Technology Program Evaluation
Many agencies in the federal government work directly with academic and business organizations in developing new technologies in defense, energy, transportation, agriculture, and other sectors of the economy. These efforts are often designed to overcome market barriers faced by individual firms, to coordinate activities among firms and thus increase development efficiency, or to make scarce knowledge resources more widely available.
Our technology program evaluation services seek to provide detailed, quantitative analysis of the economic benefits generated by these programs. We perform both prospective and retrospective studies of the technology and industry of interest to the client, and present measures of economic return for the program as a whole.
Findings from prospective studies are used for strategic planning and resource allocation. Retrospective studies typically evaluate public and non-profit sector's role in the R&D process and assess their role in mitigating market barriers and failures that impede innovation. Many of these studies have focused on the economic impact of inadequate technological infrastructures.
Example Studies
- Economic assessment of Internet protocol version 6 (IPv6)
- Economic assessment of ATP's funding of tissue engineering research
- Evaluation of governments role in the development and adoption of the international Standard for the Exchange of Product (STEP) model data
- Estimating the societal costs of inadequate software testing, thus providing potential benefits from a NIST program to improve standards for testing
- Evaluating net benefits from ATP's support of technology development by 24 firms in component-based software
- Quantifying the utilization and impact of public utilities' demand side management (DSM) programs
Clients
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National Institute of Standards and Technology's laboratories
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Advanced Technology Program
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National Institutes of Health
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Electric utilities
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