Next week we're going to have a very important meeting. It's sponsored by the Department's newly reconstituted R&D Council. The Council's principal purpose is to improve integration between the applied and basic research activities of the DOE.
The meeting will occupy one and one half days and utilize a workshop format to arrive at recommendations to improve this integration. It will start by hearing input from a number of speakers from inside and outside the Department. All will give examples of good integration practices and models. The outside speakers will include people from industry, academe, and even from the Hill. The workshops will then deliberate in particular major mission areas of the Department like national security, energy research, and environmental research and come up with recommendations for improvement to the R&D Council. These recommendations will cover both ideas for management process improvements and new opportunities for collaboration and integration among the Program areas. These recommendations will be made to the Council on the second day. The Council will then retire for about an hour to deliberate on what they have heard and come back to the entire session audience and state what they plan to do. Deputy Secretary Curtis will be there, and we might even get Secretary O'Leary.
The DOE participants will be top management and key professionals from our labs and program organizations. The industry and academic participants will also help in the workshops.
It is a very important meeting because it will address numerous criticisms over many years that we are not well integrated. It's also a major commitment of a lot of very busy people's time, just like this meeting is.
They were willing to do this because they recognize that times have changed dramatically in recent years, and we cannot any longer ignore our critics who say we are not well integrated. What they are really saying is that they do not believe we are spending the taxpayers' money in the most effective way. Today, that kind of criticism becomes less and less tolerable in the current atmosphere of severe budget restrictions and incessant demands for better stewardship of taxpayers' funds. And, the critics have real credibility with our authorizers. Of most recent vintage, they are the like of the Galvin and Yergin Committees, reports from GAO, and even criticisms within our own Department.
All walks of society are under the same kinds of pressure.
These include industry, universities, and us.
All must get more for the dollars expended that are given to them by either the taxpayer, as in our case and for the most part universities too, and in the case of industry it's the stockholders.
The meeting you are holding today could not come at a better time.
The initiatives that you will promote as a product of this meeting are probably the single most important examples of integration that can be imagined.
I'd go so far as to say, if we can't do what you are dealing with today, we cannot integrate, no matter what else we do.
Why? It's totally obvious to all of you, I know. You are proposing to knit the enormous assets of the DOE together so that we can operate as a system in areas where it makes sense, and use the power of our assets in entirely new ways--not only to save money, but far more importantly to do things that cannot be done any other way and be able to do these new things at a faster rate.
Such an accomplishment, when you achieve it, will dumbfound, please, and excite our critics like nothing else can.
All of you have, therefore, a very special responsibility to make this initiative succeed, and succeed at a rapid rate.
You cannot let this founder; you cannot even let it flounder.
You can do more for the reputation of the DOE and the great labs that make us the technological powerhouse we are than any other group in the Department, the government, and even in the country.
But far more important than the reputation of the DOE, we're talking about giving this country one of the most powerful technical capabilities of any country on earth.
I don't have to explain to you why this is so, because you are well aware of the resources that can be knitted together by the implementation of this initiative.
The people that have worked so hard over the last year to put meat on the bones of this initiative are to be congratulated. Defense Programs and Energy Research leadership have been the key drivers.
I don't know all their names, but I hope you will find a point somewhere in this meeting to acknowledge them for their efforts. They are real heroes and courageous visionaries.
As I read the white paper put together increasing, and my excitement at the possibilities that they have given us welling up inside me.
I've had these feelings a few times before, in my former job as CTO of DuPont.
However, I can tell you, the scale and impact of this one dwarf anything I've ever seen.
Even the examples of the triumphs in industry achieved through integration of computer power that are given at the end of the white paper, impressive as they are, are small shadows of what you are capable of delivering with this initiative.
No, I am not getting carried away. I've sen enough of these kinds of proposals in my career to know that when I get that certain feeling in the pit of my stomach, I'm being shown something in its early stages that has enormous and for the most part not fully imaginable potential. When I get this feeling, I also get a determination that nothing can be allowed to get in the way of its implementation.
This is definitely one of those pit of the stomach feelings things. And you are the people who can't let anything get in the way.
Unfortunately, not everyone will immediately see the potential as clearly as most of you at this workshop.
But enough will, and you do have some pretty important people here in this room, and there are others throughout the DOE and the government that will help as well. You will have to invoke them all, I suspect.
One of the most useful to you should be the DOE R&D Council. There's no doubt that the product of this meeting must form part of the discussion next week, so you have an added emphasis to really frame the needs you have for implementation, so it can be clearly brought up next week. We're going to aid that process a little bit by borrowing some of the exhibits you have here today and show them extensively next week.
I mentioned that feeling in the pit of my stomach that tells me I'm looking at something that is really great. I need also tell you that that feeling derives additionally from my knowledge and experience that there is also a lot of hard work in front of all of you to really bring this thing to a successful state.
