Summary

Federally Funded Research and Development Centers were established during World War II to meet special research needs to federal and private sector facilities could not provide. The number of centers has varied over the years, but in fiscal year 1993 there were 39, 10 sponsored by the Defense Department (DOD)--the NA Corporation, the Institute for Defense Analyses, the Lincoln Laboratories, the Logistics Management Institute, the MITRE Corporation, the Rand Corporation, and the Software Engineering Institute. This report provides information on the boards of trustees who served in fiscal year 1993 at DOD centers. GAO discusses (1) how trustees were elected to each board; (2) center trustees and officers who left in fiscal year 1993 to take executive positions in the federal government; (3) trustees' representation on the Defense Science Board; (4) retired command-level officers on the boards; (5) trustees sitting on more than one board, and affiliated with non-DOD centers; and (6) the fiscal year 1993 and prior affiliations by center and by individual trustees, and the trustees having the most individual affiliations (with centers, universities, private sector firms, the federal government, and the military).

GAO found that: (1) six FFRDC boards of trustees are elected, while two, the Lincoln Laboratories (LLB) and the Software Engineering Institute (SEI), are appointed by the provost of the university that manages them, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Carnegie Mellon University, respectively; (2) the Rand Corporation (RND) has 5-year terms, with a 2-consecutive term limit until age 72; the MITRE Corporation has 3-year terms, with a 2-term limit until age 72; the Aerospace Corporation has 3-year terms, with a 3-consecutive term limit; SEI has 4-year terms, with a 2-term limit; the CNA Corporation has 3-year terms, with a 2-consecutive term limit; the Institute for Defense Analyses has 3-year terms with no term limits; the Logistics Management Institute has 1-year terms with no term limits; and LLB trustee appointments are for unlimited terms; (3) the six nonuniversity boards provide their FFRDCs guidance and overall management direction, while the LLB and SEI boards only provide advice and recommendations for FFRDC activities to their respective university boards; (4) in FY 1993, there were eight trustees and officers who left the DOD FFRDCs to take executive-level positions in the federal government; (5) in FY 1993, 16 trustees sat on more than one DOD FFRDC board (15 sat on two boards, one sat on three boards), 13 trustees sat on the 1993 Defense Science Board (representing 21 percent of its total membership), and 12 trustees had non-DOD FFRDC affiliations; (6) the 21 retired admirals and generals that sat on the DOD FFRDC boards represented 15 percent of the total FY 1993 board memberships; and (7) there were over 1,200 trustee affiliations (over 700 FY 1993 and over 400 prior), with the total affiliations for individual DOD FFRDCs ranging from about 50 to over 300, and total affiliations for individual trustees ranged from one to 26.