Science funding shake-up heralds innovation agenda
Science funding shake-up heralds innovation agenda
by Pattrick Smellie
Oct 23 (BusinessWire) - The Government's has unveiled an important chunk of its slowly emerging innovation agenda today with the publication of proposals to radically simplify funding for scientific research by the Minister of Research, Science and Technology, Wayne Mapp.
"The changes we will deliver in the next six to nine months are arguably the most significant in 10 to 15 years" in science policy and will be a centre-piece of the 2010 Budget, Mapp told BusinessWire in an exclusive interview.
Bearing the heavy stamp,
as well as the credibility, of the Prime Minister's Chief
Science Adviser, Professor Peter Gluckman from the
University of Auckland's Liggins Institute, the feedback
paper proposes trimming to fewer, more strategic "priority
areas" of RS&T investment. The proposals relate mainly to
the funds administered by the Foundation for Research,
Science and Technology, the Health Research Council and the
Royal Society of New Zealand. These relate mainly to Crown
Research Institute funding.
University funding
through vehicles such as the Performance-Based Research Fund
and Centres of Research Excellence is not affected. Nor is
a considerable volume of agricultural and climate change
research funded by the Ministry of Agriculture and
Fisheries.
Five key areas of science funding are now
identified:
High tech industries
Biological
economy
Energy and Minerals
Hazards and
Infrastructure
Environment
Health and Society
Those headings strategically bundle 16 areas previously separately funded under the Labour Government.
Separately funded streams of Maori scientific research
disappear despite Maori scientific research issues being
dealt with explicitly by an advisory process, and the
Foundation for RS&T's TechNZ fund to support high-tech
industries will be folded mainly into the high-tech
industries spend area.
The decision to create energy
and minerals as a separate category is understood to have
occupied considerable time at the Cabinet committee stage,
and is consistent with Energy and Resources Minister Gerry
Brownlee's enthusiasm for increased mineral exploitation to
fuel economic growth at higher than recent historical rates.
Renewable energy and efficiency research will fall within
this category.
At the core of the proposed new
approach to funding are three outcome areas that are crucial
to any scientific ambitions:
Attracting and keeping top
talent in New Zealand;
Building international scientific
relationships;
Building and maintaining a research
infrastructure that plays to strategic needs and
opportunities.
Feedback on the approach is sought by November 18, but it received immediate endorsement from the university sector's peak body, the New Zealand Vice-Chancellors Committee for its "strong sense of direction".
Mapp says one main objective is to stop
the trend identified by the OECD in 2007 about the New
Zealand system, where "too many people are spending too much
effort on applying for funding".
Longer term funding
would give research institutions greater certainty, and
obvious experts in particular fields should presume funding
rather than having to justify it.
"If you know a
certain CRI will do all rainfall or hydrological work, then
just fund it," he says. "We don't need to make that
contestable."
The discussion document identifies
economic growth as the primary driver for government
research investment, and will stress the importance of
research that shows "pathways to results" as New Zealand
develops a "full scientific value chain from discovery to
exploitation".
(BusinessWire) 14:13:31