Academy submission to the Science System Advisory Group phase 2 consultation

Submission from the Academy of the Royal Society Te Apārangi

April 2025

The mission of the Academy of the Royal Society Te Apārangi is to honour, recognise and encourage outstanding achievement in the sciences, technologies and humanities, as well as to assist and support the activities of Royal Society Te Apārangi, including providing independent and nonpartisan advice to government policy makers and the wider community on science, technology and the humanities.

This submission has been prepared by the Academy Executive Committee, who are elected by the Society’s Fellows, but it does not necessarily express the views of all the Academy’s Fellowship.

In what areas must New Zealand have or develop in-depth research-based expertise over the next two decades?

At what levels should research prioritisation occur?

There is always going to be a dynamic tension between having high-level priorities and the projects and disciplines that contribute to them and solve problems. National funding bodies in virtually all advanced countries have broad strategic goals and long-term vision statements that respond to the needs of society and national interests. By definition, these should not be rigid but have the capability of adapting to emerging societal needs and trends in science and technology.

‘Benefit to New Zealand’ should be one of the themes for funding, but this often lacks clear pathways to problem-solving, utility or implementation. Much of the New Zealand research community has already aligned itself to problem-solving and utility through mechanisms like the former Public Good Science Fund and its later developments. This trend must be continued within any new research prioritisation. ’Benefit’ is often unpredictable, so there is still a need for a substantial engine of undirected ‘blue skies’ research where often the greatest breakthroughs are made but where eventual application cannot be predicted.

We suggest that research prioritisation for that part of the funding system should be encapsulated within broad high-level categories of national need. Examine and specify the priorities within each, using strategic plans developed using experts in the broad areas to contribute to a prioritisation framework, with international priority setting methods to avoid conflicts of interest in a very small community. For example:

• Health: innovation and advancement is always likely to be needed here.
• Food: New Zealand is known for innovations in growing, storing, harvesting, shipping food, etc.
• Environment: We are a small country with an expanding population, a highly erodible coastline, and high intensity land usage. The climate is changing, and weather patterns and storm events are more frequent and intense, and sea levels are rising.
• Defence: Many technological advances have come from programmes under the rubric of defence funding. This includes GPS, the internet, drone technologies, night vision technology, radar and internet encryption. New Zealand can be highly innovative in these areas.
• Industry. New Zealand will continue to have many innovations in industrial activities, from boatbuilding, hydrofoil technologies, to AI applications.
• Cultural heritage and identity: New Zealand’s diverse cultural traditions, especially Māori and Pacific perspectives, can be deepened to support community wellbeing and social cohesion.
• Creative industries and innovation: Research in creative practices, digital arts, and cultural production, can drive innovation and economic development.
• Interdisciplinary collaboration: Integrative research that bridges the arts, humanities, and the social sciences can address complex societal challenges such as sustainability, climate change, and urban development, and enable societal readiness of research.
• Stewardship of research: Develop ways of carrying out research that builds on knowledge of leadership, policy-influence, and effective models of cross-sectorial engagement.

Rather than focusing on particular technologies, prioritization should instead focus on higher level goals, for example, to make New Zealand a more secure and advanced haven for its people and the environment.

What are some criteria for research selection?

Criteria should be higher level and aspirational. New Zealand already does this in most of our funding platforms. Possibilities include:

• Intellectual merit as the first priority. Good research needs to be led by high-quality researchers, doing work of significance, with strong elements of originality and innovation, and using robust methodologies.
• Broader impacts: All good research should be able to articulate why and how it will lead to deeper understanding of key problems, who will (or might) benefit from it, and in what ways.
• Feasibility and resources. Some research requires large teams, expensive gear, or large institutional backing, while other research does not. We should have funding that accommodates this spectrum of expertise.

What is the value of research roadmaps in priority areas?

‘Roadmaps’ must be adaptable and updated from time to time. Emphasis should focus more on being clear about outcome priorities rather than on instructions about how to get there. We have a highly innovative research sector and so allowing them to identify ways to achieve priorities will likely lead to good things.

Does New Zealand need to rationalise its funding mechanisms?

In our response to Phase 1 we noted that a Research Development and Innovation (RDI) Council, with engagement of industry, government, Māori and researchers, would be a good idea. We support this mechanism to provide coordination across the research sector and to respond with agility to changing priorities. However, the mechanisms of distributing the funding (calling for applications, review, contracting etc) does not need to be centralised. Indeed, creating a new centralised function for this would be extremely time consuming and expensive. We recommend retaining one or more of the existing independent fund distributors, under the oversight of the central Council and mechanism-specific Boards if required.

What kind of funding instruments should be used and in what circumstances?

Within the funding structure, having a ‘blue skies’ and ‘public good fund’ seem to strike the right balance.  However, consideration could also be given to strengthening Research Fellowships for New Zealand’s very top researchers, that demonstrate excellence in funding, research outputs, researcher development, and societal interactions. To date, the great part of funded research is project-, programme- or institution-based.  Research Fellowship funding could allow some of our best researchers to focus on priority areas without the need for continual funding applications.

How would a funding agency balance these different expectations?

