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View Paper |
Session Topic: 2D, NMI and RMO Strategies |
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Paper Title: Setting Research Priorities For A National Measurement Programme: The Biggest Bang For The Tax-Payer’s Buck
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Date & Time: MONDAY, August 5, 2002 |
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2:30pm - 4:00pm
PARALLEL SESSIONS - SESSION 2 |
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Speaker: Shelley Charik
UK Dept. of Trade and Industry |
Email: shelley.charik@dti.gov.uk |
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The British Government’s Department of Trade and Industry places research contracts with a range of UK metrology institutes to an annual value of £50 million. The contracts cover work across the whole range of measurement science, from mass, length and flow, through ionising radiation and acoustics, to valid analytical measurement in chemistry and bio-chemistry. Within each scientific area, a number of research projects are selected. Looking back at our total expenditure over the past and using macro-economic techniques to assess the benefit to industry, we can easily demonstrate that the tax-payer received good value for money. More focused work on an individual project can also assess its economic value. Such backward-looking analysis is reassuring but provides insufficient guidance to the direction of future work. We need to know if research into mass will provide better value than research into ionising radiation. We also need to know if ionising radiation research is better directed at dosimetry for workers at nuclear power plans or at calibration of hospital cancer treatment equipment. In the UK we are working hard to develop analytical tools to help us make these judgements. For some years now we have been using a technique which assesses the relative industrial impact of different research projects. However, much of our research is aimed at improving quality of life rather than at benefit to industry. We are now trying to adapt to our purposes techniques, already used by other parts of our government, to assess the value for money generated by new medical treatments and by transport safety improvements. We are also considering whether the concept of the uncertainty budget can also be used as one factor in determining value for money. We then hope to use decision conferencing, where experts can take what guidance may be available from all these quantitative methods in order to reach judgements on the highest value combination of research topics. The state of the art in what is very much a work in progress in the UK will be fully described at the conference. |
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