Summary

In fiscal year 1991, Congress established the Counterdrug Technology Assessment Center to oversee and coordinate federal efforts to develop technology that would reduce both the flow of illegal drugs into the United States and the demand for such drugs. For example, counterdrug technology research and development was instrumental in the development of X-ray and gamma-ray technologies that can detect drugs hidden in trucks and railroad cars entering the United States along the southwest border. This report discusses (1) how the Center coordinates its counterdrug research and development efforts with other federal agencies to address needs that are not being met by other agencies and to avoid unnecessary duplication of efforts and (2) the contributions that the Center has made to counterdrug research and development efforts since its creation.

GAO noted that: (1) CTAC has a coordination process in place for identifying counterdrug technology needs and selecting and funding R&D projects to meet those needs; (2) however, GAO identified the following shortcomings in CTAC's design and execution of the process: (a) the Science and Technology (S&T) Committee's charter, which was created before CTAC existed, does not reflect the Committee's current composition, responsibilities, and relationship to CTAC; (b) CTAC did not regularly and consistently involve the S&T Committee in its coordination process; (c) CTAC did not regularly evaluate and prioritize the agencies' counterdrug R&D technology needs to ensure that it funded otherwise unfunded projects with the highest priority; (d) CTAC did not systematically identify and consider the counterdrug technology needs of state and local agencies, in conjunction with federal agencies' needs, as part of its regular process for selecting and funding projects, and state and local agencies were only recently represented on the S&T Committee; (e) agencies generally did not submit transitional or acquisition plans to CTAC; and (f) although a few agencies cited instances where duplication was avoided as a result of CTAC's efforts, CTAC had not developed any means for determining the extent to which unnecessary duplication had been identified and avoided due to its efforts; (3) as a result of these shortcomings, neither GAO nor CTAC could determine the extent to which its coordination process was meeting its mission; (4) GAO's task of determining CTAC's contribution to federal drug control efforts was complicated by CTAC's lack of meaningful performance measures to enable it to: (a) assess its progress in achieving its mission and contributing to the development and deployment of counterdrug technology; and (b) identify and implement any needed improvements to better achieve its mission; (5) CTAC's Chief Scientist told GAO that he considered not just technologies that are completed and in use as contributions, but also uncompleted projects that have reached various stages of development; and (6) the contact officials of the lead R&D agencies identified by CTAC told GAO that they considered 10 of the 36 projects cited as contributions by CTAC to be actual contributions.