The need for a national systems center: An ad-hoc committee report

The purpose of this report is to outline the findings and recommendations of an ad-hoc committee of systems engineers and scientists with respect to the establishment of a National Systems Center (NSC). The chairman of the ad-hoc NSC committee is Michael Athans of M.I.T. The committee concluded that there is a national need for a high-quality, independent, non-profit National Systems Center and that steps have to be initiated to establish such an entity. This report summarizes the developments to date (November 1 1978) and is written for the purposes of (a) information dissemination to the engineering and scientific community and (b) to solicit criticism and suggestions for future plans.