This Article  • Full text  • PDF  • Reply to article  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in this journal  Topic Collections  • Health Policy  • Neurology, Other  • Alert me on articles by topic

Arch Neurol. 2003;60:1191-1192.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

THE OPERATIONS, management, and even time-honored peer-review process of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) are likely to be adversely affected by policy changes undertaken as part of the President's Management Agenda "to reduce duplication of effort by consolidating administrative functions and eliminating management layers to speed decision-making."^1(p9) Two separate but interrelated initiatives are especially threatening to the NIH: consolidation (also referred to as centralization) and outsourcing (or privatization). Federal directives that have begun implementing these policy changes are already negatively affecting NIH activities. This should be cause for alarm within the scientific community.

In 2003, the Office of Management and Budget issued a revised version of its Circular A-76. The Federal Activities Inventory Reform Act of 1998 is now being aggressively implemented. It requires that all federal agencies, including the NIH, must categorize their activities as either "inherently governmental" (ie, "so intimately related to the public interest as to . . . [Full Text of this Article]

Roger N. Rosenberg, MD
Editor, Archives of Neurology

Timothy A. Pedley, MD
Past Chair, Scientific Issues Committee, American Academy of Neurology
Chair, Department of Neurology, College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University

J. Richard Baringer, MD
Past President, American Neurological Association

Stanley Fahn, MD
Past President, American Academy of Neurology

Robert P. Lisak, MD
Editor, Journal of the Neurological Sciences

Richard P. Mayeux, MD
College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University

Sandra F. Olson, MD
President, American Academy of Neurology

Steven P. Ringel, MD
Associate Editor, Neurology Today

Lewis P. Rowland, MD
Editor, Neurology Today

Michael E. Selzer, MD, PhD
Editor, Neurorehabilitation and Neural Repair