The advanced technology program, its evaluation plan, and progress in implementation

The Advanced Technology Program (ATP) partners with U.S. businesses in high-risk research to develop enabling technologies with strong potential for economic benefits to the nation. Universities, nonprofit research laboratories, and firms of all sizes participate in ATP-funded projects. ATP’s evaluation effort seeks not only to measure the impacts of the technology development projects it funds, but also to understand the underlying relationships among research, technological change, and economic impact, and to provide feedback to the program to increase its broad-based benefits. Evaluation activities encompass developing models, conducting surveys, compiling databases, conducting micro- and macro-economic case studies, and performing statistical and econometric analyses. Program metrics include private rates of return, social rates of return, and public rates of return—the social-rate-of-return component attributable to the ATP. Topics of special interest, in addition to performance metrics, include spillover pathways, benefits and costs of collaboration, financing issues, and new models of impact assessment.