Notes from Te Ara Paerangi Information Session, December 13th 2022

[sorry, most notes skipped; I started writing notes in the Zoom interface, and wasn't able to copy them over]

* Creating new futures - our impact Objective
Prue
* Want to be clear about what are public good science services
* Funding mechanisms: want to support excellence, improve transparency of overhead
funding
* Some long-term planning required, need to work with th sector
Tara
* Phase-based approach, immediate priority is workplace and people support
* Then looking at how government and institutions need to change
* All change processes take a significant amount of time, will take months / years
* Will not wait until 2026 for structure or funding, will be having those conversations
next year
* Phase 1 - Significant workforce changes, including starting to embedding Te Tirity
* Training schemes
* International talent attraction
* First step is to embed Te Tiriti into the design
* Phase 2 - Establish National Research Priorities
* Work to set up / establish / identify starts already
* Phase 3 - Implement any of the changes required
* Expected to start working on this next year
What's next?
* Many ideas came through in submissions, submissions are still live and being used
Prue
* Release of the White Paper is only a beginning
* Have identified 4 objectives of most significance to NZ

Q & A Session

[note: this is incomplete; I got distracted on a few occasions trying to write questions]
Response to Te Tiriti

* Important to look across everything, how do we understand what is investing,
and the purpose of diversity
* Need to get better at monitoring data
* Not going to be a case of only having one tool, will need a few things
* Analysing some investments to understand how they're working for Māori
* Collection of data is an important part
* Legal implications of privacy
* A bit of work ahead of us
* National Research Priorities vs National Science Challenges
* National Science Challenges had a panel, a different era to what we have now
* Thinking very carefully about what that process will be
* Base grant funding model, no explicit mention in white paper
* Everyone had a very different idea of base grant, what they wanted it to achieve
* Have tried to bring it back to issues / challenges / funding mechanism
* Base grant is a solution, not the answer to challenges
* Trying to pull back from base grant as a solution, looking for a range of different approaches

How will you plan to engage on the NRPs and reforms? Will it just be through the MBIE channels - many people within the RSI system still not aware of these major reforms.* Still missing people, there will be people in the sector just doing the māhi
* Not going to do this in isolation
* Members working through Twitter to make sure information is being lifted up
and gathered together in a single place on Twitter
* How robust is TAP to change in goverments?
* Have tried to make sure working with people across the centre, making changes
as national as possible, as broad as possible.
* Keeping on working with the sector and testing out possibilities.
* Trying to make sure this is not something that is forced on everyone.
* e.g. earthquakes can change priorities

Could CRIs be merged together?
* National priorities could require people to work together, want to get collaborations
working together
* How is the difference between senior and ECR being managed?
* No detail yet in white paper; detail yet to come
* Working closely with MoE
* Will be engaging with industry

National Science Challenge funding will come to an end in 2024, what happens after that?
* National Science Priorities timeline set early to allow continuity

The White Paper makes frequent reference to digitilsation/data/software capabilities, and the wider range of skills and careers needed to support a dynamic, diverse, response research system. What sorts of ideas are coming through in this (rather broad) area?
* White paper hasn't dropped down to that level of detail
* We need to use data effectively

The white paper seems to suggest that the government would prefer to sit back and let businesses increase their funding for research, rather than any government increases. What plans are there to increase government funding as a proportion of total research funding?
* GDP is a combination of both government and private spend
* Paper focuses a lot on public good funding

What mechanisms will be put in place to affect other local and central govenrment agencies to implement the new system?
* Wanting to make sure parts are well connected to the system.
* We have an active discussion with other parts of government.

Publications / Track record ?
* A lot of work with global research council
* Other countries are also facing similar issues
* Quite a worldwide trend thinking about academic focus on CVs, publications
* Have introduced narrative CV
* We have a really strong network where we share
* We all share the same challenges with peer review, carrying out good assessments
in constrained time periods
* Global research connections
* We have a whole international team making sure it's part of the response