[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 143 (Wednesday, October 20, 1999)]
[Senate]
[Pages S12935-S12937]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

      By Mr. BINGAMAN (for himself and Mrs. Murray):
  S. 1756. A bill to enhance the ability of the National Laboratories 
to meet Department of Energy missions and for other purposes; to the 
Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.
  Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, today I'm pleased to be joined by 
Senator Murray in introducing the ``National Laboratories Partnership 
Improvement Act of 1999''. This bill will make it easier for our 
national labs to collaborate and build strong technical relationships 
with other technical organizations, particularly universities and 
companies right near the labs. That will yield two major benefits. It 
will improve the labs' ability to do their missions, and it will 
promote high tech economic growth around the labs, thus, helping the 
labs as it helps the labs' communities.
  Many of you know that making it easier to work with our national labs 
is a cause I've pursued for many years. And we've made solid progress. 
The labs are now involved in an array of technical collaborations, 
usually under cooperative research and development agreements or 
CRADAs, that would have been impossible a decade ago. In 1989, there 
were no CRADAs with the Department of Energy's national labs; in 1998, 
the number was over 800.
  So, we've come a long way. But there's still work to be done. It's 
still not as easy to collaborate with the national labs as it should 
be, nor are collaborations as common as they need to be to keep our 
labs on the cutting edge of science and technology. This legislation 
takes the next steps in that direction.
  There are three fundamental ideas running through this bill. The 
first is that scientific and technical collaboration with the national 
labs is good for our economy and essential to the future of the labs. 
The labs will be unable to succeed in their missions unless they can 
easily work with other technical institutions. Why? Because that's 
where the bulk of cutting edge technology is today. Consider the 
following. Real federal spending on R&D peaked in 1987, but from 1987 
to 1997, national R&D grew by 20%. The federal government was 
responsible for none of that growth, and now accounts for only about a 
quarter of national R&D spending. In the same period, industrial R&D 
grew by over 50% and accounted for around 95% of the growth in national 
R&D. As Nobel laureate Dr. Burt Richter stated during his testimony on 
DOE's reorganization, ``All of the science needed for stockpile 
stewardship in not in the weapons labs.'' That's why I was so concerned 
with the ability of the labs to collaborate during the reorganization 
debate.
  I emphasize how collaboration helps the labs because it's a point 
that's often missed in our discussions of tech transfer, CRADAs, and 
other such things. When legislation making it easier to work with the 
labs was passed in 1989, we were in the midst of a ``competitiveness 
crisis'' and looking for ways to use technology to improve our economic 
performance. After all, innovation is responsible for 50% or more of 
our long term economic growth. With these roots, people usually focus 
on how collaborating with the labs helps US industry by giving it 
access to a treasure trove of technology and expertise. For example, 
over a 100 new companies were started around DOE technology in the last 
four years. And, the fact that industry has been collaborating with the 
labs and recently paying for a greater share of those partnerships is 
good evidence that its getting something of value. The economic 
benefits from these collaborations are real and a primary reason I've 
pushed them for many years.
  But the benefits back to the labs are real too. A recent letter from 
Los Alamos to me stated, ``Working with industry has validated our 
ability to predict . . . changes in materials . . ., improved our 
ability to manufacture . . . replacement parts with greater precision 
and lower cost, and enhanced our ability to assure the safety and 
reliability of the stockpile without testing.''
  As an example, Sandia's collaboration with Goodyear Tire has helped 
Goodyear produce computer simulations of tires--an extremely complex 
problem--and helped Sandia improve its modeling and production of 
neutron generators, a critical component of nuclear weapons. Technical 
collaborations with our labs that have a clear mission focus by the lab 
and a clear business focus by the company are good for our economy and 
good for the labs' missions.
  The second fundamental idea flows from the first. If collaborations 
with the labs are beneficial, we should keep working to make them 
better, faster, and more flexible--much like the collaborations we see 
sprouting throughout the private sector. Hence, this bill includes 
provisions to:
  Establish a small business advocate at the labs charged with 
increasing small business participation in lab procurement and 
collaborative research;
  Establish a technology partnership ombudsman at the labs to ensure 
that the labs are known as good faith partners in their technical 
relationships;
  Authorize DOE to use a very flexible contracting authority called 
``other transactions,'' which was successfully pioneered by the Defense 
Advanced Research Projects Agency to manage some of its collaborative 
projects in innovative ways; and
  Significantly streamline the CRADA approval process for government 
owned, contractor operated laboratories like Sandia, allowing the labs 
to handle more of the routine CRADAs themselves, and allowing more 
flexibility in the negotiation of intellectual property rights--all to 
make CRADA's more attractive to industry.
  The third fundamental idea that runs through this bill is that if 
collaboration is important to our economy and to the success of the 
labs, then the local technical institutions near the lab--the 
universities and companies that might work with the lab--matter a great 
deal. We know that the environment inside an institution, how it's 
managed, will help determine how innovative it is. Managing innovation 
is more art than science, and that's why people are always visiting 
places like 3M.
  Well, just as the internal environment affects how innovative an 
organization is, its external environment, the organizations near it 
that might collaborate with it, also help determine how innovative it 
is. When the technical institutions in a region form a high quality, 
dynamic network, they can meld into what's been called a ``technology 
cluster'' that dramatically boosts innovation and economic growth 
throughout the region. We see this most famously in places like Silicon 
Valley, or Route 128, or Austin, TX. In most of these places, there is 
a large research university that serves as the anchor innovator seeding 
the cluster.
  With that phenomena in mind, this bill seeks to harness the power of 
technology clusters for the benefit of the labs' missions and the labs' 
communities, with the labs as the anchor innovator. The bill authorizes 
the labs to

