Scientific Peer Review
The Office of Management and Budget published in the Federal Register on January 14, 2005, an information quality bulletin that specifically addressed peer review of scientific information within the federal government. This Bulletin directs all federal agencies to develop agency-specific systems for scientific peer review that would be consistent with guidance contained in the bulletin. The Bulletin is available at the following address: www.whitehouse.gov/omb/fedreg/2005/011405_peer.pdf. This Bulletin identifies two categories of information that it addresses:
Influential Scientific Information: scientific information that will have or does have a clear and substantial impact on important public policies or private sector decisions. The term "influential" should be interpreted consistently with OMB's government-wide information quality guidelines and the information quality guidelines of the agency. Information dissemination can have a significant economic impact even if it is not part of a rulemaking. For instance, the economic viability of a technology can be influenced by the government's characterization of its attributes. Alternatively, the Federal government's assessment of risk can directly or indirectly influence the response actions of state and local agencies or international bodies.
Highly Influential Scientific Assessment: a scientific assessment is considered ''highly influential'' if its dissemination could have a potential impact of more than $500 million in any one year on either the public or private sector; or that the dissemination is novel, controversial, or precedent-setting; or that it has significant interagency interest. One of the ways information can exert economic impact is through the costs or benefits of a regulation based on the disseminated information.
Department of the Interior offices and bureaus have created web sites providing
the public with information about planned agency actions that meet the Office
of Management and Budget's requirements for scientific peer review. The Department's
website provides links to the office and bureau websites at the following address:
http://www.doi.gov/ocio/iq_1.html.
National Park Service Peer Review Agenda
The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) directive, Final Information Quality Bulletin for Peer Review, dated December 16, 2004, requires that there be a "systematic process of peer review planning" and access to a list of information products for official dissemination that will be peer reviewed as either influential scientific information or highly influential scientific assessments.
NPS scientific and scholarly activities are conducted to inform decision-making by individual park and office managers about specific park management actions, about scientific issues associated with inventory and monitoring in small groups of parks, or about bureau programs. In most cases, these decisions relate to planning, resource stewardship, or visitor use management in individual parks, specific park regulations, and other park-specific activities. In some cases, the decisions relate to guidance developed for NPS assistance programs, such as regarding national landmark or historic structure recognition or various types of conservation assistance. Scientific and scholarly activities commissioned to inform these park management actions or assistance programs rarely, if ever, have a clear and substantial impact on important public policies or private sector decisions. They never have a potential impact of more than $500 million in any one year on either the public or private sector. In very limited cases, it is possible they might have an influence on dissemination of novel, controversial, or precedent-setting information or information that has significant interagency interest.
Based on the review it has conducted, NPS believes that it does not currently
produce or sponsor the distribution of influential scientific information (including
highly influential scientific assessments) within the definitions promulgated
by the Office of Management and Budget. As a result, at this time NPS has no
agenda of forthcoming influential scientific disseminations to post on this
website in accordance with OMB's Information Quality Bulletin for Peer Review.
