share the concern, of course, about how rapidly any scientific or technical body can absorb such an increase, but it is modulated, as I think he implied, by the fact that the Bureau has needed to do this work for a long time. They have been grasping for it, they have been struggling to get some of it done. Therefore, the issue is not quite so much a completely new set of operations to carry out, rather being able to carry out some that they have been half doing, or not doing, for some years already. They really are more prepared than one might expect. Senator STEVENSON. Do I take that to mean that you do disagree and feel that the $13.4 million is a reasonable figure? Dr. BAKER. I do really disagree, and think it is appropriate. Senator STEVENSON. What are your views on the proposed cooperative technology program for the Bureau? Dr. BAKER. Well, sir, I would have to say that that is a vital new element in the reorganization and, therefore, it is early for us to be able to judge anything about it. We haven't had the chance to see the outputs. We do feel, as we noted, that the other missions of the Bureau, which have much needed expanded support, are so compelling, along the lines I reported to you, for example, in automata, in computers, that it is going to be a full-time job to get those things done well. Therefore, we will look with interest but with reservation on whether a quite different program, such as the one in cooperative technology, will find the appropriate attention. The Bureau's management is very competent, is highly committed to doing these important things for the country. You can only do so many things at once. Senator STEVENSON. I believe you were here during Dr. Baruch's testimony? You heard him indicate that his program was directed toward cooperative technology for women's apparel as opposed to automation. Would you care to respond to his suggestions about the directions of this program, for disaggregated industries? Dr. BAKER. I think he very wisely emphasized that we are much worried in the country about the science and technology, research and development, available to the so-called disaggregated industries. I believe, on the one hand, we must heed very keenly Dr. Compton's point that it is those industries themselves that know what they need, and it will be very hard to do their research and development for them. But, on the other hand, we have to agree with Dr. Baruch's implication, at least that maybe we can get something out of their way. That is the hand of regulation, of control, of the dealing with questions of intraindustry communication, that is, being able to have exchange of information within an industry. Those things are very serious constraints on the research and development for those smaller industries. For example, in the high technology part of electronics, where there are many small industries, it is necessary to clean the materials that you use which are semiconductors, metals, all sorts of things. Industry, for generations, has had methods of degreasing, cleaning by certain solvents. The Toxic Substances Control Act will make it practically illegal-nobody is quite sure of what-to use a beaker of benzene in removing contaminants from vital parts of the raw materials from which the smaller industries make the components that we are dealing with. Now, nobody knows whether this is good or bad. If you grow up inside of a tank full of benzene there are certainly dangers. But one has not got a set of scales of hazard, which is to adequately enable us to keep research and development and to keep process technology moving in industry. By the way, even the matter of mere demonstration of the quantities of these alleged toxic materials that are present in processes is something NBS can contribute a great deal to, by its analytic techniques and measurement techniques. Then to turn all the way around and say that Government can do research and development for disaggregated industries which are being inhibited in their own solution of technical problems by unmeasurable, uninterpretable regulations, I think is of very serious concern. Senator STEVENSON. Do you have any suggestions for changes in the Organic Act of the Bureau? |