Feds unveil refocused National Research Council

It's official. After more than two years of planning and execution, the federal government has pulled back the curtains on the refocused National Research Council (NRC). While the announcement was short on details, the revamped NRC has emerged with business clearly in the driver's seat (R$, April 24/13).

The NRC's institutes have been replaced with 12 "industry-themed entry points" and will now be guided by a five-point value proposition: impact, accountability, leadership, integrity and collaboration.

Speaking at the May 7th announcement, Dr Gary Goodyear, minister of state for science and technology, said the NRC had drifted from its original mandate and was now returning to its historic roots as a driver of commercial innovation with "a business led innovation mission".

The intent is to encourage the private sector to conduct more R&D — an area in which Canada has been notably weak in comparison to competitor nations.

What that means is the NRC will be doing less fundamental research and a lot more applied R&D via four business lines: strategic R&D, technical services, management of S&T infrastructure and the Industrial Research Assistance Program.

"NRC really doesn't do basic research for the sake of basic research. Any basic research it does now will be customer driven like in aerospace. There are often no distinct lines between these sorts of things," Goodyear told RE$EARCH MONEY . "Some companies will pay for basic research and there will be others that have a product that needs tweaking."

The latest federal Budget provided NRC?with $121 million to support its new mandate and aid in its transformation. Goodyear says that there will be expenses associated with NRC's increasing collaboration with business and its efforts to de-risk R&D, whether it's hiring new personnel or purchasing new equipment, adding that industry will be required to shoulder much of the cost.

A recent NRC internal poll found that 58% of responding employees strongly disagreed or disagreed that the NRC leadership is "making the right decisions for the success of the organization." Goodyear says now that the refocusing is public it will be easier to explain the rationale for the changes both to staff and stakeholders.

"We now have a transformation coordinator with the NRC and we hope to get the full message to employees. I'd like to see that poll repeated, perhaps in August," says Goodyear, adding that the NRC has a comprehensive suite of metrics that includes a "constant monitoring of different managers at NRC with an eye on improvement".

Goodyear says the refocused NRC?is the next major step in a multi-year strategy for S&T, drawing on both the 2007 S&T strategy and the updated strategy now under development at Industry Canada.

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