In the United States, Congress has in place a number of institutions and services to provide members and committees with up-to-date, expert knowledge. The acquisition of expert scientific testimony for congressional members and committees costs Congress over $2 billion per year. Clearly, science and technology testimony is important to legislative and policy making bodies. This project studies the quality of expert scientific testimony. The challenge we propose to address is this: Can the quality of the expert testimony of scientists, engineers, and technologists be improved through the introduction of new ideas and new technologies of peer review and peer production? In the design of the proposed system we will integrate new insights and techniques of peer-production from studies of Open Source Software development; game-based co-production of useful information by non-experts; and, an emerging subfield of knowledge management, online expertise sharing between experts and non-experts. The combination and extension of these techniques will provide new tools for exploring online, peer-production processes.
The research results will create a set of concrete tools for providing science, technology, and engineering input into legal, legislative or policy decision making processes. In terms of the possible, pedagogical impacts of the project, its budget and plan have been developed to foster collaborative working relationships between faculty, staff, graduate students, undergraduates, university and non-university based scientists and engineers from a diverse set of fields.
Information provided to or discovered by Congress has a profound effect on the legislative process. The acquisition of policy information for its members and committees costs Congress well over $2 billion per year of which about $100 million is spent on House and Senate committees. If the proposed project is successful, we will have a set of concrete, implemented proposals to show how Congress and the communities of science, technology, and engineering could be better integrated using tools and techniques of information technology. In terms of the possible, pedagogical impacts of the project, its budget and plan have been developed to foster collaborative working relationships between faculty, staff, graduate students, undergraduates, university and non-university based scientists and engineers from a diverse set of fields, in addition to, potentially, congressional staff and members of Congress.
