Dr. BARKER. No. sir, I believe that it has proven to be effective and versatile. It has met the needs that I have described to you, which I think are samples of needs which will still be coming on at the end of this century. It is a good act.

Senator STEVENSON. You and others have cited the personnel problems at the Bureau. In addition to supporting the fiscal year 1979 budget request for competency building, what else should be done? Dr. BAKER. I am not quite sure I follow you.

Senator STEVENSON. În addition to supporting the request for competency building, what if anything should be done to help solve that personnel problem?

Dr. BAKER. Specifically, some relief in the matter of personnel positions that the Bureau has been held to. It has-it needs

Senator STEVENSON. There is some relief contemplated.

Dr. BAKER. Yes.

Senator STEVENSON. Are you familiar with the ceilings proposed in the budget for personnel?

Dr. BAKER. I have looked very quickly at the budget.

Senator STEVENSON. Should it be higher?

Dr. BAKER. I think it should be higher soon. If-particularly in the area of funds which the Bureau can manage experimentally and use for supporting the basic work that will permit these measurement techniques we are talking about, I do think that should be higher. I do think there are specific

Senator STEVENSON. Should there be any ceilings at all?

Dr. BAKER. I am sorry?

Senator STEVENSON. This is a somewhat theoretical question. Why not make money available and forget about the ceilings. Leave it to the Bureau to determine for itself how best to make use of the funds made available.

Dr. BAKER. I would hope there would be a strong tendency in that direction. They are able to do this. The legislation is already very good, as we have indicated about defining a mission. The demonstration over 75 years really is that the Bureau management has been highly realistic about this.

They have tried to relate consistently to the intentions of the Congress. Therefore, the point you are making is really very vital for maintaining technical excellence.

They should be able to dispose of these funds. An interesting thing about their reorganization is that they have reduced the fine structure. They reduced some of the subdivisions in their own internal organization. It is a good thing, because they are going to be able to move people and move programs more readily than before.

They removed, I think the thing they called sections. I think this puts them in a good position to do what you are implying, that they should have a little more internal autonomy.

Senator STEVENSON. Anything else you would suggest?

Dr. BAKER. What?

Senator STEVENSON. Anything else you would suggest for coping with the personnel problem?

Dr. BAKER. No, thank you, sir. I think this has been a very useful exchange.

Senator STEVENSON. Nothing more?
Thank you very much, sir.

[The statement follows:]

STATEMENT OF DR. W. O. BAKER, BELL LABORATORIES

I am pleased to appear here today to discuss with your Subcommittee the strengths, problems, and needs of the National Bureau of Standards.

Since 1959, the Department of Commerce and the National Bureau of Standards have annually invited the National Academy of Sciences to provide an external evaluation of the technical work of NBS. This is accomplished through a series of Evaluation Panels. There are currently six major Panels and a number of Subpanels. The National Academy of Sciences selects and appoints the Panel members, of which there are at present over 200 people who give freely of their time. In recent years I have been pleased to serve as the Chairman of the Steering Committee of the Evaluation Panels.

Today I speak on behalf of the Panels, who are charged with the responsibility of evaluating the technical functions and operations of NBS, and also as a private citizen and industrial scientist with a keen interest in the vital functions that the Bureau performs.

As a member of the U.S. industrial community, I can report that the need for the National Bureau of Standards appears to be more compelling than ever. The Department of Commerce and the National Bureau of Standards have worked coopertively with industry in this country for many years, and it is incumbent on the Congress and this Subcommittee in particular to ensure that the Bureau is able to continue to make valuable contributions to the scientific and technological health of the nation. I believe that the Bureau has performed its role with distinction and that it can continue to do so.

I have sressed the importance of the Bureau to industry, but my colleagues on the Evaluation Panels from universities and also from other government agencies attest to the fact that the Bureau is vitally needed by these other segments of the nation.

