The birth of IDA was due to the failure of WSEG to attract top talent or compete with the RAND Corporation, which had been established at the same time as RAND. IDA was designed to be able to pay its employees higher salaries and operate with greater independence than those on the federal payroll. See Paul E. Ceruzzi, Internet Alley: High Technology in Tyson's Corner, 1945–2005. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2008, pp. 44–48. According to a report for Congress which summarizes the founding of IDA, "There was considerable concern in the early and mid-1950s that [WSEG] was not performing effectively, so the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA) was created to act as a technical backstop to WSEG and to facilitate the recruitment of high-caliber scientific manpower."See U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment. A History of the Department of Defense Federally Funded Research and Development CentersArchived 2014-04-29 at the Wayback Machine., OTA-BP-ISS-157. Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, June 1995, p. 26.
The birth of IDA was due to the failure of WSEG to attract top talent or compete with the RAND Corporation, which had been established at the same time as RAND. IDA was designed to be able to pay its employees higher salaries and operate with greater independence than those on the federal payroll. See Paul E. Ceruzzi, Internet Alley: High Technology in Tyson's Corner, 1945–2005. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2008, pp. 44–48. According to a report for Congress which summarizes the founding of IDA, "There was considerable concern in the early and mid-1950s that [WSEG] was not performing effectively, so the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA) was created to act as a technical backstop to WSEG and to facilitate the recruitment of high-caliber scientific manpower."See U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment. A History of the Department of Defense Federally Funded Research and Development CentersArchived 2014-04-29 at the Wayback Machine., OTA-BP-ISS-157. Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, June 1995, p. 26.
The birth of IDA was due to the failure of WSEG to attract top talent or compete with the RAND Corporation, which had been established at the same time as RAND. IDA was designed to be able to pay its employees higher salaries and operate with greater independence than those on the federal payroll. See Paul E. Ceruzzi, Internet Alley: High Technology in Tyson's Corner, 1945–2005. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2008, pp. 44–48. According to a report for Congress which summarizes the founding of IDA, "There was considerable concern in the early and mid-1950s that [WSEG] was not performing effectively, so the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA) was created to act as a technical backstop to WSEG and to facilitate the recruitment of high-caliber scientific manpower."See U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment. A History of the Department of Defense Federally Funded Research and Development CentersArchived 2014-04-29 at the Wayback Machine., OTA-BP-ISS-157. Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, June 1995, p. 26.
IDA was created using a $500,000 grant from the Ford Foundation. See Paul Dickson, Think Tanks. New York: Atheneum, 1971, p. 146.
As of 1993, after creation of its simulation center, IDA reported that approximately two hundred research tasks were underway at any given time, three-quarters of which were evaluations of defense systems and assessments of advanced technologies. See James A. Smith, Idea Brokers: Think Tanks and the Rise of the New Policy Elite. Simon and Schuster, 1993, p. 292.
Former IDA president Maxwell D. Taylor expounds on the matter of FFRDCs, in particular IDA's membership in this family of organizations and how they serve the Department of Defense, in his 1968 paper, "Case Study of a 'Think Tank': The Institute for Defense Analyses."Alexandria, Va.: The Institute, 1968.
