THE VOICE OF HIGHER EDUCATION LEADERSHIP

Higher Education South Africa

THE VOICE OF HIGHER EDUCATION LEADERSHIP

The Science and Technology

Ministerial Review Report

South African Higher Education Institutions and

the National System of Innovation

In July 2010, Minister of Science and Technology constituted a Review Committee. The purpose of the committee was to

• review the Science, Technology and Innovation landscape and its readiness to meet the needs of the country;

• appraise the degree to which the country is making optimal use of its existing strengths;

Remit (1)

Remit (II)• assess the degree to which the country

is well positioned to respond rapidly to a changing global context and meet the needs of the country in the coming ten to thirty years.

The study was to provide the nation with an understanding of what is being achieved in and by the National System of Innovation (NSI).

Phase One

• Phase one comprised scrutiny of the relevant policy framework established since the adoption of the White Paper on Science and Technology in 1996, and evaluation of the systemic response to the external review of the South African National System of Innovation (NSI) conducted by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in 2006/2007.

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Phase Two

• Phase Two focused on the development of recommendations for a greatly enhanced NSI.

In particular Phase Two was expected to make recommendations regarding

• Framework conditions to achieve coordination and coherence

• Appropriate institutional arrangements and structures that would direct the NSI

• Location and levels of investment responsibility for the NSI, including government, business, foreign support and other sources of funding

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WHAT IS AN NSI

• The idea of a National System of Innovation rests on the importance of linkages and interactions among organisations and institutions in the creation of knowledge, its transfer and the development of innovations.

• The main actors are business, government research laboratories and universities.

• Government plays many roles: setting framework conditions, providing infrastructure, human resource development;

• Framework conditions: policies; regulations, tax incentives.

Governance of the NSI (I)Assessment:• Department of Science and Technology

achievements reviewed – much that is positive.• Lack of shared understanding across

Government departments of conception of National System of Innovation;

• Poor inter-governmental coordination and cooperation;

• Many sectoral S&T services under-performing.• Failure of ‘New Strategic Management Model’

for SETIs.

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Governance of the NSI (II)

• The trust placed in voluntary inter-departmental cooperation has not been realised;

• Virtually no prospective NSI planning as envisaged in the White Paper has been possible;

• There is still too little systemic coherence and sense of common purpose between the private sector, Government, Higher Education and civil society;

• There is an absolute requirement for coherent information-gathering and analysis for effective agenda-setting and prioritisation in the NSI, and for the achievement of clearer and better-aligned institutional missions and functioning of the agencies.

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Governance of the NSI (III)

Recommendation 1: Establish a statutory National Council on Research and Innovation (NCRI) chaired by Deputy President; representatives from Government, private sector, HEIs, Research Councils, Labour, Civil Society. Responsible for oversight of NSI.

Recommendation 2: Establish a Unitary Research and Innovation Vote.

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Governance of the NSI (IV)Recommendation 3: The primary function iof

Ministry and Department of Science and Technology would be a systemic formulator and co-ordinator of NSI-related policy and strategy, consistent with decisions of NCRI, allocating macro-resources andpromoting the system.

Recommendation 4: Transform the present National Council on Innovation (NACI) into a new statutory Office for Research and Innovation Policy (ORIP).

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Governance of the NSI (V)

Recommendation 5: Establish three ‘core NSI nexuses’ by written agreements.

– Post-school education and training involving the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) and the DST

– Business and enterprise development, involving at least the departments of Trade and Industry (the dti), the Economic Development (EDD), Public Enterprises (DPE) and the DST

– Social development and social innovation, involving the DST and departments concerned with social and rural development, and the social security, health and education complex.

Governance of the NSI (V)

Recommendation 6: Broaden modes of public grant-making: participatory sectoral funds’.

Recommendation 7: Review, re-think and integrate the ‘Science Councils’ and the Government S&T services system.

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The enabling environment for NSI (I)

Assessment:• Deep-seated gap between business and

government (too little joint participation, decision-making, benefit-sharing, etc).

• Tax incentive schemes under-subscribed.

• Innovation survey ‘hides’ low patenting and international impact of business innovation.

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The enabling environment for NSI (II)

• Falling contribution of business to Higher Education and Science Council R&D .

• Technology balance-of-payments poor.• Technology and Human Resources for

Industry Programme and Support Programme for Industrial Innovation positive, but slow ‘multi-helix’ formation.

• NSI not yet open and ‘permeable’ enough.• Despite some good examples, public service

innovation weak.

