Federal labs face increasingly challenging environment as they steps to measure and maximize benefits to Canada

Efforts to enhance and measure the benefits of federal S&T are constrained by the current high-tech industrial landscape and a lack of tools for accurately measuring the impact of government labs in the economy and society, a gathering of federal technology transfer officials were told this week. The 10th annual meeting of the Federal Partners in Technology Transfer (FPTT) heard that the challenges of moving federal intellectual property (IP) into economic and social realms for the benefit of all Canadians are made more complex by the ongoing march of globalization and often thwarted by the conflicting objectives of the parties involved.

Perhaps the most vexing challenge within government is the difficulty in measuring the impact of federal S&T — a conundrum currently being tackled through several projects designed to generate new indicators and an overarching framework. Projects by the Policy Research Initiative (PRI) and Management Solutions Inc (MSI) are attempting to more accurately gauge the output of government laboratories by improving the measurement and reporting of their activities. The projects were initiated as part of the Conservative government's emphasis on accountability and value-for-money which has permeated all aspects of the federal S&T and R&D enterprise.

"For federal S&T, the wrong indicators are being used. Statistics Canada still uses patents, licences and revenues," said MSI president Keith Belinko, a former senior government scientist and research manager who founded and chaired the Interdepartmental Group on Intellectual Property Management. "There's currently no consistent approach in measuring and reporting the impact of federal S&T activities … It's not part of our (government) culture to measure impact."

MSI is developing a new framework that will include institutional and policy impacts as well as the more traditional social and economic impacts of federal S&T to supplant previous haphazard and ad hoc attempts by various departments and agencies. The expanded definition reflects the fact that the mandates of most science-based departments and agencies have no economic dimension.

The MSI project is paralleled by the work of the PRI, which is leading a multi-departmental initiative to improve the measurement and reporting of those organizations. A final report is due in early 2009.

PRI senior project director André Downs pointed to CANARIE as an example of an organization that does not collect data on impacts or outcomes, relying instead on non-statistics measures such as testimonials.

"If you're putting $120 million into a program, you need to know what you're getting out of it," said Downs.

The FPTT conference also heard from individuals outside of government, who offered perspectives on the receptor environment for tech transfer and efforts to secure benefits to Canada.

Benefit-to-Canada provisions are included in the mandates and activities of publicly funded organizations such as the Industrial Research Assistance Program (IRAP), the Ontario Centres of Excellence and TEC Edmonton. But the global scope of high-tech and the interests of private sector financing often force these organizations to compromise.

IRAP for instance, will waive the benefit-to-Canada clause or even repayment provisions if it will help a company become successful. IRAP also relies on indicators such as jobs, sales and impact on clusters.

The global environment has also had an important impact on IP being transferred from the university sector. Due to the collaborative nature of much research, IP is often transnational in nature and spread across multiple institutions and jurisdictions, says Dr Tim McTiernan, assistant VP research and executive director of The Innovations Group at the Univ of Toronto.

"Commercialization has become a substitute for more coherent economic development strategies and policies. It leads to interesting push-and-pull relationships between universities and government departments," says McTiernan. "We're caught in this tug and tussle, balancing public policy imperatives with what we are supposed to do from an economic development perspective."

Protecode Inc CEO Mahshad Koohgoli, a veteran of Ottawa's high-tech sector and a serial entrepreneur, says benefits to Canada often conflict with the reality of the marketplace.

Koohgoli tends to shy away from utilizing government programs as the process is too time consuming. But he did use IRAP funding for a previous venture. After mortgaging his house to come up with matching funds for a $200,000 IRAP grant, he secured a $1-million follow-on from IRAP, only to have his company purchased by a large US company.

"IP clauses and clarity are very important for companies ... A large US multinational bought it and wanted clear IP title," he says, adding that he paid back the IRAP contribution. "The R&D stayed in Ottawa and employs 50 people so it's a good story giving away that IP. It created jobs."

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