Song of the Science Policy Successes

ScienceBlogger asks: "What are some unsung successes that have occurred as a result of using science to guide policy?"

Um, errr...

Ok, since the place is full of bio/med/geo types, lets narrow the field to astro and space.

Astronomers have been extremely successful in guiding space science policy, at least through to 2005, through the little know advisory committees and various NRC, AAS and APS small, high prestige, ad hoc committees that make recommendations like "the decadal survey" and how astro and physics should interplay their priorities, like Quarks to Cosmos.
These are major internal guidance mechanism that have really had a major influence on funding and science directions across very broad fields for a long time now. Other fields would do well to replicate the mechanism and consensus building approach to consolidate their funding priorities.

Another unsung success was the push to consolidate not just preprints and future papers into online archives like arXiv, but we also got the entire astronomical literature through all of history into an free online searchable database - the ADS.
Further, most all new data now goes straight into online data bases open to the public (typically after a short proprietary period) with raw data, reduced data, calibration data and pipeline software provided. Like MAST
And a lof of older archival data like in SIMBAD

In the near future, the NVO and similar efforts will make the data mining broader and more seamless, hopefully...

The cultural concept that publically funded data ought to be freely public and that private data ought to be saved and exhibited is slowly being pushed out into other fields that are intrinsically more propietary in their nature. Having data public is a long term public good, and the model of a relatively short proprietary period (or none at all in some cases) and then full access is productive; it pushes the PIs to get to the data before someone else can (extensions for proprietary periods can be requested in exceptional circumstances) and having the data available for mining can often lead to long term future gains in science.

Another not very high profile initiative is "Dark Skies" they have had some success, and I wish them more.