Academy submission to the Science System Advisory Group’s phase 1 consultation

The Science System Advisory Group has been established by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment to provide advice to the government on strengthening the science, innovation and technology system.  

To prepare this advice, submissions have been called in two phases. Phase 1 submissions will consider high-level sectoral questions that consider the role of science and innovation in New Zealand to inform the interim report.

Academy Executive Committee submission 

The Science, Innovation and Technology System

Before considering questions related to the process of transitioning between the current state of the system to a future state, it is fundamentally important to envisage what that future state should be delivering for us – what do we want it to achieve?  What does an excellent system look like? This is the first question raised in the ‘Submission Questions’ document, and in our view is the most important in this phase of the review.

Let us imagine a science, innovation and technology (SIT) system that:

• Is a major driver to the prosperity of the country as an economy, a cohesive and inclusive society, and a fantastic place to live
• Is optimistic about, and committed to, the positive impact research can make upon the short- and long-term future of New Zealand’s success
• Recognises, values and nurtures a whole ‘ecosystem’ approach. Dimensions of this will include being a system that:
  • Values, supports and celebrates excellence
  • Encourages trans- and multi-disciplinarity, and where a wide breadth, as well as depth, of knowledge is valued, nurtured and applied to our work
  • Enables ‘science, innovation and technology’[1] to have impact across the economy, environment and society of Aotearoa. 
  • Attracts investment by government, NGOs and commercial interests
  • Is attractive at primary, secondary and tertiary levels of our education system as a pipeline to encourage and support talent
  • Actively encourages the cross-fertilization of ideas between the generators of knowledge and the users of, pure and applied, scholarly and commercial, entrepreneurial and curiosity-driven research.
  • Values the full range of subject areas that contribute to a vibrant ecosystem, including the humanities and their important role in creating a place where talent wants to be.
  • Balances the support for research that underpins our success on the 10 -100-year horizon with research that generates more immediate return on research investment.
  • Exhibits clarity of purpose, positive, healthy competition and collaboration while minimizing unproductive competitive drivers.
• Is an attractor for talent, including:
  • Enabling us to grow our own talent, retain our talent, and attract new talent from offshore.  It is a place and space where talent wants to be (drawing from Sir Paul Callaghan), making it simple for talent to enter the system, stay in it, and move around in it.  This involves Immigration, Education, Welfare etc.
  • Paying attention to all parts of the people pipeline in the system – from school-age, through early and mid-careers to our top practitioners. 

Drawing on this vision, some elements of the system that will need to be considered:

• The New Zealand SIT system works in many respects, however, there is a need for clearly defined goals and clarity of purpose. If one of the goals is a high-tech knowledge economy focus, we could see the distribution of funding and roles between universities and CRIs changing to a tighter, far more integrated approach not only via active collaboration, but also fostering career pathways. Equally, if another goal is to see more innovation independent of existing or desired industries, then the distribution and allocations across the system and the relative utility of its elements (universities, Crown Research Institutes (CRIs), Independent Research Organisations (IROs), industry, and others) would be different again. Both could be different from what we see now. Clarity of purpose will lead to clarity of support mechanisms and higher productivity from the system.
• The level of cross-government departmental consultation on priorities, or discussions with end-users, should be strengthened. Government departments, iwi, business, researchers and the community must be involved, and have the means to be involved as end-users and intermediaries in priority setting.
• Research is becoming more transdisciplinary and encompassing of a broader range of fields and knowledge systems across the sciences, social sciences, humanities and Māori knowledge, which can have a real-world impact on the economy, policy, society, industry, and technology. 
• There are key workforce issues needing to be resolved in terms of equity, precariousness, diversity, and support for the education system. 
• Overall, the Committee needs to grapple with the oversight and administrative costs of doing research, relative to the research dollars available. Given the current funding climate, while there are benefits to overlaps in expertise in the programmes of CRIs, IROs, and universities, especially where there is a need for both industry and the public interest to be taken into account, in a small competitive funding system it can be difficult for one to not crowd out the other. It will be important to coordinate such expertise, wherever it is found, via mechanisms akin to the Centres of Research Excellence or National Science Challenges, while reducing the governance/administration costs of such coordinating programmes, i.e. through streamlining the contracting and reporting systems. 

In response to the other areas identified in the consultation:

Public Research Organisations 

• CRIs are a critical part of the New Zealand research landscape. They are mandated to do research in the public good and have the long-term infrastructural support that most universities lack in key areas. While overlaps of research and functions among CRIs should be addressed, CRIs should be properly funded for at least their core functions so that they may be called on in terms of crises, as has happened many times over the last 30 years, as exemplified by the kiwifruit disease Psa incursion in protection of a $2b industry, and ESR’s role in protecting the entire population during the pandemic. These functions are very much in the national interest and cannot be started from scratch when a crisis hits.
• A corporate model helps ensure sound governance and management structures, reporting, accountability and internal efficiencies, but the downside is the continual need for a financial return to the government annually. It may be worthwhile examining how the benefits of corporate efficiencies can be retained in a new model that does not require dividends to be returned to the government.
• CRIs and universities are eager to interact, but there are often financial and administrative barriers in both types of institutions to achieving comprehensively close ties. All western countries have models of how such interactions can occur, and the Committee may care to examine a few in countries of similar size to New Zealand.
• 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 CRIs. 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’s research activities, 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.

 Contestable Research 

• A Research Development and Innovation (RDI) Council, with engagement of industry, government, Māori and researchers, would be a good idea. 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.
• 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.
• In addressing today's local and global challenges, it is important for New Zealand to maintain a balanced investment across various research SIT areas. While disciplines like health sciences, life sciences, physical sciences, and earth sciences have direct impacts on technological advancements and economic growth, the humanities and social sciences play an equally vital role in understanding the full complex of research problems, interpreting the results, and realising how results can have societal and economic impact. To maximise the benefits from the breadth of research expertise available, New Zealand should support interdisciplinary collaboration, inter-institute cooperation and encourage cross-cutting research initiatives that address a question in a holistic way, and provide targeted support for implementation.
  
  

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  [1] The broad definition of science & research used by both the International Science Council (ISC) and the Royal Society Te Apārangi is a useful descriptor of what SIT encompasses.