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Counterdrug Technology Assessment CenterCounterdrug Technology Assessment Center
Ten-Year Counterdrug Technology Plan and Development Roadmap

Executive Summary

This report is not required by law, rather, an interagency working group, drawn from the Science and Technology Committee, was organized to develop a comprehensive ten-year counterdrug technology plan that supports the five goals and technology objectives of the National Drug Control Strategy. This group represented the lead research and development (R&D) organizations within federal law enforcement and drug addiction treatment research. The Performance Measures of Effectiveness will provide the impact targets, specific measures and outcomes to make the National strategy a success. The plan is consistent with the FY 99 President’s budget request and recognizes that all drug and non-drug control budgetary priorities must compete for limited resources within the multi-year budget ceilings established for each agency. This plan addresses the technical performance necessary to support the research and technology impact targets outlined in the performance measures system.

Federal civilian law enforcement organizations have just begun participating in the five-year planning process. Current individual agency plans do not address the full range of counterdrug technology development necessary over the ten-year period. This plan concentrates on the counterdrug technology needed by all Federal agencies with drug control missions. The plan:

  • Presents a ten-year counterdrug technology plan and development roadmap,
  • Designs a long-term planning methodology to guide future efforts to coordinate use of resources and avoid duplication of efforts,
  • Establishes four technology panels for advanced technology development efforts to meet the national priorities, impact targets, performance measures, and goals set forth in the National Drug Control Strategy and Performance Measures of Effectiveness System,
  • Provides a review process to evaluate whether the plan is meeting the national priorities, impact targets, performance measures, and goals set forth in the National Drug Control Strategy and Performance Measures of Effectiveness System,
  • Establishes a structure composed of lead development agencies to maximize efficiency of resources within the entire community in setting performance targets for the Strategy objectives and impact targets for the Strategy goals,
  • Organizes the entire spectrum of each agency’s operational capabilities and technical requirements by technology panel,
  • Contains ten-year development roadmaps for each panel which array the general development activity of off the shelf equipment, maturing technology, and emerging but focused research and development, and
  • Supports regional technology initiatives.

Over the next year, a clear connection will be made between this plan, the forthcoming Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) FY 1999-2003 Strategic Plan, the ONDCP FY 1999 Annual Performance Plan, and individual agency plans to support a consolidated federal drug control budget. With the 1998 National Drug Control Strategy and these planning documents, the framework for measuring progress in achieving the five goals of the Strategy will be provided. The following actions will be taken to assure that adequate data are available for measuring program performance as these plans come into place:

  1. An interagency working group for technology (IAWG-T) will be formed as a working group of the Science and Technology Committee. The IAWG-T (with the assistance of ONDCP components for Strategy, Supply Reduction and Demand Reduction,) will meet quarterly to perform the following functions:
  • a schematic will be developed showing each of the 21 agencies involved in the Science and Technology Committee with the respective programs falling under each of them and links between the programs, the Strategy goals, the development roadmap and the desired outcomes,
  • specific technology-related performance targets will be established by the IAWG-T for each agency technology initiative shown on the schematic,
  • a correlation will be made between the technology development/system procurements and each agency’s performance measures, impact targets and outcome,
  • acquisition plans will be coupled with development efforts with specific agencies identified for each system procurement,the anticipated operational impact for each technology development will be quantified,
  • a technology roadmap will be developed for demand reduction technology,
  • agency specific resource levels for technology will be estimated on a five-year scale as provided in the President’s budget request for each year,
  • priorities, or priority categories, will be assigned to ensure that funding is allocated only to technology development efforts of greatest importance to drug control agencies,
  • for each panel of technologies, meaningful national goals will be developed with affected agencies to compare, on a case-by-case basis, existing deployed systems and proposed, new technology products to address current operational limitations and shortcomings with anticipated performance and characteristics of future products, and
  • provide input to ONDCP for the development of annual budget guidance that will be used by ONDCP to certify agency drug control budgets.
  1. ONDCP Counterdrug Technology Assessment Center (CTAC) will work closely with the affected agencies in providing coordination and oversight to the Science and Technology Committee and IAWG-T on some 85 counterdrug research and development programs. CTAC will serve as the central organization for test and evaluation of advanced counterdrug technology prototypes. CTAC also will identify technologies appropriate for transfer to state and local law enforcement organizations. In support of the entire community, CTAC will:
  • conduct three regional workshops and one major technology symposium each year,
  • working with the appropriate user agencies develop, test and field five technology prototypes within the next five years, and
  • develop an improved framework to evaluate new systems being acquired by the federal, state and local agencies and measure their utility to stakeholders.

In the short term, CTAC will track output measures of agency technology programs by activity: number of projects sponsored, number of deployed systems evolving from agency programs, and number of systems evolving from CTAC sponsored projects. In the longer term, CTAC will work closely with relevant agencies to perform qualitative assessments to measure contributions of each project to the overall Strategy goals and objectives. These assessments will also serve to evaluate and improve the measures themselves over time. As the ONDCP reporting system becomes a reality, the agencies may be able to employ more sophisticated assessments and measures to measure process oriented linkages (decrease by x%) as well as end state outcomes (inspect x% of the containers entering port y). For example, implications of the recently announced President’s technology initiatives, such as the use of the National Research Laboratory computers, also should be included in the planning process.

Annual updates to this plan will be prepared by the IAWG-T under CTAC leadership. CTAC will include this plan in its FY 98 technology transfer pilot program to State and local organizations and technical symposia with academic institutions and industry to increase an awareness of progress in technology development in the federal sector.