Quantitative portfolio evaluation of US federal research and development programs.

Portfolio evaluation of R&D programs, that is, assessment of the value or performance across a broad set of projects, programs, or activities, is receiving increasing attention in the federal evaluation community. Now quantitative portfolio evaluation of federal R&D programs is emerging. This paper provides a brief overview of the emerging practice, touching on efforts of the Department of Commerce’s Advanced Technology Program, the Department of Agriculture’s Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service, the National Institutes of Health, and the US Department of Energy (DOE). Then the focus shifts to a recent Congressionally driven quantitative portfolio evaluation to inform funding decisions of a large group of applied energy R&D programs of the DOE. These efforts represent the beginnings of systematic quantitative evaluation of entire portfolios of federal R&D projects and programs in place of the prevalent piecemeal approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]