As required by 10 CRF 50.36, plant Technical Specifications (TS) for power reactors are to include: (1) safety limits and limiting safety system settings, (2) limiting conditions of operation (LCO), (3) surveillance requirements (SR), (4) design features, and (5) administrative controls. Purportedly to make the Technical Specifications process (which operating license applicants are required to utilize) more effective and efficient, the NRC developed and required, on a forward-fit basis, the use of Standard Technical Specifications (STS) since 1975. In part, and in attempting to comply with the elements contained within TS, engineering judgment, codes and standards requirements, and manufacturer's recommendations are used as the basis for establishing testing and surveillance policies specified in the SR element of TS. However, situations have arisen which indicate that test and surveillance intervals that are either too short or too long could, through different mechanisms, be adverse to safety. On August 3, 1983, an interoffice and interdisciplinary Executive Directors Office (EDO) Task Group of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission was formed to address some of these concerns. Their findings, documented in NUREG-1024, resulted in a directive wherein Brookhaven National Laboratory was charted to conduct the needed research to firmly anchor future TSs, TS changes, and reviews of TSs to a probabilistic risk basis. To scope out the project several issues were identified to evaluate the safety implications of technical specifications. In increasing order of importance, they are: • - What are the possible approaches for evaluating technical specifications? • - What are the possible measures of technical specification performance? • - What technical specifications aspects (attributes) need to be evaluated? • - What are the possible objectives of technical specifications? This paper describes the development of the program and some of its early findings.