Implementing national research priorities will be a significant challenge for research and research funding bodies. Implementation arrangements will:
- Give flexibility to research and research funding bodies to explore innovative ways to increase scale of effort in priority areas through enhanced collaboration and coordination mechanisms;
- Focus on what is to be achieved (outcomes) and how it is to be achieved (outputs);
- Acknowledge the mandates and missions of individual research and research funding bodies; and
- Promote efficiency and transparency through utilising existing structures, planning processes and reporting arrangements, where appropriate.
As a general principle, all Commonwealth research and research funding bodies that can contribute to a national research priority will participate in the initiative to the extent that this is consistent with their mandate or mission. Such bodies will be expected to prepare an implementation plan.
Implementation plans
Research and research funding bodies will describe how they propose to implement national research priorities in their implementation plans. These plans, one per implementing body, will be concise documents of up to 20 pages, the length dependent on the extent of involvement in the priorities.
Each research and research funding body will:
- describe its mandate or mission;
- outline how it will contribute to achieving the desired outcomes, within the context of its overall mission or mandate, and how these strategies will add value to existing activities;
- describe how its strategies will contribute to developing critical mass in the priority areas
- indicate the current level of investment in priority areas and projected changes over a 2-5 year time span;
- describe how it will link with related key government or industry initiatives, such as the Commonwealth’s initiatives in the areas of national security or water utilisation;
- identify performance measures to enable the impact of the national research priorities initiative to be assessed. Performance measures should include outcomes, outputs and inputs components. Research and research funding bodies should adopt consistent performance measures where appropriate; and
- identify any significant structural impediments or other issues that are likely to limit its capacity to respond effectively and promptly.
In addition, each research funding body will need to describe:
- how it will identify relevant research that falls within a priority; and
- the funding mechanisms for enhancing collaboration and building critical mass in priority areas (e.g. such as funding centres-of-excellence or other activities).
A research body will need to:
- describe the scope of research it will address in priority areas taking into account the selection criteria given in the Government’s “The Framework for Setting National Research Priorities”.
- describe how it will enhance collaboration and achieve synergies with other members of the innovation system (in Australia and internationally) focusing on changes to current activities
- identify the degree of industry involvement, and/or commercialisation strategy, including the management of intellectual property.
In developing their implementation plans, research and research funding bodies should recognise that some disciplines and technologies transcend more than one of the priorities. For example, the development of new information and communications technologies and applications falls directly within the ‘Frontier Technologies for Building and Transforming Australian Industries’ priority, but is also integral to the other priorities, and to research more broadly. In the interests of improving collaboration across organisations, research and research funding bodies should ensure that their implementation plans show not just how their research contributes to national research priorities, but also how it may enhance research in other areas.
Implementation plans should be cleared by the relevant authority of that body and then forwarded through their Minister to the Minister for Science by 16 May 2003. The Minister for Science will seek advice from the Chief Scientist and other experts as to the adequacy of the plans and advise the Government accordingly. The Government will assess the extent to which the efforts of individual research and research funding bodies, and the overall effort, can be expected to deliver the Government’s objectives. Once the Government has considered the adequacy of the implementation plans, they will be released publicly, subject to commercial-in-confidence and national security considerations.
Research and research funding bodies should include a report on the progress against these plans in their strategic and operational planning documents, as appropriate, and in the annual Innovation Report. They will also need to report progress achieved against these plans annually to Government.