ABSTRACT
The history of White House science advice indicates that technology was more often the subject than science itself. There is a surprising unease in Washington about the current state of White House science advising. The Washington critics believe that the White House office should be doing more to infuse technology in the broadest sense into the operations of the White House. It has become a shibboleth that the formulation of national policies and programs which involve science and technology call for a systems approach in which economics, social factors, and politics are all interwoven. As a matter of fact, the White House Science Office has had a reputation in the past of playing an advocacy role for the research universities. The Congressional dissatisfaction with the office illustrates the basic contradiction. Perhaps a more realistic role is for the office to provide the basic underpinnings for imaginative step-out policies which address some of the major problems of our times.
