Ministers are drawing up new “specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-bound objectives” for UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) to help ensure taxpayers receive value for money from science spending.
Details of the forthcoming targets were revealed in a new report by the National Audit Office (NAO) which notes how UKRI’s five-year strategy had “set out its high-level priorities but it and the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) have not yet set measurable objectives for UKRI’s spending”.
Without these more concrete measures in place, it was “difficult to understand what outcome UKRI is seeking to achieve”, explains the report,?
DSIT had told the review’s authors that it intended to publish more specific objectives with “corresponding key performance indicators” for the ?9.6 billion research funder this summer.
Next month Ian Chapman, now chief executive of the UK Atomic Energy Authority, will take over as UKRI’s chief executive when Ottoline Leyser steps down after five years in charge.
“UKRI will therefore not have a finalised and measurable set of objectives to guide advice and decisions on its future direction in Spending Review 2025 Phase 2 [which ends in June],” notes the report, though the department had communicated “information to UKRI on ministerial priorities during this work”.
Noting the “lack of joined-up direction [to UKRI] from government departments”, the report notes how government expects UKRI to support the delivery of a range of objectives yet these policy priorities were made clear in a variety of ways such as ad hoc and routine meetings, government strategies, mission statements and spending review budgets.
“But these are not consolidated or ranked, which means the overall picture of what government is asking UKRI to do is unclear,” explained the report, which called on ministers to “streamline the mechanisms through which the government communicates its priorities to UKRI” and, by December, “map out government priorities and objectives whose delivery UKRI is expected to support”.
The study also flagged how not all UKRI-funded projects were routinely evaluated in terms of their impact and outcomes.
While UKRI undertakes evaluations on projects or programmes that meet specific criteria – those that are over ?20 million or considered politically or strategically important, novel, complex or contentious, or have potential to aid UKRI’s understanding of what works, these thematic evaluations were “not consistently applied across the organisation and as a result the cumulative learnings and impacts of these grants may not be effectively captured”, the report says, recommending greater use of such evaluations.
Gareth Davies, head of the NAO, said UKRI had “played a key role in supporting a globally respected research and innovation system” but “there is more it could do to maximise value for money”.
“Our recommendations are designed to help UKRI ensure its culture supports well-managed risk-taking; develop better data to support decision-making; and work with DSIT to define more clearly the overarching outcomes sought from its research and innovation spending.”
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