[[Page S12936]]

work with their local communities to foster commercially oriented 
technology clusters that will help them do their job. Projects under 
this ``Regional Technology Infrastructure Program'' would be cost 
shared partnerships between a lab and nearby organizations with the 
clear potential to help the lab achieve its mission, leverage 
commercial technology, and commercialize lab technology. This is not 
about outsourcing a lab's functions, but about promoting technical 
capabilities near the lab that are commercially viable and useful to 
the lab. Thus, the lab gets highly competent collaborators nearby and 
the region gets high tech economic growth.
  Let me give an example. Imagine a lab that does research in optics 
that has optics companies nearby. The lab and the companies discover 
they both need better training for their machinists and skilled 
workers. So they agree to set up and share the cost of an advanced 
training program for their workers at the local community college. This 
is good for the workers, good for the companies, good for the lab. 
Other types of projects this program might fund include:
  Local economic surveys and strategic planning efforts;
  Technology roadmaps for local industry;
  Personnel exchanges among local universities, firms, and the lab;
  Lab based small business incubators or research parks; and
  Joint research programs between a group of local firms and the lab.
  We have some real life examples of this kind of thinking in the 
research parks Sandia and Los Alamos are setting up to collaborate with 
industry and promote economic growth. And Argonne, Idaho National 
Engineering and Environmental Laboratory, and Sandia have programs to 
link their technology with venture capital, to get it into the 
marketplace, which can only help advance the lab's mission. This bill 
will encourage the labs to systematically experiment with more projects 
like those.
  Now, some might think that the Internet will make proximity 
irrelevant to collaboration. But that's not the case, as simple 
observation of Silicon Valley shows; it's not been dissipating, it's 
been growing. Close collaboration will remain easier among close 
neighbors, because it partly depends on people who know each other and 
are rooted in a community--which is why one provision of this bill is a 
study on how to ease employee mobility between the labs and nearby 
technical organizations. The Internet complements and strengthens 
collaborations, but is not a complete substitute for having 
collaborators nearby. Thus, even as the Internet grows in influence, it 
will still make sense to harness the power of technology clusters to 
help our labs do their jobs and to promote high tech economic growth in 
their communities.
  Mr. President, for many years I've pushed for and supported efforts 
to make it easier for our national labs to work with industry, 
universities, and other institutions. I've done this because I think 
it's good for the science and security missions of our labs, good for 
our economy, and good for my home state of New Mexico. I think this 
bill is a comprehensive package that will yield more of those benefits, 
and I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting it.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill, a 
summary, and letters of support for this bill from the Technology 
Industries Association of New Mexico and the City of Albuquerque be 
printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:
  [The text of the bill was not available for printing.]

