§1014 Requirements Relating to National Academy of Sciences and National Academy of Public Administration

Summary

Federal agencies may not use advice from the National Academy of Sciences or the National Academy of Public Administration that came from a committee set up for that agency unless three things are true. First, the committee was not actually run or controlled by the agency or a federal officer. Second, if the committee was created after December 17, 1997, its members had to be appointed following the Academy’s appointment rules. Third, the Academy followed certain public-process rules: for the National Academy of Sciences it must follow five rules about meetings, records, reports, and reviewers; for the National Academy of Public Administration it must follow two of those rules about meetings and the final report. Those public-process rules require the Academy to announce who will serve and give brief bios and a chance for public comment, require members to report conflicts of interest and try to avoid them, make meeting schedules public and keep most meetings open (and share outside presenters’ materials unless disclosure is barred by section 552(b)), provide short public summaries of non-data meetings, publish the final report (or a redacted version if needed), and list the principal outside reviewers. The Administrator of General Services can write rules to put these requirements into practice.