Evaluation of Government Funding in RTDI from a Systems Perspective in Austria

created on 22 May 2009

In spring 2008, the Austrian Ministry for Transport, Innovation and Technology  together with the Austrian Ministry of Economics, Family and Youth commissioned an evaluation of Austria's research funding system. The aim of this evaluation was to analyse the performance of the national research funding and financing system, and to identify possible fields for action. A focal point of the analysis was the set of instruments used so far, its composition and its coordination.

The evaluation was carried out by a consortium of 4 contractors (WIFO, KMUFA, Prognos, convelop). Additionally, 22 national and international experts were involved. In the context of the study, 5,000 enterprises and 1,400 research institutes were consulted.

The final report summarises about fifty recommendations for major or minor improvements of the Austrian System of Science, Research and Innovation, which will facilitate a strategy shift and make the system fit for future requirements.

The key recommendations of the evaluation consortium are the following:

• From an innovation policy in the narrow sense to a comprehensive innovation policy. The latter is interlinked with education policy and includes improvements of the framework conditions (for example competition, international openness, mobility), while the former only concentrates on the measures and institutions directly involved in science and technology.
• From an imitation strategy to a frontrunner strategy. In a frontrunner strategy, firms and researchers strive for excellence and market dominance in niches and high quality segments, increasing market shares in sophisticated industries and technology fields, and in areas or missions of particular relevance to society.
• From fragmented public interventions to coordinated and consistent interventions derived from a vision which specifies economic objectives, external and internal challenges and the type of (market or system) failures which call for public intervention.
• From a multitude of narrowly defined financial programmes to a flexible, dynamic policy defining broader tasks and priorities. Some broad technology and research fields important for society (missions) should be defined top-down in the vision, but clusters and centres of excellence will grow bottom-up, and should be funded sufficiently so as to attain international leadership.
• From a blurred division of responsibilities between and within ministries (and other “players”) to well defined responsibilities. Ministries devise sub-strategies for their area of responsibility from the top-level vision, are coordinated on the government level by a high-level commission and monitored by a Council for Science, Research and Innovation.
• From managing public intervention by bureaucratic procedures to modern public management techniques. Goals are pursued either by internal competence centres in ministries or by delegation to outside agencies (agencification). Agencies are free to choose instruments and are controlled according to pre-defined output criteria, not by means of micro-interventions.

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