Analysis of Historical Federal R&D Priorities: The OMB-OSTP Memorandum and the R&D Section of the Analytical Perspectives in the President's Budget

Each year, the directors of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) jointly produce a memorandum of research and development priorities and how those priorities align with the fiscal year budget. This memo guides the actions of executive branch departments and agencies towards the administration’s science and technology priorities. By presenting these priorities yearly, these memoranda serve as a record of the science and technology priorities of respective Presidential administrations and, in turn, can reflect a changing science and technology policy landscape over the duration of several Presidential terms. This paper assesses how science and technology policy priorities, as established in these memoranda, are reflected in the Presidential budget within and across administrations. Additionally, this paper compares and analyzes priority topic areas from the OMB/OSTP memos with another representation of science and technology areas of emphasis: the research and development (R&D) section of the Analytical Perspectives in the President’s budget. The Analytical Perspectives document highlights items from the Presidential budget requests. This paper discerns the extent to which these two sources of priority-setting become aligned in order to identify trends in which science and technology topics are prioritized by the White House across time and administration. This study addresses two core research questions: 1) How do science and technology priorities change over time, both across and/or within Presidential administrations?; and 2) To what extent, if any, are the ideas in the OMB/OSTP science and technology priorities memoranda and the Analytical Perspectives documents aligned?