During the many years that I have been aware of its activities, the Bureau has been a forum for the exchange and dissemination of scientific and technical information, and it has been a major force in the encouragement of innovation. It not only has furnished an accepted language for science and technology— the language of measurement-but it also has become a scientific conscience of these communities. It has set high standards for research. Scientists have become accustomed to expect that they can visit the Bureau to obtain new ideas and to confirm the validity of their work. My overall assessment is that, through the National Bureau of Standards, Congress has provided the science and technology of this nation with invaluable support.

Since the Bureau was founded in 1901, the needs of science and technology have changed considerably and I must emphasize that the needs of the very near future are quite beyond those with which we have been familiar. There is an evolving role of the National Bureau of Standards in its relationship to national science and technology goals. As the reputation and prestige of the Bureau has grown, additional responsibilities and tasks have been entrusted to its care. I want to stress that the role of the Bureau is quite pervasive. It covers many fields of science and engineering, and it is a crucial base of support for programs of many other federal agencies.

Because the Bureau furnishes the legal as well as operational bases for many measurements in this country, it is important that sufficient resources be made available to the Bureau to maintain the competences necessary to ensure the quality of measurements and measurement methods on which the nation' depends. Since its beginning, the Bureau has been involved with standards for weights and measures in the marketplace that are necessary to ensure equity in trade, both within this country and internationally.

Let's look at one type of standard-the standard of length. A century ago, this standard consisted merely of the space between two scratches on a metal bar. Today, you will find such a metal bar in the NBS museum, but not in the laboratory. Today, the Bureaus is called upon to furnish standards and standard measurement methods for length that range from astronomical distances to interatomic spacing. Optical effects of highest precision are nowadays the principal length meter.

The Bureau has made technical contributions to the Global Positioning System of the U.S. Air Force. In this System, precisely timed signals from a group of satellites will be used to accurately locate the position of an object on the surface of the earth or even in the air to within a few feet. The precision of the instruments required in this System are at the forward state of the art.

At the other end of the range of length measurements required in today's technology, the Bureau has recently been able to measure absolutely rather than relatively the distance between atoms in a silicon crystal. This has far-reaching effects because until now, these atomic distances had to be expressed in arbitrary x-ray units because the exact relationship to the standard of length was not known.

In between these two extremes of length are many other examples of muchneeded work that is being carried out by the National Bureau of Standards. Everyone is familiar with the revolutionary advancements in the field of electronics; advances that are now providing a myriad of consumer products such as calculators, digital watches, home video games, and many other devices. It is now possible to construct device, such as a microprocessor, that is smaller than a postage stamp but contains literally thousands of transistors and associated components. This device is in fact the working part of a computer. Devices like this one have to be calibrated and are subject to manufacturing controls that are orders of magnitude greater than before. This nation leads dramatically in applying such controls, and the National Bureau of Standards has provided the necessary precision standards.

For electrical measurements, the Bureau provides calibration services by which many types of electrical measurements throughout the country are coordinated. A dramatic example of the need for these calibration services occurred last year on the Evaluation Panels. The Bureau proposed a cutback in the number of electrical calibrations. Such a cutback was vigorously protested by Evaluation Panel members from both the military services and the defense contrctors. Both stressed the need for such callibrations to be done by a recognized authority such as the National Bureau of Standards in a third-party role.

Continual improvement in measurements is vitally important to industry, but at the same time, there are many challenges in new areas that the National Bureau of Standards must tackle if our nation is to remain internationally competitive. One such area is dynamic metrology, which could greatly enhance our ability to compete as a manufacturing nation. Already tremendous advances have been made in the manufacture of discrete parts through numerically controlled machine tools. The next step is to measure the work in progress dynamically without slowing down the machining process. This technique can result in a significant increase in manufacturing productivity. Even greater increases can be made by providing computer-controlled, continuous adjustment of the machining process based on these dynamic measurements. This is the kind of anticipatory research that the National Bureau of Standards is doing and should be doing. Inspection by automatic pattern recognition is another oncoming need that is capable of lifting productivity.

