The government will reorganize the system of evaluation of scientific programs financed from the budget
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Until March 1, the White House is waiting for data from ministries and state corporations on the structure of the system of expert councils that evaluate scientific and scientific-technical programs and projects applying for budget funding—this was the instruction given to them by Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Chernyshenko. The Russian Academy of Sciences has been tasked with optimizing the structure of scientific expertise. The goal is to eliminate duplication of functions of collegial bodies and overlap in their areas of expertise, as well as situations where applicants endlessly submit their work to different expert councils before funding is approved. Government priorities in science are changing: the White House policy to achieve “technological sovereignty” requires the development of its key technologies with limited budgetary resources.
The White House intends to reorganize the system for evaluating scientific and scientific-technical programs and projects that are financed from the budget. Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Chernyshenko, who is in charge of this area, instructed the heads of ministries, departments and state corporations to inventory the coordination and advisory bodies and working groups involved in the examination of such programs by March 1. The inventory data will be sent to the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAN), where, within a month and a half (until April 15), they must prepare proposals for revising the number and composition of expert bodies, taking into account the need to attract representatives of high-tech public and private companies. The order also provides for the institutional participation of the Russian Academy of Sciences in the work of such councils. The authorities and state corporations must implement the proposals of the Russian Academy of Sciences by August 1.
Let us note that formally what is happening is the implementation of the instructions of President Vladimir Putin based on the results of the Council on Science and Education held back in February 2023. Then the head of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Gennady Krasnikov, complained that a lot of expert councils have been created and operate under ministries and departments, which often overlap each other thematically, which leads to a decrease in the quality of expertise. It often happened that for one object of examination there were several expert opinions that contradicted each other and the examination of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the academy explained to Kommersant, adding that they considered the situation when its expertise was not taken into account unacceptable.
As Dmitry Chernyshenko’s office told Kommersant, expert councils operate primarily autonomously, often behind closed doors. “It is quite difficult to assess the effectiveness of their work, given the lack of uniform approaches to the activities of expert councils,” they noted. The involvement of representatives of high-tech companies in the examination is due to the state’s desire to obtain a sought-after scientific result for the sake of “technological sovereignty.”
What’s happening with the Scientific Review Bill?
A year ago, the government also introduced a bill to the State Duma that would establish the concept of “scientific (scientific and technical) examination” and define its content and procedure. The functions of a methodologist and coordinator of the entire national body of experts are assigned by the document to the RAS. Not only experts from the Academy of Sciences or the Russian Science Foundation (often these are the same people), but also other expert institutes will be able to participate in expert work – according to the same rules. As Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Chernyshenko explained, the new approach to the examination of the results of scientific and scientific-technical projects, works and research is aimed at ensuring that they are in demand by the economy and not “lie on the shelf” (see “Kommersant” dated February 14, 2023).
The document passed its first reading in March 2023. At the same time, the deadline for submitting amendments to the second reading was postponed several times, which may be due to parallel work on the government’s priorities in science. Now work on it is likely to speed up.
The state’s attention to science is growing due to its high need to create and develop its own technologies – the ineffectiveness of scientific work against the backdrop of loss of access to foreign technologies carries the risk of the economy falling behind. The scientific priorities of the coming years are determined by the government concept of technological development – these are the practical needs of industry for import substitution here and now and breakthrough technologies of the future, packaged in the so-called priority and end-to-end projects. This work is supervised by First Deputy Prime Minister Andrei Belousov, and such projects de facto have state priority in financing, but given the limited budget capacity and the risks of excessive budget stimulus (see Kommersant, December 29, 2023), the government seeks to avoid ineffective spending , eliminating unnecessary links from the chain of performers. The restructuring of the work of expert bodies that influence the volume of budget funding for science also fits into this logic.
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