2.  Measuring Against Mission: An Evaluation Framework

Evaluation has been an integral part of program operations from the outset. To learn about the program’s impact, ATP set aside a small amount of their initial budget in 1990 to fund rudimen-tary evaluation activities. Since then, the budget for program evaluation has grown significantly, as has interest in evaluation. With a professional staff of economists, statisticians, information specialists, social scientists, business liaison specialists, and administrative support, the ATP’s Economic Assessment Office (EAO) is charged with carrying out ATP’s evaluation activities. EAO aims to measure the economic impacts of ATP’s funding of high-risk, enabling technologies, and also to increase understanding of underlying relationships between technological change and economic phenomena. EAO also provides business and economic expertise for ATP selection boards and locates expert business reviewers to review proposals.

ATP’s evaluation program has four main goals:

1. To meet external requests for ATP program results,
2. To use evaluation as a management tool to meet program goals and to improve program effectiveness,
3. To understand ATP’s contribution to the U.S. innovation system, and
4. To develop innovative methodologies to measure the impact of public R&D investment.

ATP’s Economic Assessment Office tracks progress throughout the life of funded projects and for several years after the ATP funding ends. Evaluation work consists of conducting surveys, compiling data, producing statistical analyses, undertaking economic and policy research studies, and commissioning studies by consultants and research economists.

Evaluation works best when it is closely mapped to a program’s mission. ATP’s legislative man-date is to increase the prosperity of the United States by funding the development of high risk technologies through a public-private partnership. ATP’s goals are to add to the nation’s scientific and technical knowledge base, to foster accelerated technology development and commercializa-tion, to promote collaborative R&D, to refine manufacturing processes, to ensure small business participation, to increase the competitiveness of U.S. firms, and to generate broad economic and social benefits (Ruegg and Feller, 2003).

ATP award recipients deliver benefits directly and indirectly. Direct benefits are achieved when technology development and commercialization is accelerated, which leads to private returns and market spillovers. Indirect benefits are delivered through publications, conference presenta-tions, patents, and other ways in which knowledge is disseminated. From program purpose and design to final outputs, outcomes, and impacts, ATP’s evaluation program measures these direct and indirect benefits.

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Date created: July 20, 2005
Last updated: August 3, 2005

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