       National Laboratories Partnership Improvement Act of 1999


                                Summary

       The National Laboratories Partnership Improvement Act of 
     1999 will build stronger technical relationships between the 
     Department of Energy's national laboratories and other 
     institutions, particularly those near the labs. These 
     relationships will help the labs achieve their missions by 
     leveraging the scientific and technical resources of the 
     private sector and universities and will also promote high 
     tech economic growth around the labs.


                         Background/Discussion

       More and more of our nation's innovation occurs outside the 
     federal sector. Since 1987, around 95% of the real growth in 
     our national R&D has come from the private sector, and none 
     from the federal government. Industry now funds almost 70% of 
     our national R&D.
       Scientific and technical collaborations between our 
     national labs and other technical institutions improve the 
     lab's access to the huge pool of science, technology, and 
     talent outside their gates. Technical collaboration with the 
     national labs is both good for the companies that do it and 
     essential for keeping the labs on the cutting edge of 
     research.
       This bill takes the next step in making it easier for our 
     national laboratories to work with other institutions. In 
     addition to improving the CRADA process, the bill also 
     focuses on improving the ``regional technology 
     infrastructure'' around the labs. This refers to things like 
     the companies, universities, labor force, and non-profit 
     organizations near a lab that are not formally part of it but 
     that nonetheless contribute to its technical success.
       Places like Silicon Valley show that when these technical 
     institutions form a high quality, dynamic network, they can 
     develop into a ``technology cluster'' that dramatically 
     improves innovation and economic growth throughout a region. 
     This bill will promote the development of technology clusters 
     around the national labs both to help the labs harness the 
     power of technology clusters to achieve their missions and to 
     stimulate high tech economic growth around the labs.


                     Section by Section Description

       Sec. 1-3--Titles, findings, and definitions.
       Sec. 4--Regional Technology Infrastructure Program--
     Authorizes the Department of Energy to promote the 
     development of technology clusters around the national labs 
     that will help them achieve their missions. The idea is to 
     foster commercially oriented, dynamic networks of local 
     institutions, broadly analogous to that in Silicon Valley, 
     that will improve innovation and economic growth around the 
     labs--thereby helping the labs as they help the labs' 
     communities. Projects under this program will be 
     competitively selected, cost shared partnerships between a 
     lab and nearby organizations. Projects with the clear 
     potential to help a lab achieve its mission, leverage 
     commercial innovation, and commercialize lab technology will 
     be selected. The program begins with $1M of funding at each 
     of the nine, large multiprogram labs. Examples of the kinds 
     of projects that might be funded are: local economic surveys 
     and strategic planning efforts; technology roadmaps for local 
     industry; personnel exchanges and specialized workforce 
     training programs among local universities, firms, and the 
     lab; lab based small business incubators or research parks; 
     and joint research programs between a group of local firms 
     and the lab.
       Sec. 5--Small Business Advocacy and Assistance--Establishes 
     a Small Business Advocate charged with increasing small 
     businesses' participation in procurements and collaborative 
     research at each of the nine, large multiprogram labs. 
     Authorizes the labs to give small businesses advice to make 
     them better suppliers and general technical assistance. For 
     example, a lab could point them to venture capitalists or 
     technical partners that would strengthen their ability to 
     work for the lab. Or, a small business could get technical 
     advice from a lab on how to fix a product design problem. 
     Complements Sec. 4, but is focused directly on small 
     businesses.
       Sec. 6--Technology Partnership Ombudsman--Establishes an 
     ombudsman at the nine, large multiprogram labs to quickly and 
     inexpensively resolve complaints or disputes with the labs 
     over technology partnerships, patents, and licensing.
       Sec. 7--Mobility of Technical Personnel--Requires DOE to 
     remove any disincentives to technical personnel moving among 
     the national labs. Creates a study to recommend how to ease 
     the movement of technical personnel between the labs and 
     nearby industry with the long term goal of promoting start-
     ups and stronger networks of technical collaboration near the 
     labs.
       Sec. 8--Other Transactions--Standard government contracts, 
     grants, or cooperative agreements can be ill-suited to 
     collaborative projects that have a variety of actors and 
     equities. This section gives DOE ``other transactions,'' an 
     exceptionally flexible contracting authority that allows a 
     ``clean sheet of paper'' negotiation with non-federal 
     organizations. Other transactions were successfully pioneered 
     by the Defense Advance Research Projects Agency to manage 
     many of its innovative relationships with industry; more 
     recently they've been adopted by the military services and 
     Department of Transportation.
       Sec. 9--Amendments to the Stevenson-Wydler Act--The current 
     law governing CRADAs can make them slower to negotiate and 
     less attractive to industry than they should be. This section 
     amends that law to make the negotiation process faster, more 
     flexible, and more attractive to industry. More specifically, 
     this section: shortens the time federal agencies have to 
     review, modify, and approve CRADAs with government owned, 
     contractor operated (GOCO) labs, making it the same as that 
     for government owned, government operated labs; allows more 
     negotiation over the allocation of intellectual property 
     rights developed under a CRADA; and allows federal agencies 
     to permit routine CRADAs to be

