Science, Technology & Public Policy

Science, Technology & Public Policy Overview

Science and technology play a multi-faceted role in the governance of modern national economies that extends beyond the current focus on innovation per se. The resulting disjuncture between these complex realities and the simplicity sought by contemporary innovation policy stances creates significant challenges for policymakers.

Firstly, public science generates socially, environmentally and economically useful outcomes (such as preparedness for dealing with future uncertainties and risks) that do not necessarily require innovation – although innovation objectives may be driven by these preparedness concerns. The risk-averse manner in which output-outcome budgeting has been implemented makes it difficult to capture these important outcomes in program appraisal and evaluation, and has therefore distorted policy-making. It is hard to justify spending on public science aimed at generating preparedness outcomes in contexts that privilege research commercialisation outcomes via more easily measured outputs (patents, spin-offs, licences etc).

Secondly, scientific and technological capabilities play a critical role in the articulation and projection of national power and in responses to threats to national security (including terrorism and trans-national organised crime). The dominating emphasis on business innovation in current policy narratives neglects this critically important and often more troubling aspect of science and technology. It is also notable that international relations scholars have tended to treat science and technology as exogenous factors in the conduct of international affairs rather than as endogenous factors that are driven by the efforts of nations to exercise material power (the geostrategic shaping of science and technology). Similarly, the majority of scientists who work outside of the national security community tend to be reluctant to recognise the geostrategic implications of their work (few research fields do not have the potential for dual use applications).

Thirdly, the relationships between advances in industrial technology, and changes in employment, productivity growth and business competitiveness are more complex than implicitly assumed in many government policy stances. This is partly because competiveness, employment and productivity growth can be driven by innovative business applications of older vintages of technology with higher profit margins than are attainable simply by adopting the latest vintages of technology. These business realities tend to be glossed over in government innovation support policies – which tend to assume that newer technologies are always commercially superior to older vintages of technology.

In short therefore, an understanding of the different ways in which science and technology impact upon, and are affected by, government policies requires and richer and more nuanced approach than simply asserting that there is an over-arching imperative to ‘innovate’ and, in so doing, overlooking the more complex considerations outlined above.
 
The aim of this program is to complement the current emphasis on innovation in government policy stances with a more balanced and accurate approach to understanding how the complex issues and choices concerning scientific and technological capabilities can be addressed effectively within a public policy context.

The key policy challenge for governments is not simply to ‘foster innovation’ as an end in itself. Rather, it is to manage critical trade-offs between economic imperatives, geostrategic and national security considerations, environmental challenges, and the long-term social and economic consequences of an ageing society. These trade-offs are particularly acute in regard to dual use science and technology – domains in which commercial and economic pressures must be balanced against the risks to national security posed by the dissemination and cross-border transfer of scientific and technological expertise, information and know-how.

One major objective of the program is to seek to re-connect modern understanding of the nature and extent of scientific and technological advances with the initial impetus for focusing on such issues in the immediate post World War Two era. Namely, understanding the contribution of scientific and technological advances to economic growth in the civilian domain together with the ‘dual use’ ways in which defence science and technology contribute to national security whilst also contributing to the dynamism of the overall economy. We need to re-connect our modern focus on innovation with these economic, social and geostrategic fundamentals.

Consequently, the program will help to drive a convergence between central economic ministry concerns with modeling and managing the transition to an ageing society and a lower carbon footprint with current understanding of how business innovation and scientific and technological advances actually take place. The latter is a body of work that has ‘spun-off’ from the initial econometric research on the sources of economic growth but has yet to re-connect with those growth accounting analyses.

A major benefit from facilitating this re-connection will be an enhanced capacity to understand how policy choices concerning science, technology and innovation (including R&D support and R&D tax subsidies) are likely to impact upon future economic performance, national security and environmental sustainability. We require this richer and more accurate understanding of how science and technology relate to a wide range of policy domains in order to better grasp the specific relationships between levels of investment in R&D and long-run employment and productivity growth.

The program provides the Institute with access to cutting-edge policy research, teaching and professional education in a key policy domain of interest to several Commonwealth government departments.

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