The White House’s science and technology office announced the launch of the beta version of its R&D Dashboard, a website to track where federal funding for research and development is going and what impact it’s having.
For those with their eyes on federal investments and spending, The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy hopes the site will be a way to track the “lab-coat-ready†projects in the same way that Recovery.gov allows users to track the “shovel-ready†projects.
The R&D Dashboard beta website provides information on federal investments over the past decade stemming from the two most prominent agencies involved in R&D: the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation.
The site tracks data from what OSTP calls the input stage to the output. It works likes this: the Dashboard tracks the first infusion of federal cash (the “awardâ€) and proceeds to track whether federal funding led to significant outcomes, such as publications and patent applications.
Users can search by location (state, congressional district or university) and by scientific topic.
“This means that you can now start to see some of the ways federal R&D investments in NIH and NSF have contributed to your community, your university or your state,†wrote Kei Koizumi, OSTP’s assistant director for federal R&D, on the White House blog.