In our view, such a body should:

• ensure that the strategy set by the Council has been determined through working closely with Government, iwi, industries, researchers and communities
• promote a high level of development of workplace capability and diversity and enable accurate data collection to facilitate decision making and strategy development.
• encourage excellence on all fronts making New Zealand a highly desirable place in which to conduct research (for both New Zealanders and international researchers)
• skilfully manage investment in the research infrastructure in order to deliver on the strategy
• ensure there is complete transparency of the allocation of resources to eliminate duplication, and to identify the true costs of conducting research

How should high- intellectual risk but potentially high-reward research applications be identified and funded?

In an ‘investor capital’ funding environment, it is fully expected that most start-ups will fail, but perhaps one or two in a hundred will yield high dividends. Identifying and funding such research could involve several key strategies:

• Diverse, expert evaluation panels: Ensure that review panels include experts from a range of relevant disciplines. This diversity helps assess proposals not solely by conventional scientific metrics
  but also by their potential to challenge established ideas and lead to creative breakthroughs.
• Staged funding models: Implement a multi‐stage funding process where initial seed funding supports exploratory work. Promising early results can then justify further investment, allowing researchers to take bold risks while managing accountability.
• Clear criteria for innovation and impact: Develop selection criteria that prioritise originality, intellectual daring, and the potential for transformative impact. Rather than focusing solely on immediate outcomes, assess proposals for their capacity to open new lines of enquiry and contribute to long‐term cultural, societal, and educational innovation.
• Flexibility in evaluation: Recognise that high‐risk research may not yield conventional outputs and may not yield success over a short period. Funding mechanisms should allow for flexibility in how
  success is defined and measured, supporting projects that may initially appear speculative but have the potential to generate significant, long‐term benefits.

How should research involving the study of or the application of Mātauranga Māori be managed and funded?

The present Vision Mātauranga (VM) statement is an insufficient mechanism for authentic participation of, and with, Māori. It heavily loads Māori researchers to contribute for the benefit of others and does not adequately involve Māori in conceptual and critical decision-making on research that is intended to benefit Māori. Rather, Government needs to co-invest with Māori and enable Māori to be the primary decision maker on that research investment. We advocate introducing a dedicated funding pūtea and a Māori-led decision body or bodies. Also, centralisation of decision-making is at odds with Kaupapa Māori whakaaro, and so localisation of decision-making on funding will yield best results – the actual mechanisms and governance need to be co-developed with Māori. Such a pathway would be more in tandem with Te Tiriti, Mātauranga Māori, and Māori aspirations.

How should New Zealand address expensive research infrastructure needs such as access to supercomputing, bespoke lab equipment or spaces, and data requirements?

As we noted in our phase 1 response, research infrastructure, such as research collections and databases, high-tech lab equipment, ships, super computers, satellite access, ocean and climate sensing equipment, collections, libraries, archives, museums and so on, are a critical component of New Zealand’s public research infrastructure and extend beyond PROs. Not only are they of immense value to New Zealand research, but they also represent a global responsibility of New Zealand for international science and research. There is no coordinated national process for assessing whether this infrastructure and the policies of individual institutions, meet national and stakeholder needs. Nor, in the absence of national scale oversight, are infrastructure resources safe from individual institutional policy changes and priorities. The combination of eroding support, lack of formal protection, and reliance on individual organisation’s prioritisation processes poses a risk of unintentional consequences if not addressed. The proposed Council should set up an oversight process with dedicated funding to inventory, plan and support national research infrastructure in collaboration with the relevant institutions.

One of the issues is that the real costs of research are hidden and poorly understood, leading to erosion of research infrastructure. So called “full cost funding” applies to only a very small proportion of the research activities of universities, and this proportion is steadily diminishing. Over the last decade most new research funding schemes have been exclusive of the “full cost” component, exacerbating the problem. In addition, within and across institutions, improvements are needed at sharing infrastructure in terms of efficiencies, synergies, and making best use of our human and research capital.

What does New Zealand do to improve workforce retention and develop the research workforce from the early career to the mature? How does New Zealand ensure the retention of research/innovation leaders?

Options to improve workforce retention include:

• An individual’s career and prospects are largely based on salary structures and predictability of future purposeful employment, which for good researchers means the likelihood of being funded to
  continue their research. When the general funding environment is highly uncertain, good researchers move on. Business salaries have individual contracts that account for experience, duties
  and expectations. Some of the CRIs have responded to this with salary loadings for designated science leaders, which seems to have worked reasonably well. Increase incentives for world class
  research and innovation. The Performance-Based Research Fund (PBRF) helped transiently in relation to research but has become so diffuse now that the effects are lost. There should be more
  incentives for the universities to work with the PROs to enhance technology transfer through streamlined funding mechanisms and reward systems. The current funding structure of ‘all time as
  billable time’ in PROs makes it challenging to encourage and support cross-sectoral research, between PROs and Universities.
• Provide a national structure for supporting and funding early to mid-career future research-focussed workers. The new national research fellowship scheme is a potentially valuable contribution but so small in scale as to make little impact on the problem. A “whole of career” system of national fellowships is needed for the country’s best researchers. This is common amongst advanced economies and is essential to attract and retain the stars who will make a difference. This includes early career fellowships but also needs the next phases of mid-career and senior fellowships to be really effective.

Further information
This paper has been developed for the Academy of the Royal Society Te Apārangi. For further information, please contact Marc Rands at academy@royalsociety.org.nz.