Need for a Government-Wide Budget Classification Structure for Federal Research and Development Information

There is a need for a unified presentation of Federal Research and Development (R&D) budgetary information according to defineable user patterns. An agency-wide structure for the Department of Housing and Urban Development contributed to the development of a conceptual foundation for the Government-wide structure. The Unified Classification Structure for Federal Research and Development. The categories in the structure have been designed to identify specific national objectives which are of concern or interest to Congress. The proposed structure will be a supplementary categorization of total funding for all research by national objective. The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) stated that a useful course of action would be to develop some limited supplementary R&D data on an interagency basis to cover specific problem areas identified by Congress, thus avoiding the collection of too much data. OMB also stated that the GAO system would cause more work for the agencies and OMB and would lead to arbitrary classifications.