Summary

In the last decade, concerns about the possible use of chemical and biological weapons in both military and civilian settings has prompted Congress and federal agencies to launch new programs or expand existing ones to address these threats. Overall funding in these areas has risen significantly since 1996. Today, several civilian and military agencies are conducting research and development to counter these threats. Without effective coordination among the different agencies, however, their efforts might be unnecessarily duplicated and important questions may be overlooked. This testimony identifies similarities among nonmedical research and development programs and explains how coordination mechanisms could effectively address potential duplication, research gaps, and opportunities for collaboration. GAO focuses on the following four programs: (1) the Defense Department's Chemical and Biological Defense Program, (2) the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's Biological Warfare Defense Program, (3) the Department of Energy's Chemical and Biological Nonproliferation Program, and (4) the Counterterror Technical Support Program conducted by an interagency working group.

GAO noted that: (1) each of the federally funded programs conducting nonmedical research and development on threats from chemical and biological agents has its own mission objective; (2) GAO found many similarities among these programs in terms of the research and development activities they engage in, the threats they intend to address, the types of capabilities they seek to develop, the technologies they pursue in developing those capabilities, and the organizations they use to conduct the work; (3) two of the programs focus on threats to the military, and the other two focus on threats to civilians; (4) however, the military and civilian user communities are concerned about many of the same chemical and biological substances--such as nerve gas--and possible perpetrators--such as foreign terrorists; (5) these programs are seeking to develop many of the same capabilities, such as detection and identification of biological agents; (6) furthermore, the types of technologies they pursue to achieve those capabilities may overlap; (7) these programs may contract with the same groups of laboratories to perform research and development work; (8) although the four programs GAO examined use both formal and informal mechanisms for coordination, several problems may hamper their coordination efforts; (9) participation in formal and informal coordination mechanisms is inconsistent; (10) program officials cited a lack of comprehensive information on which chemical and biological threats to the civilian population are the most important and on what capabilities for addressing these threats are most needed; (11) several programs do not formally incorporate existing information on chemical and biological threats or needed capabilities in deciding what research and development projects to fund; and (12) having and using detailed information on civilian chemical and biological threats and the capabilities needed to respond to those threats would enable coordination mechanisms to better assess whether inefficient duplication or critical research gaps exist, and if so, what changes should be made in federal research and development programs.