Statistics Canada maintains focus on GERD, vows to re-engage international community

Statistics Canada's program to track S&T and R&D activity in Canada remains focused on measuring inputs to gross expenditures on R&D (GERD) as it responds to cuts to several surveys and a pending re-definition of R&D from an expense to an investment. The division is also working to further merge S&T with the agency's much larger Integrated Business Survey Program (IBSP) as well as the measurement of investments in tangible goods.

Formerly known as the Science, Innovation and Electronic Information Division (SIED), S&T is now part of the Investment, Science and Technology Division (ISTD) — a combination its director says provides an opportunity to rethink existing measures and explore the potential for providing a more accurate and holistic statistical representation of innovative activity. While earlier efforts to develop indicators for technology use have not evolved, there is a push to move from producing qualitative to quantitative indicators including intangible investments.

"I think we're putting ourselves in a good place … When we integrated the R&D surveys into the IBSP program that gave us a much more stable program from which we operate," says Greg Peterson, who assumed leadership of the division last October. "The questions we should be asking ourselves are, we've got a lot of survey capacity within innovation so how do we best deploy that capacity and how do we find linkages between what's happening in the S&T program and the capital expenditure program."

The task will be made somewhat more difficult as the ISTD division seeks to re-engage on the international front while absorbing a $600,000 cut to its resources announced in the last Budget. While the cuts represents about 2% of the $33.9-million reduction in StatsCan's overall budget, it prompted the elimination of three core surveys from the ISTD roster (see chart). Peterson says their elimination will have little impact on the division's main focus on GERD.

"The two intellectual property surveys don't feed into GERD. Given that our priority mission is to produce GERD, those were kind of low-hanging fruit," says Peterson. "For the provincial scientific activity survey, there were a couple of factors. We never got complete participation from the provinces (and) overall it contributed less than 2% to GERD … Even without cuts to the program, there were questions about whether or not it should continue in the form it's in right now — was it really responding to the needs and was it producing data at a high enough level of quality?"

Other surveys that have appeared over the years have not been repeated as they were done on an ad hoc basis, requiring funding external to the division's resources to maintain them. These surveys included the long-running biotechnology use and development, Canadian R&D that directly benefits developing nations, technology use (other than the current survey on Internet usage) and advanced technology.

"We have to take a look at how we measure innovation. Are there more quantitative means of measuring innovation. I think that's an avenue of exploration. Others are involved in that exploration as well. What do we produce out of the creative use of existing administrative databases. That's the other question out there."

— Greg Peterson, director, Investment, Science and Technology Division,

Statistics Canada

Many of these were launched during the 1990s when the former SIED division was led by Dr Fred Gault. Under Gault's leadership, Statistics Canada developed a powerful set of STI indicators that put Canada on the map internationally and helped to establish a small but influential group of researchers examining the complexities of innovation as a local and regional phenomenon (R$, April 16/08). The viability of those indicators was already under siege when Gault left StatsCan in 2008 and the latest cuts combined with the merger of S&T and investment activities and the agency's temporary withdrawal from international activities has left that division at something of a crossroads. Yet Peterson says he's optimistic it will flourish once again.

"A large part of that comes with the combination of these two divisions into one unit. We have on the S&T side a lot of (people) thinking about and largely focused on statistical infrastructure and how we are going to be modifying things and moving things ahead. On the investment side, we have people in our capital expenditures survey program," he says. "If I can use a metaphor, it's kind of like a swimming duck. On the surface, we're producing GERD and many of the indicators we were producing before. The other activity happening is underneath the surface and it's a lot of stuff which I think would be probably transparent or invisible to users. We're doing a lot of things internally to support the statistical infrastructure that we have in the division and support a lot of the back office activities."

Another initiative that still requires a decision is external advice. The former SIED division utilized an external advisory committee which fell dormant for the past few years before being officially disbanded early this year. While Peterson says the agency hasn't decided upon the method of securing external advice, the need is not questioned. "I don't think we can develop and evolve the S&T program with having input from policy makers and people from the outside," he says. "We benefit greatly from that kind of guidance but I don't think we've settled on the vehicle that we use to obtain that guidance."

Peterson says the division also plans to re-engage with the international S&T statistical community after missing this year's gathering of OECD's National Experts on Science and Technology Indicators (NESTI).

"This is not an activity we can do in isolation. We have to do it in partnership with others both nationally and internationally," says Peterson. "(International) has fallen by the wayside in the recent past and it's our intention to be plugged into what's happening internationally. Anytime we can learn from the experience of others, that only helps us."

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