Taking on the world - not each other
16/04/2007
Anthony Scott, executive director,
Association of Crown Research Institutes.
The good news is that collaboration between the various players in New Zealand.s innovation system is at unparalleled levels of quality and quantity.
The bad news is that this good news has yet to reach Ian Shaw, Canterbury University.s pro-vice chancellor (Science). He calls for `collaboration with the enemy. (Education Review, March 30).
I do not wish to intrude upon relationships between universities, but perhaps the CRI experience might help his reflections.
Crown research institutes have long urged that New Zealand.s science entities take on the world, not each other. Where some see enemies, we see allies.
Developing collaboration
In 2001, the Association of Crown Research Institutes (ACRI) initiated the first meeting of CRIs, universities, and research associations solely with each other.
In 2002, ACRI outlined a performance-based transformational science system, seeking means by which the specific roles and responsibilities of all entities might contribute most effectively to the New Zealand good.
Through 2003-05, CRI and research association leaders worked with the then chair of the NZVCC, Professor Stuart McCutcheon; Professor Tom Barnes, Auckland.s Deputy VC (Research); and Professor John Raine (initially Canterbury and then Massey Deputy VC, Research) in the Science Enterprises Group (SEG).
These were vigorous, no holds barred discussions with very simple rules: no institutional agendas and a focus on how our research investment system might maximise the use of scarce resources in support of desired national outcomes.
The outcome was A Framework for Research & Development in New Zealand (see /show/7bb9c7ea7a2954ce5fd3ab76fe8fd334).
SEG agreed that the issues underlying, for example, New Zealand.s appalling levels of science investment must be addressed in partnership with policy makers, private and public sector purchasers and investors. For too long, science enterprises had been merely the object.
A history lesson
Shaw rightly looks to history for clues to the makeup of today.s science system. But in several areas he, like Homer, nods.
The history and purpose of the Capability Fund and Non-Specific Output Fund are incorrect. There are nine, not eight, CRIs. And to say `CRIs guard FRST funding avidly. could be said equally of any entity to which winning FRST funding is essential.
I am always interested that people overlook the creation of MoRST in 1989 and FRST in 1990 to state that the science reforms commenced with the formation of the CRIs in 1992.
Arguably the reforms were inevitable from the mid-1980s when government accepted the policy, purchaser, provider model for all its activities. Indeed, that focus on clearly accountable purpose and outcomes may be seen as the precursor of the reforms now being applied to the tertiary system.
For CRIs, the first few years were spent establishing scientific credibility and economic viability.
Then the CRIs entered into intense competition. Neither public nor private funds were rising as fast as costs, opportunities or number of bidders. One CRI did not make it.
Hence an aggressive silo-like approach. But it ended with the century as CRI leaders consciously determined that such an approach was damaging not just to CRIs but to science overall.
A new approach recognises vital but distinct roles
Disunity does nothing to entice investment needed from the public or private sectors. And new science areas and market opportunities required multi-disciplinary thinking and capability.
So to say `We must take on the world, not each other. is not a slogan. It is the statement of the obvious for a country that contributes less than one per cent of the world.s science research and is dependent upon global insights, knowledge and connectedness to underwrite our social and economic health.
The total mosaic of science enterprise in New Zealand needs fostering.
Universities have a statutory role in research-led teaching, educating the researchers and science-literate graduates our society needs. Blue-sky research inspires, stretches and underpins that role. If research can be commercialised . preferably for the benefit of New Zealand . even better.
The CRIs. statutory role is undertaking and disseminating research, science and technology to benefit New Zealand. This, the CRI Act says, requires the pursuit of excellence, social and ethical responsibility, being a good employer and maintaining economic viability.
Economic viability is often misunderstood. Unlike SOEs, CRIs are not profit maximisers.
CRIs must ensure they can sustain themselves while undertaking their research. Not doing so simply transfers the true full cost from the research purchaser to the taxpayer. Some may have legal and financial discretion to ‘give away. research, as Shaw requests . CRIs do not.
The funding channels
The difference may arise from how government funds science research via Vote Education and Vote Research, Science & Technology. They differ in scale, eligibility and the resiliency of the recipients.
Vote Education is available primarily to educators (not unnaturally), for research and education.
In Vote RS&T, all comers are accepted. Indeed, FRST has given priority to new entrants . new, that is, to Vote RS&T, not to the public purse.
So competing bids deemed equally excellent fall to the new entrant. The CRI suffers loss of its excellent researchers along with their collateral work and, with its capability gone, is eliminated as a future bidder in that science area.
The process confuses the why and how of each class of entity. The purpose, knowledge, sectoral engagement and means to deliver are very different, even if the scientists come from the same discipline.
Similar confusion was seen in the latest Centre of Research Excellence (CoRE) bids.
CoREs are a brand, not an exclusive description. So, CRI researchers of excellence proudly and collegially participate in many CoREs.
One might assume that it makes sense for government to coalesce national efforts around existing ‘centres of research excellence. regardless of being in or outside a university.
But the system says Tertiary Education Commission (TEC) money is only available to the nascent upper-case entity; and is quite unconcerned that some goes to develop systems, employ administrators and so on, rather than strengthen and expand on the existing base.
Dynamic science, dynamic CRIs
When CRIs recognised similar dysfunction they abandoned their silos and embraced collaboration. Formal and informal links between CRIs (and with others) bloomed.
Biopolymer Network Ltd, for example, brings together the expertise of Scion, Crop & Food Research and Canesis to focus on the conversion of sustainable natural resources . such as trees, crops and fibres . to biopolymers and biocomposites.
This science, style of thinking, behaviour or markets did not exist when CRIs were created . but today.s CRIs are as dynamic as the science and sectors.
AgResearch, for example, developed a sniffer technology to aid our biosecurity and exporters . and then extended it to detect explosives at public places.
At what point should the scientists have been told, as Shaw suggests, `you are straying beyond your remit. Stop!. Instead, they saw the possibilities, identified partners and made it happen to New Zealand.s benefit.
The organisational purposes of universities, CRIs and other science enterprises are too different to be shoehorned into a single funding model. While most recognise this, the temptation is to argue for funding increases into areas that inherently suit one or other type of entity.
ACRI and SEG rejected that approach to say that New Zealand needs to invest across the spectrum.
Today.s system has still too much of the waste of inappropriate contest amongst financially mismatched entities in which some can endure losses from bids, and others cannot.
But within Vote RS&T, negotiated investment, open to all entities, is a welcome start to a more mature and balanced system.
New funding model to strengthen NZ-benefit outcomes
An idea of considerable merit is matching resourcing, at least in type if not scale, between tertiary institutes and CRIs.
Just as there is a performance-based research fund primarily funding universities, there should be a performance-based transformational science fund to underpin the unique purpose of CRIs.
A third strand would fund competitively bid collaborative projects between types of entity.
Collaboration is not the purpose of science research, but can increase effectiveness and delivery in some areas.
Today, most CRIs have a presence on at least one university campus; CRI staff working one day a week at a university have all their research count towards the income generating PBRF; there are hundreds of joint teams; and CRIs are helping fund professorial chairs and multi-million dollar research facilities.
A Government role
The collaborative national research system is being shaped at grass roots. It is time for the `whole of government. to catch up and support.
But ultimately, discussions about rearranging the deckchairs are futile if the ship is sinking through lack of investment. We are all on the same ship, so let.s work together and take on the world, not each other.
Published in Education Review, 13 April 2007