[[Page S12937]]

     simply handled by a GOCO lab by eliminating extra steps now 
     required for CRADA with them.
                                  ____

                                             Technology Industries


                                    Association of New Mexico,

                                Albuquerque, NM, October 13, 1999.
     Hon. Jeff Bingaman,
     U.S. Senate, Washington, DC.
       Dear Senator Bingaman: On behalf of the board of directors 
     of the Technology Industries Association of New Mexico (TIA), 
     I am sending this letter to express our support of 
     legislation you are introducing, the National Laboratories 
     Partnership Improvement Act of 1999.
       Members of our organization are well aware of the benefits 
     that already have occurred via the ``technology transfer'' 
     process begun with the Stevenson-Wydler Act of 1980 and 
     continuing since with various improvements and changes to the 
     original measure. Although most of the member companies in 
     TIA do not engage in direct sales to or contracting with the 
     Federal government or military a number of these companies 
     have benefited due to the technology transfer process.
       At least one of our TIA members was created as a spin-off 
     of Sandia National Laboratories. Some of the larger 
     multinational companies with divisions in New Mexico have 
     benefited via CRADA arrangements. And some of our other 
     smaller member companies have been greatly aided through the 
     simple but effective mechanism of the technology assistance 
     program run by Sandia.
       After reviewing draft versions of your proposed 
     legislation, we particularly like two features:
       The provision that the national laboratories can link with 
     private companies, rather than the other way around. We think 
     this is important, because, as much as private companies can 
     and have been aided via access to the vast R&D capabilities 
     of the national labs, it is also important that the 
     government institutions learn from private companies those 
     skills necessary to succeed in the intensely competitive 
     international free-market economies.
       The section which promotes the development of technology 
     clusters in the local economies where national laboratories 
     are located. This strategic approach to economic development 
     is beginning to emerge in central New Mexico with the help of 
     your office and others. We think the development of 
     technology clusters provides a focus for issues and for 
     building vertical infrastructure that often has been lacking 
     in the previous well-meaning, but scattergun approach to 
     economic development.
       TIA thanks you for your effort and is hopeful the 
     legislation will be enacted.
           Sincerely,
                                                 John P. Jekowski,
     President.
                                  ____



                                          City of Albuquerque,

                                Albuquerque, NM, October 13, 1999.
     Jeff Bingaman,
     U.S. Senator, Hart Building,
     Washington, DC.
       Dear Senator Bingaman: On behalf of the citizens of 
     Albuquerque, I want to state my strong support of your 
     proposed legislation, ``The National Laboratories Partnership 
     Improvement Act of 1999.'' For the past 50 years the synergy 
     among our scientific, civic, and educational communities and 
     the Department of Energy's national laboratories has helped 
     to build and enhance our modern city. While we welcome these 
     working partnerships, we recognize that stronger technical 
     relationships between the labs, private businesses, and other 
     nearby institutions are needed to leverage additional 
     resources, both public and private, and promote high tech 
     economic growth at the local, regional, and national levels.
       Your leadership in the past and your thorough understanding 
     of the complex issues involving tech transfer has deeply 
     benefited Albuquerque's economic diversification, job growth, 
     and stability. This legislation provides an important and 
     timely framework for the future, and we look forward to 
     working with you and your staff in whatever way necessary to 
     implement it. To this end, we would hope that monies 
     generated by the legislation might come directly to the 
     community, and not go to existing or proposed lab tech 
     transfer programs. This will enable our business, 
     institutional and civic leadership to develop the 
     infrastructure required by this well-crafted, thoughtful, and 
     far-reaching proposal.
           Sincerely,
                                                         Jim Baca,
                                                            Mayor.
                                 ______