In recent years, regulatory agencies have issued a large number of regulations in health, safety, environment, energy, and so forth. In many cases, the legal enforcement of these regulations depends on the work of the National Bureas of Standards for calibration, standard measuring methods, and Standard Reference Materials. Sometimes, new technologies of measurement have had to be developed. For example, pollutants in the atmosphere often must be measured to parts per billion, and this requires the highest type of technology. Of course, it is not the Bureau's mission to determine the maximum allowable level of pollutants in the air-that is done by another agency. However, it is the mission of the National Bureau of Standards to provide the calibrations and standards to enable these measurements to be made.

As you know, the National Bureau of Standards is now in the final stage of an extensive reorganization. The Evaluation Panels of the National Academy of Sciences have not been active participants in the planning of the reorganization, but nevertheless they are extremely interested in any management action that might affect the technical programs of the Bureau. All organizations find it necessary to reorganize from time to time, and one always hopes that some of the problems of the organization will be solved thereby. Although Dr. Ernest Ambler was only recently sworn in as the new Director of the Bureau, his association with that organization covers a quarter of a century, and he is well known to us. Therefore, it is to be expected that the reorganization is being

done with a very thorough knowledge of the mission and operation of the Bureau.

In some cases, specific organizational problems pointed out by the Evaluation Panels have been addressed. For example, it has been previously necessary to have three separate Subpanels to evaluate the work of the Electricity Division, the Electromagnetics Division, and the Electronic Technology Division, because these parts of the Bureau were in separate institutes and separate locations. The Panels have pointed out the need for improved coordination of these activities, and in the new organizational structure we find them grouped together. Included with these three divisions will be a small group in cryoelectronics that was formerly part of the Cryogenics Division. This move is also viewed as a positive step by the Panels. And there are other examples.

One of the management problems that cannot be wholly solved by reorganization is the difficulty of having a part of the Bureau located in Boulder, Colorado, which is 1,500 miles from Gaithersburg, Maryland. It might seem that the obvious solution is to move the entire operation to Gaithersburg, but this is neither necessary nor desirable. The technical quality of work in Boulder is high and is enhanced in some cases by the location. For example, the recent discovery of a new type of molecule important in atmospheric chemistry resulted from a joint project between NBS and NOAA, another large Department of Commerce laboratory located in Boulder. Also, the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics (JILA), a joint venture between NBS and the University of Colorado, is world renowned for its scientific excellence. The work done by the NBS portion of the JILA is directly related to the mission of NBS, but it is immeasurably enhanced by interactions with experimentalists and theorists in the university portion of JILA.

I might point out that one of the original justifications for moving a part of the Bureau to Boulder was to obtain a better location from which to broadcast the much-used time and frequency signals from WWV. There is now also a transmitter in Hawaii. In the not-too-distant future, the time signals will probably be broadcast from satellites, and the ground location of the Time and Frequency Division could be anywhere, but the ground-based transmitters must be maintained for another decade or so.

The Evaluation Panels were not happy with the original reorganizational plan for the Cryogenics Division in Boulder, but the difficulties appear to have been resolved satisfactorily. This is one example of how the Bureau has been very responsive to the findings and recommendations of the Evaluation Panels. I have discussed the NBS Boulder laboratories in some detail in order to illustrate that the inherent problem of managing an organization with a smaller portion located at some remote distance has not resulted in work of any less significance or quality from that remote location.

The main concern of the Evaluation Panels at this time is that the Bureau is spread too thin. It has too many responsibilities for the resources available to it. In many cases, the expertise of the Bureau in a particular field is now only one person deep.

