(FORTUNE Magazine) – CHIEF EXECUTIVE J. Peter Grace of W.R. Grace proudly gives the Grace Commission, also known as the President's Private Sector Survey on Cost Control, a score of 9.9 on a scale of one to ten for effectiveness. He thinks it helped pave the way for efforts to trim the federal budget. Alan Greenspan, the economist who chaired the President's National Commission on Social Security Reform, admits that his group's report ''turned out far better than I expected.'' The Social Security system is stronger for the commission's work, Greenspan believes. Grace and Greenspan are among the favored few whose commissions got lots of attention and might possibly have made a difference in national affairs. But many commissions can take a lot of hard work and still produce nothing that will be remembered longer than the members are in town. Many of the groups are standing committees laboring in obscurity -- if they labor at all -- on matters of less than pressing importance. During the last fiscal year, 118 of the 930 government commissions and committees in existence did not even meet. ''Pick a subject out of your morning newspaper and there is probably an advisory committee on it,'' says Ronald Martinson, the General Services Administration bureaucrat in charge of overseeing federal advisory committees. A random example: the Ice Age National Scenic Trail Advisory Council, which weighs in on the maintenance of trail markers. Many of the committees concern subjects of interest to business. Business and trade association executives are well represented on them. A sampling of committees found that almost two-thirds of the members came from these two groups. Only 2% of the members represented consumer groups; 9% represented labor unions. Federal advisory committees usually don't ring up big bills. Consider the Board of Tea Experts. It was established by the Tea Importation Act of 1897 to advise the government on ''uniform standards of purity, quality, and fitness for consumption of all kinds of imported teas.'' The eight-member board met once last year. Its 1984 budget: $4,800. After studying 73 committees, William G. Ouchi, a professor of management at the University of California at Los Angeles and the author of Theory Z, a tome on Japanese management methods, wrote a report arguing that the U.S. should cut the number of committees. But Richard Wegman, a Washington attorney and author of a 212-page study on committees, concludes that the system works. Says Wegman: ''Federal agencies are getting the advice they need at a fraction of what private consultants would cost.'' Congress held hearings last year on the effectiveness of advisory committees, but not much is likely to happen. Ouchi's report sank from view with scarcely a ripple. Entitled ''The Microeconomic Policy Dialogue,'' it is Appendix E in Volume II of the report issued by the President's Commission on Industrial Competitiveness.