A Legislative Proposal for Improving Materials Policymaking: Impacts and Issues

The materials data, forecasting, and analysis system is very important to the future materials policies of this country. Adequate, timely, and reliable data, forecasts, and analyses are not sufficient for effective policy to solve complicated national materials problems, but they are necessary for improving the public policymaking process. Under a contract from Congress’ Office of Technology Assessment, the present authors reviewed the existing repositories of materials information and the possibilities for improvement. We interviewed policymakers in government, private industry, and nonprofit organizations.

In this Article we describe our principal recommendation resulting from that research, a proposal for a new Bureau of Materials Statistics and Forecasting, and analyze its probable effects on government, free enterprise, and the general public.