Over the past few years, the number of short-term tasks assigned to the Bureau has increased while the ceiling on the number of personnel has remained essentially constant. It appears that this situation has compromised the Bureau's ability to maintain a balance between short-term applied work and long-term fundamental research. There is a general impression, both within and outside NBS, that the amount of fundamental research undertaken by the Bureau has decreased within the last few years. It is generally believed that this is primarily due to the fact that additional, short-term, applied responsibilities assigned to the Bureau do not carry concomitant additional personnel slots, and consequently, the required positions must be generated within a constant-size staff by reducing the amount of long-range fundamental research. It would be desirable to find mechanisms to maintain and protect the level of long-term fundamental research so that it is no lower than about 15 percent of the total NBS program. It is vital that the necessity of maintaining the ability to do fundamental research within NBS be formally recognized in the federal budget approval procedures.

It is important that the National Bureau of Standards do both short-term applied work and long-term fundamental research. In fact, the ability to do today's short-term applied work is based largely on the long-term fundamental research that was done in the past, and there is no doubt that today's long-term fundamental research will be useful in the applied work of the future. Adequate long-range planning can determine those areas of fundamental research that are

most likely to give results that will be needed in the future. We must protect the ability of the Bureau to be able to respond quickly to the short-term needs that will arise in the future.

The quality of the science and technology at the Bureau is, for the most part, excellent, but constant vigilance is required in order to make sure that the expertise and equipment available at the Bureau are sufficient to meet the evolving needs. Several years ago, the Evaluation Panels called attention to serious deficiencies in the equipment of the Bureau due to reduced equipment funding. At that time, the Secretary of the Department of Commerce began an equipment modernization program that has done a great deal to relieve the situation. However, there will continue to be equipment needs because the Bureau needs state-of-the-art equipment in order to maintain and disseminate the national standards of measurement.

The Evaluation Panels have called attention to deficiencies in the central computing facility at the Bureau, and I understand that plans are under way to modernize this facility.

In general, the Evaluation Panels have no complaints about the technical work of the Bureau or the productivity of the staff. In one case involving the Bureau's nuclear reactor, which is used heavily by other agencies, the Panel believes that the productivity is actually too high. That is to say that the reactor is being used to the maximum exen possible, and only minimum time is available for reactor operator training and routine safety maintenance. In order to relieve this, it is proposed in the fiscal year 1979 budget of the Bureau to install equipment that would allow the maximum power of the reactor to be doubled to 20 MW, and this is fully endorsed by the Evaluation Panels. The additional power of the reactor would allow individual irradiations to be accomplished more quickly and thus a greater number of them could be done. The current assessments of the Evaluation Panels highlight three points: 1. The technical work of the Bureau is excellent;

2. The managerial talent at NBS is of high quality; and

3. NBS is being stretched beyond its resource limits.

It appears that new assignments are given to NBS because of the great trust than can be placed in an institution with such a strong reputation. What the Bureau is able to do with resources available, it does well. The National Bureau of Standards continues to provide, as it has in the past, the standards, the measurement technology, the critical standard reference data, the Standard Reference Materials, and the information processing standards that are necessary for increased productivity, equity in trade, continued innovation, and more efficient government operation.

Senator STEVENSON. We now have been joined by Congressman Brown. I apologize for keeping you waiting, Congressman. I thank you for joining us this morning.

STATEMENT OF HON. GEORGE E. BROWN, JR.,

U.S. REPRESENTATIVE FROM CALIFORNIA

Mr. BROWN. I apologize for being late. I intended to be here a little earlier. I was unable to do so.

Senator, I am taking the liberty of appearing and offering testimony before your subcommittee because of my own interest in this area, and because of earlier hearings which we held on the House side which led me to feel that perhaps I could offer some suggestions or raise some questions that might be helpful.

I have a prepared statement which I hope that you can see fit to insert in the record. I will try to briefly cover as much of it as I think is necessary.

Senator STEVENSON. The full statement will be entered in the record. Mr. BROWN. I want to pay tribute to the work that you have done in this subcommittee, Senator, in a number of different areas which I won't belabor.