Statement on the Establishment of the National Goals Research Staff.

IN 7 short years, the United States will celebrate its 200th anniversary as a nation. It is time we addressed ourselves, consciously and systematically, to the question of What kind of a nation we want to be as we begin our third century.

We can no longer afford to approach the longer-range future haphazardly. As the pace of change accelerates, the process of change becomes more complex. Yet at the same time, an extraordinary array of tools and techniques has been developed by which it becomes increasingly possible to project future trends--and thus to make the kind of informed choices which are necessary if we are to establish mastery over the process of change.

These tools and techniques are gaining widespread use in business, and in the social and physical sciences, but they have not been applied systematically and comprehensively to the science of government.

The time is at hand when they should be used, and when they must be used.

Therefore, I have today ordered the establishment, within the White House, of a National Goals Research Staff. This will be a small, highly technical staff, made up of experts in the collection, correlation, and processing of data relating to social needs, and in the projection of social trends. It will operate under the direction of Leonard Garment, Special Consultant to the President, and will maintain a continuous liaison with Dr. Daniel P. Moynihan in his capacity as Executive Secretary of the Council for Urban Affairs, and with Dr. Arthur Burns, Counsellor to the President, in his capacity as head of the Office of Program Development. The functions of the National Goals Research Staff will include:

--forecasting future developments and assessing the longer-range consequences of present social trends;

--measuring the probable future impact of alternative courses of action, including measuring the degree to which change in one area would be likely to affect another;

--estimating the actual range of social choice--that is, what alternative sets of goals might be attainable, in light of the availability of resources and possible rates of progress;

--developing and monitoring social indicators that can reflect the present and future quality of American life and the direction and rate of its change;

--summarizing, integrating, and correlating the results of related research activities being carried on within the various Federal agencies, and by State and local governments and private organizations.

I would emphasize several points about this new unit: --It is not to be a substitute for the many other research activities within the Federal Government; rather, it is intended to help us make better use of the research now being done by bringing together, at one central point, those portions of it that relate directly to future trends and possibilities. It will make accessible what has too often been fragmented.

--It is not to be a "data bank-" It might more accurately be referred to as a key element in a management information system. For the first time, it creates within the White House a unit specifically charged with the long perspective; it promises to provide the research tools with which we at last can deal with the future in an informed and informative way. Since taking office as President, one of my major objectives has been to improve the processes by which our Nation is governed. It has long since become clear that the old ways are no longer adequate, and that much of the old machinery is obsolescent if not obsolete. It also has become clear that one of the principal requirements is for new mechanisms which can enable government to respond to emerging needs early enough so that the response can be effective.

Out of the studies undertaken by the new administration over the past several months, a number of conclusions have emerged that bear directly on the creation of this new unit:

--There are increasing numbers of forecasting efforts in both public and private institutions, which provide a growing body of information upon which to base judgments of probable future developments and of the choices available.

--There is a need to synthesize the results of these efforts, and to analyze the interrelationships of the various kinds of change they represent. The lack of such analysis is a shortcoming of most present forecasting efforts.

--Despite the recent rapid increase of such activity, there are many areas in which a longer-range perspective is still needed.

--There is an urgent need to establish a more direct link between the increasingly sophisticated forecasting now being done, and the decision making process. The practical importance of establishing such a link is emphasized by the fact that virtually all the critical national problems of today could have been anticipated well in advance of their reaching critical proportions. Even though some were, such anticipation was seldom translated into policy decisions which might have permitted progress to be made in such a way as to avoid--or at least minimize--undesirable longer-range consequences.

--We have reached a state of technological and social development at which the future nature of our society can increasingly be shaped by our own conscious choices. At the same time, those choices are not simple. They require us to pick among alternatives which do not yield to easy, quantitative measurement.

Only by focusing our attention farther into the future can we marshal our resources effectively in the service of those social aims to which we are committed, such as eliminating hunger, cleaning up our environment, providing maximum opportunity for human development during the critical first 5 years of life, maintaining and improving standards of education and medical care, reducing welfare dependency, and making our cities livable for all.

Only by marshaling the facts can we know how to marshal our resources.

We should expect this look into the future to be both exciting and sobering: exciting, because it will show how great is the reach of the possible; sobering, because it also will show that there are some problems against which the best will in the world can produce only painfully slow progress. The important thing is that we know--that we know both the reach and the limits of what can be done, and the probable consequences, so that our choices can be informed by this knowledge.

The first assignment of this new research group will be to assemble data that can help illumine the possible range of national goals for 1976--our 200th anniversary. It will prepare a public report, to be delivered by July 4 of next year, and annually thereafter, setting forth some of the key choices open to us, and examining the consequences of those choices. It is my hope that this report will then serve as a focus for the kind of lively widespread public discussion that deserves to go into decisions affecting our common future. The key point is this: it will make such discussion possible while there still is time to make the choices effective. Instead of lamenting too late what might have been, it will help give us, as a people, both the luxury and the responsibility of conscious and timely choice.

Only shortly beyond the Nation's 900th anniversary lies the year 2000. These dates, together, can be targets for our aspirations. Our need now is to seize on the future as the key dimension in our decisions, and to chart that future as consciously as we are accustomed to charting the past.