By Yoke Har Lee
The Government has mapped out a set of defined outcomes it wants to achieve from money spent on science funding and from the $317 million Public Good Science Fund in particular.
High on the agenda is the directive for research funding to help create a knowledge-based economy, enhance current learning systems and enterprise, and to raise the country's global competitiveness.
The blueprint for what the Government hopes to achieve is a radical shift from the current brief which focuses on how much is spent rather than what the outcomes should be.
"For as long as can be remembered, we have focused on how much the Government proposes to spend on research, science and technology. The new focus will be on identifying what the Government seeks to achieve through its investments," Maurice Williamson, minister for research, science and technology said.
Future research funding will also be aimed at raising industry's technological capability; developing and applying new knowledge-based processes and technologies; and fostering understanding of environmental systems and social well-being.
These targets also mean the "deliverers" of research funding would come under more scrutiny, with performance measures scrutinised.
The ministry said in its website, which has details of the blueprint, that rather than support existing sector interests, emphasis will be given to knowledge-led innovations.
Funding should also be delivered in a way which does not displace or create disincentives for investments.
Dr Steve Thompson, chief executive of the Foundation for Research Science and Technology, the organisation responsible for dishing out money available in the Public Good Science Fund, told the Business Herald: "The blueprint set out by the Government essentially means we have been given our marching orders. Our job is to now go and achieve those targets by means of the Foresight outcomes."
The Foresight process is aimed at getting New Zealand society to come forward with proposals on which way industry and the economy should move in the future. A total of 144 strategies were developed by groups formed to participate in the Foresight project. The first thing the foundation will do, with the blueprint as its brief, is to come up with names of portfolios it will fund.
Govt sets new science target
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