Some of this hard work derives from questions and thoughts like:
I don't think any of us realistically thinks that significant sums of new money can be achieved in the near future. But, this program will require substantial sums of money. Maybe in a few years some new money can be found, but for now, I believe you will have to be highly imaginative, and very statesperson-like in participating both in spirit and financially. Said another way, you're going to have to find that money by prioritizing some projects to lower positions so that the money can be freed, or get some efficiencies into what you are already doing to free some money. Said even yet another way, those of you in the Programs will all have to give up something to make this work, and that something cannot be just a token.
I really believe you can do this and perhaps other things to demonstrate that this is reall a great and necessary initiative. Perhaps after a few significant successes, new money can be found, but in today's climate you're clearly going to have to prove yourself convincingly before such largess will be forthcoming. Quite frankly, that should not bother you, because it's the right thing to do.
Years ago, back in 1983, I was summoned to the Executive VP's office who was in charge of R&D. At the time I was the assistant director of the corporate research organization. He told me he was fed up with the ever increasing demands to buy more computers. He said that if the R&D organizations expected him to ever sign another purchase requisition for a computer, he'd "have to clearly show how we had to have it for the betterment of the company." His real expectation was that I would find that we were profligate in computer demands.
I knew very little about computers for scientific work at that time, since I had just come over from a hardnosed commodity chemical business, and share to some extent the prejudice that the central research organization was perhaps overdoing computer purchase demands and ought to put more focus on cost reducing some of our manufacturing processes or at least stick with conventional chemical research.
I went to the Chief Information Officer and asked him for someone to help me. He gave me a very smart engineering type who had a great track record of computerizing some of our most complex processes.
He listened to me describe the situation with the Executive VP and said he would try to find out what R&D really needed by way of computers. It was obvious he had the profligacy view as well, But he was a real good problem analyzer. He put together a stellar team of inside and outside the company people and in about six months came back with a report with recommendations on what he and his committee had concluded about DuPont's computational needs.
I waited with bated breath for the answer, expecting he would show me how we could cut the 10% per year growth. he said that we had to double our budget for next year and then for the next three years we had to triple, quadruple, and then quintuple it. We should be at about 3 percent of the R&D budget, and then hold at that level for the foreseeable future. A she was talking, I was imagining myself of the unemployment line, However, as he talked he described what was possible in such areas as total company research integration through technology-based networks, e-mail systems, reductions in experimentation costs that could b e achieved back even then, increased speed of product development, and so forth. I soon found myself forgetting about the ire of my boss and got instead enthralled with the potential he was unveiling.
We tool the proposal to the Executive VP. He likewise quickly went from start horror at the budget recommendations to captivation with the logic and potential. He said go ahead and submit your increased budgets. And the rest is history. Within two ears we were back with a request to get the chemical industries' first supercomputer and it continues today at DuPont.
However, I knew that we had to document successes early and often, so put in a few measurement systems right off the bat. These were things like tracking successes and the money saved, but most importantly, showing who was using the growing computer capability. Initially it was almost exclusively the corporate research people. This was both good and alarming. But soon we saw the participation of the business R&D organizations coming in. Additionally, the successes began to reflect that participation.
The point of this story is to show that a good selling job based on showing the value in a convincing manner is vital. That of course was 1983. Today the climate is very different . We know that computers do marvelous things, and that the potential is till only beginning to be seem. So, you have a harder job, and I don't think you can expect an easy financial situation. But if you do get this thing under way immediately and grow it appropriately over the next several years, I believe our authorizers will be willing to step up. Those great industrial tories at the end of the white paper need to have counterparts from the results of this effort. The pilot programs you are promoting are excellent for this.
There are of course other questions that we must deal with. Things like:
IF this were in DuPont, I'd know the answers to most of these questions.
But, this is not my former company, but most of you have been here for quite a while and know the answers to these and many more questions that must be dealt with effectively to get this thing going smoothly and quickly.
So, I'll leave that to you. I would like to help in any way I can.
Next week is one opportunity for help, as I said several times already. Don't waste it.
The R&D Council has all the top management in the Department on it. They want to back initiatives like this. It's up to you from all the Programs to make the case to them.
Don't let anything or anyone stop you.
Most of you know I will be leaving DOE shortly to throttle back to a more leisurely pace.
I am not divorcing myself entirely from the DOE. The Secretary has asked me to serve in an important oversight capacity, and I have jumped at the chance to do that. So, I'll be watching your progress, and I never forget anything that is really important in research. I intend to be a friend always, and as helpful as I can be in my future associations with the Department , its Program areas, and most of all its great laboratories.
So, good luck in this meeting.
You could not be doing more important work.