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The enabling environment for NSI (III)

Recommendation 8: Systematic efforts should be made to bring industry and government closer together, and to strengthen the response of the system to demand signals from business and

industry, on the one hand, and social spheres, on the other. The effective participation of the private sector should be structured into all levels of the system, including participation in the NCRI.

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The enabling environment for NSI (IV)

Recommendation 9: A concerted effort must be made to bridge the knowledge transfer gap between local companies (big and small) and public sector researchers and administrators, in order to ensure that the nation’s considerable intellectual resources are utilised to a much greater extent.

Recommendation 10: The research investment climate must be improved through a review of present and further incentive schemes for accessibility, simplicity and effectiveness, with broadening as required.

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The enabling environment for NSI (V)

Recommendation 12: An explicit Strategy should be developed for the advancement of social innovation within NSI.

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The Human Capital and Infrastructure (I)

Assessment: • Multiple systemic ‘pipeline jams’ hindering

action (or implementation)• Massive unresolved schooling issues• Deficits in FET, vocational training (Green

Paper)• The achievement of an innovative and

technology-rich economy and society depends on the depth, width and overall quality of the reservoir of human capital

The Human Capital and Infrastructure (II)

Assessment cont.• Despite sustained efforts to increase admission to HE

for academically deserving but financially disadvantaged students, overall particpation rate remains low at approximately 17 – 18%.

• Low graduation rates and drop-out rates at all levels;• Innovation-driven economies tend to have strongly

differentiated HE system;• Difficult to increase postgraduate enrollements;• Disciplinary ageing due to failure to reproduce the

existing researcher cadre – next generation of scholars.

The Human Capital and Infrastructure (III)

Recommendation 13: In order to meet the human resource development requirements of a knowledge economy, a planned, concerted, well-resourced and sustained programme of action in all areas of human capital development should be undertaken by all the relevant policy-makers and performers.

The Human Capital and Infrastructure (IV)

• Teaching at all levels should be declared an essential public service within labour and other legislation and relevant regulations.

• Public resourcing (both from outside and inside institutions) should be focused on departments or research enterprises that are demonstratively capable of attracting and hosting large numbers of successful postgradautes.

• Opportunities in the academic job market should be widened to increase the population of productive academics.

The Human Capital and Infrastructure (IV)

Recommendation 14: The existing infrastructure needs not only to be expanded but restructured in terms of its elements to ensure a higher degree of effectiveness and efficiency in its deployment;

Recommendation 15: There is a strong case for the establishment and step-wise rollout of an Infrastructure Roadmap for South Africa.

Recommendation 16: Establish a National Advisory Panel on Cyber-infrastructure to deal with cyber-infrastructure at strategic and policy level.

Monitoring and Evaluation (I)

Assessment:

• Progress in improving the functioning of the NSI is currently still hampered by absence of an assigned responsibility for ensuring the availability, collation, maintenance (and even analysis) of the STI indicators (quantitative and qualitative) + M&E and planning of NSI.

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Monitoring and Evaluation (II)

Assessment cont.

• No entity currently has the capability to do system mapping, analysis, building, steerage, evaluation, learning and foresight for the NSI.

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Monitoring and Evaluation (III)

• Recommendation 17: ORIP should be a centralised facility to serve as a repository of evaluation information on the NSI, and an expert site for its distillation and distribution to inform strategy and steerage at the highest levels and more broadly.

• Attention to foresight studies, as well as carefully designed social fabric studies.

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Financing the NSI (I)

Assessment:Comparison of the 2008–2009 R&D expendituredata with those for 2007–2008 shows anincrease in total ‘real’ spend of only 1.3%, whilethe total number of researchers and R&Dpersonnel has generally been static, andactually fell when expressed as a percentage ofthe total employment in the country, to only 1.4researchers per 1000 persons employed.

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Financing the NSI (II)

Assessment cont.• The current incentive schemes are

laudably investing about R600 million of government money in innovation projects of business/industry, most of it actually spent in HEIs and science councils.

• The tax benefit for business R&D activity that meets set criteria is being taken up too slowly.

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Financing the NSI (III)

Recommendations 17, 18 and 19• Increase public resourcing of HE R&D

(using performance as key criterion).• Encourage and incentivise

business/industry to increase its R&D expenditure

• The incentive schemes offered by the DTI and TIA/DST should be expanded.

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Financing the NSI (IV)

Recommendation 20: Encourage government departments to improve service delivery through RDI, including the effective use of the annual survey of government expenditure on science and technology activities, to draw up prospective expenditure plans annually for such activities.

Recommendation 21: Everything possible must be done for South Africa to become the preferred destination on the African continent for R&D-related foreign direct investment.

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