Improving the national science and technology policy development process

The constituent-driven political process, where research and development performers provide the most vocal advocacy for federal R&D, is unable to create programs that can survive the scrutiny of critics and maintain bipartisan support during extreme budget pressure. The political process can be supplemented during program conception by introducing models that relate finding inputs to desired public outcomes. Game technologies developed by companies for strategic planning and the military for war simulation can be used to predict behaviors of those affected by science and technology policies.