What Do They Do?
hat do policy researchers do? There are many answers to that question, but the example of the Institute for Water Resources (IWR) can serve to illustrate.
IWR is a unit of the Army Corps of Engineers located in a campus-like compound at Fort Belvoir, Va., a few miles from Corps headquarters in downtown Washington. The physical separation gives the institute a measure of independence and distance from day-to-day political pressures of the larger operation. IWR is often described as the Corps' internal think tank. Its mission is to provide unbiased and sound research on policy questions looming on the agency's horizon.
One IWR project involves studying the use of navigation channels in the Inland Waterways System, which the Corps maintains and manages. The objective is to predict where usage of the system may rise and where it may fall, to aid the agency in targeting resources. IWR also has looked at emerging methods for analyzing the rates of return on capital and maintenance expenditures, aiming to hone techniques the Corps of Engineers might use to measure payoffs in different segments of its programs. The institute has also run national studies of drought management and of wetlands mitigation banking, a system allowing people to use parcels of wetland for development if they'll agree to preserve, or trade, wetland acreage at another site.
A purpose common to such research is to determine which questions are likely to emerge in the near future impinging on the agency's mission and effectiveness and then to develop answers. With luck, that can be done before Congress begins asking for a rapid response to constituent complaints.
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