Technology assessment in the USA: distributed institutional governance

In the US, there is a lack of a centralized technology
assessment (TA) capacity, which effectively
moves the US back in time, pre-Office of
Technology Assessment, when TA functions
existed but were so decentralized and varied
that they were hardly recognized as such.
There is no primary organization, public or private,
to innovate new methods, establish best
practices, or provide policy guidance. Instead,
there are disparate organizations, the connections
among which cannot even be called a
network. This article will describe three discrete
– but at times overlapping, interacting,
and complementary – institutional settings
where activities one could recognize as TA are
occurring: government agencies, non-governmental
organizations, and academic research
centers. The paper will conclude with a brief
discussion of the challenges and roadblocks
to institutionalized TA in the US.