From a contracting notice published by Social Security:
The Social Security Administration (SSA) intends to issue a sole source contract with cost reimbursement task orders ... to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) for a period of 5 years beginning on or around September 30, 2018. The NAS will set up Committees of medical, vocational, and other experts having expertise in fields such as, internal medicine, pediatrics, oncology, otolaryngology, ophthalmology, endocrinology, physical medicine and rehabilitation, occupational therapy, physical therapy, orthopedic surgery, industrial and organizational psychology, psychiatry, developmental-behavioral pediatrics, neurology, cardiology, vocational rehabilitation, health care case management, social sciences, education and health care and workplace economics. The Standing Committee will continue work necessary to maintain an essential capability for theoretical analyses of research, relevant evidence and clinical practices in physical medicine, psychiatry, and rehabilitation medicine.
... The size standard is $20.5M....The National Academy of Sciences is not a governmental agency. It's a private non-profit that largely functions as a beltway bandit seeking out this sort of contract.
4 comments:
What does this committee actually do? "The Standing Committee will continue work necessary to maintain an essential capability for theoretical analyses of research, relevant evidence and clinical practices in physical medicine, psychiatry, and rehabilitation medicine"
"Beltway Bandit" or Bottom feeding ambulance chasers. We can label all those who suckle at the government teat.
NAS is not a gov't agency, but it was established by a Congressional charter, which specifies its purpose, to provide independent advice to the gov't. The gov't pays the costs of the research. I don't know why you dismiss them as "beltway bandits." You don't think the gov't should have a source of scientific advice? Should it only hire its own scientists (so it could fire the ones that don't follow the party line)? What do you want - the organization to disband or all the members to quit?
12:53 commenter is spot on. You don't have to like their findings, but the NAS standing committee produces evidence-based reports to inform SSA's policies. My general impression is they're usually not earth-shattering findings (i.e. not very surprising), but it can be very helpful to have an outside expert panel confirming the existing knowledge in a rigorous report that has a lot of credibility. For instance in 2015-16 they studied the growing prevalence of child SSI awards for mental impairments and speech & language impairments and found that - surprise, surprise - the growth in these categories of SSI children mirrored similar trends among the general population and the population of poor children. (See http://nationalacademies.org/hmd/~/media/Files/Report%20Files/2016/SSI%20S%20and%20L/SSI-Speech-and-Language-insert.pdf and https://socsecnews.blogspot.com/2015/09/study-on-child-ssi-for-mental-illness.html.) They also have more recent studies on assistive technology, financial capability determinations (i.e. the need for rep payees), psychological testing in the disability adjudication process, etc.
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