ABSTRACT
Even before the Technology Assessment Act was passed by Congress in 1972, European scientists and officials demonstrated keen interest in the concept of technology assessment (Hetmán 1973). Although the first proposals for an office similar to the U.S. Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) were introduced in the German Bundestag as early as 1973, it was another decade (1983) before the first European parliamentary technology assessment (PTA) agency was established in France. Since then, 15 other PTA units have been created, and for the past decade these bodies have been loosely associated as members of the European Parliamentary Technology Assessment (EPTA) organization.1 A recent in-depth analysis of the first six of these PTA units (in Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the European Parliament) concludes that they have successfully institutionalized technology assessment as a parliamentary function despite many institutional barriers and have developed a broad range of technology assessment methodologies that are proving useful to decisionmakers and the public (Vig and Paschen 2000). Indeed, these "little OTAs" may now provide useful models for the U.S. Congress if it decides to reestablish a smaller version of the former Office of Technology Assessment.
