OSTP Releases Report on Federal R&D Spending by State

The most comprehensive accounting of federal R&D investment in each state was released by the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy last Friday. Discovery and Innovation: Federal Research and Development Activities in the Fifty States, District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico offers a wealth of information on federal research activity and investment in each state. 

The 700-page on-line publication provides a level of detail for federal research and development in each state that was not easily accessible before. For example, the individual state profiles, ranging in length from six to 32 pages, provide the following information: 

• A summary snap shot of federal funding within the state, by agency, the state’s rank among states, and the percentage of federal spending within the state that is related to R&D. 
• Descriptions of each federal R&D unit within the state, including a discussion of the facilities’ activities, missions, total spending allocations, and number of employees. 
• A section identifying recipients of federal R&D grants, including institutions of higher education and non-academic institutions. Each state’s profile includes a table presenting the distribution of federal R&D funds by agency and educational institution. 
• A brief discussion of other federal R&D activities in the state, typically identifying private recipients of large R&D grants, contracts or cooperative agreements. 

Each state chapter is downloaded as a separate PDF file, allowing researchers and state and local S&T policymakers to view and print only the desired profiles. 

For ease of understanding each state’s position in relation to other states, SSTI has compiled the state rankings presented in the report’s summary tables into a single table on the accompanying web page: http://www.ssti.org/062300t2.htm  The rankings are for: 1998 population; total federal R&D obligations; R&D as a percent of all non-entitlement, non-mandatory federal expenditures in the state; and, R&D per capita. 

Prepared by RAND, the report presents several limitation in assessing federal R&D investment by state. Most significant are 1) a lack of information for 10 of the 24 agencies with R&D obligations; and, 2) variations across federal agencies as to what constitutes research and development versus science and technology. The difference is greatest between the Department of Defense and the non-military government sector. Definitional inconsistencies within some agencies also presented a challenge. 

Additional useful information is contained in the Introduction and Appendices. 

• The National Science Foundation annually collects information on federal R&D obligations for the 14 agencies with the greatest expenditures for R&D. RAND derived estimates for the additional 10 agencies based on the NSF work. A table presenting the derivation of federal R&D funding by state and agency for years 1993 through 1998 (Appendix C). 
• Government-wide and DOD definitions of R&D (Appendix B), an agency-by-agency list of in-house R&D activities (Appendix D), a glossary of terms and a list of agency acronyms (both separate PDF files from the Introduction). 
• A description of RaDiUS, a database of research and development activity in the U.S. federal government (1993 - present) that is managed by the S&T Policy Institute. Individual research project activity aggregated in each state profile can be obtained through RaDiUS. (Appendix A).  

The report can be accessed or ordered from http://www.rand.org/publications/MR/MR1194/