Report aims to maximise science benefits
3 Oct 06
A report has been published today, 3 October 2006, which provides an impartial and robust review into the MOD's approximate £500m yearly research programme.
The Maximising Benefit from Defence Research Report
The 'Maximising Benefit from Defence Research' report follows a year long study, commissioned by the Chief Scientific Adviser, Professor Sir Roy Anderson, into the research programme that is funded by the Science Innovation Technology (SIT) Directorate.
It comes at a time of huge progress in areas of science and technology which are highly relevant to defence. The UK has long benefited from the ingenuity and innovation of defence science, ranging from the development of radar before the Second World War, thermal imagers and liquid crystal displays in the 60s and 70s, through to more recent developments such as a bubonic plague vaccine.
Professor Anderson believes one of the key challenges facing the Department is to ensure this history of originality and inventiveness continues even as the range of technologies that need to be covered is ever increasing:
"I am delighted with the report," he said. "Not only does it provide the first rigorous assessment of how effectively our research programme meets our strategic needs but it demonstrates that external peer review of our research is both feasible and can form an integral part of how we commission and evaluate projects.
"We must build on our areas of success, developing our science and technology programme to ensure it continues to provide benefit for our Armed Forces.
"When I joined MOD, I decided that one of my first priorities should be to measure the effectiveness of our current research investment to ensure it is meeting the Department's needs. Another priority is to expand our research supplier base to ensure we get the best from our investment but before we can do this I first needed to establish our current position."
"We must build on our areas of success, developing our science and technology programme to ensure it continues to provide benefit for our Armed Forces."
Professor Anderson
Professor Anderson established the Capability and Alignment Study to review the alignment of the research programme to MoD's strategic needs, in order to provide an independent benchmark on quality and to assess research exploitation.
He believes the new report provides an impartial, objective and robust review that has set the benchmark for future regular reviews of research within MOD:
"The report highlights that we need to improve co-ordination of our research strategies and that we can also do more to benefit areas not traditionally well supported by research," he continued. "I will be looking to my staff to take the report's findings forward over the next year."
Those key findings are:
- Overall, the MoD's research programme meets defence needs.
- External peer reviewers scrutinised a huge proportion of the total programme (over a third of all research projects) and found over 90% to be quality; 22% was world class.
- Exploitation of research in the medium term is good, but more widespread use of firm plans engaging end-users could make the situation even better.
In the course of the study, over 240 individual research projects were subjected to external peer review of their quality, the first time Defence research has been opened up to external scrutiny on such a scale.
Professor Anderson believes this has established a clear precedent for the future. Indeed, a key report recommendation is that external peer reviews should be introduced as an integral part of commissioning and evaluating work.
"All research carries risk and some failure is to be expected, especially in an ambitious research programme."
Professor Anderson
The Study Team has also suggested that quality can be further improved by greater publication of research findings in peer-reviewed journals wherever appropriate. Professor Anderson concluded:
"All research carries risk and some failure is to be expected, especially in an ambitious research programme; but the overall high level of success identified by external peer review is welcome.
"Most importantly, we now have a clear baseline of where we are and some constructive proposals for how we can improve yet further in the support we provide to our Armed Forces."
Building on the success of the study, Sir Roy Anderson and the Chief of Defence Procurement, Sir Peter Spencer, have decided to adapt its methodology for a wider review of the Department's approximate £2.6 billion annual research and development expenditure; this further work is already underway and will report in 2007.