This report presents the findings of a process review of UKRI\u2019s research and innovation funding\nresponse to COVID-19. Areas of focus are its strategic rationale, governance, funding and\nprocess changes, operations and delivery, communications, assessment processes, and\nmonitoring.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Our headline conclusion is that UKRI performed well in its function as a research and innovation\nfunder under difficult conditions, having to process a substantially larger volume of applications\nat a much faster pace than would ordinarily be the case. Especially in the early months of the\npandemic, UKRI rapidly funded a range of studies critical to the pandemic response. However,\nUKRI\u2019s COVID-19 response was negatively affected by three partially related factors:\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We set out a number of recommendations in the concluding section of this report to help inform possible future crisis responses, some of which also pertain to post-pandemic business-as-usual. They include urgently replacing the JeS\/Siebel system (as is already planned) with a system that enables rapid design and setup of bespoke schemes with individually tailored application formats and assessment processes, to create a small suite of different funding schemes for crisis- responses of all types, and to make use of these habitually (e.g. in smaller-scale crises). We also recommend closely replicating the governance structure used for the COVID-19 response for future large cross-council endeavours, and to ensure a rule-change on how UKRI can rapidly reallocate its budget in possible future crisis scenarios.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Below, we note our key findings in each of the main focus areas for this study. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Originating in part from central government, UKRI\u2019s objective (or \u2018mission\u2019) in relation to COVID- 19 was to fund research relevant to the stated, emerging and potential needs of government and other actors (e.g. public services, private enterprise) dealing with all aspects of COVID-19 and its wider implications, and to produce impact or useable\/actionable knowledge within the lifetime of short-to-medium term awards. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
To achieve this aim, UKRI sought to execute the funding response as rapidly as possible, to fund across the disciplinary spectrum, to communicate with central government, and to mobilise the UK research and innovation community. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This overall mission remained consistent throughout and reflects UKRI\u2019s overall organisational\nmission well. It is also similar to the stated objectives in response to COVID-19 of other research\nand innovation funders across the globe.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Importantly, UKRI\u2019s COVID-19 response broadly divides into two parts. The first largely took place\nin the early months of the pandemic and was in many ways a \u2018pandemic response\u2019 broadly\ncomparable to previous responses to pandemics such as Ebola and Zika, albeit at a larger\nscale. The second part, which notably encompasses the Agile Call, presents a funding\nresponse not just to the pandemic itself, but to the wider societal emergency that unfolded,\nincluding questions around the economic, societal and technological consequences of\nCOVID-19 and its countermeasures. While there were precedents and existing guidelines for\nthe first part of the response, this second element presented a genuinely new type of funding\nendeavour: other than rapid response schemes of a small number of research funders in\ncountries that have recently experienced other societal emergencies, there is little prior\nexperience or guidance to draw on. This also means that the scope for lessons and future\noptimisation is especially large for this second part of the response.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The first part of the COVID-19 response was largely led by UKRI\u2019s regular governance structures,\nwith MRC leading much of the funding work, and through interaction between SAGE and\nUKRI\/MRC. For the Agile Call, a cross-UKRI Coordination Group was set up as the central part\nof the COVID-19 response governance, aided by an advisory expert Taskforce and a Working\nGroup representing the operational and administrative level of UKRI.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
UKRI COVID-19 governance arrangements worked very well, especially in terms of facilitating\ncross-council work through the establishment of a central Coordination Group with substantial\ndecision-making power. The overall leadership of the UKRI Chief Executive, and especially of\nthe Coordination Group chair, was widely praised. Consultees for this study often noted that\ncross-council collaboration worked exceptionally well compared with previous endeavours.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
UKRI succeeded in supporting a large body of work that was broadly relevant to all aspects of\nthe pandemic. Particularly in the first phase of the response, consultation with central\ngovernment enabled clear communication of research needs, and large platform and\nconsortia studies could be established and funded quickly to support the immediate\npandemic response.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In collaboration with the governing Taskforce, UKRI established a set of strategic priority areas\nfor funding within the Agile call. However, as the scope of research-needs broadened, there\nwas a lack of systematic priority-setting in terms of which topics required an especially rapid\nresponse (e.g. to be able to yield relevant results on timelines bound by pending policy\ndecisions). While there were many lines of communication between UKRI and central\ngovernment, these resulted in a general list of priority topics, but not in more detailed\nprioritisation and specificity in terms of what kind of timelines and impact-pathways were\nneeded for different topics.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
UKRI excelled in terms of its service delivery. From external and internal perspectives alike,\nfeedback on ease of application processes and robustness of assessment is overwhelmingly\npositive \u2013 award holders even tended to characterise UKRI\u2019s service delivery as better than\nduring pre-pandemic \u2018business as usual\u2019.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, UKRI\u2019s efforts to deliver a rapid funding service came at substantial personal cost in the shape of severe workload for both UKRI administrative staff and the community of reviewers and panellists. Large numbers of consultees for this study used terms such as \u2018exhaustion\u2019 and \u2018burnout\u2019 when describing the effect of UKRI staff having to process a high volume of applications so rapidly. Further, despite the substantial efforts put in by UKRI staff, the volume of applications and staff and reviewer capacity meant that the time-to-grant target of up to six weeks was missed frequently: our findings suggest that over a third of award holders waited more than 10 weeks for a decision. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
These delays were especially pronounced in the Agile Call and were substantially exacerbated\nin the late summer of 2020 as UKRI was waiting for a decision by HM Treasury on a business case\nto reallocate additional budget to the COVID-19 response.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
UKRI successfully mobilised large parts of the UK research base, at first in the shape of rapidly\nidentifying and supporting key parts of the research system in core tasks critical to the\npandemic response, and then in a much broader sense, supporting a large body of awards\nrelating to a wide range of issues around the pandemic and its wider implications. In total, over\n6,300 applications were received across the main UKRI calls.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Our survey data also suggest that the aims of calls and investments, as well as UKRI\u2019s overall\nmission as described above, were clearly communicated both internally and to award holders.\nThe open calls did attract a substantial amount of out-of-scope and\/or unfundable proposals\n(alongside many good ones), but our research suggests this is attributable to factors other than\nUKRI\u2019s communication of aims to potential applicants.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At the start of the pandemic, UKRI used a range of iterative processes to set up and fund the\nmajor consortia and platform studies critical to the pandemic response. For much of the\nremainder of the response, funding processes strongly resembled business-as-usual, with peer\nand panel review used throughout, and with minor differences between the Research Councils\nand small modifications in the later stages of the response. In effect, processes were\naccelerated, but not significantly simplified to aid that acceleration.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Several funders covered by our international review had schemes using alternative funding\nprocesses designed to reduce the peer review burden (including the burden on staff to\norganise it) or, for smaller and especially urgent investments, to bypass it completely. Other\nthan for specific individual award investments and the recent COVID-19 Urgency Grants, UKRI\nundertook little experimentation and diversification of funding processes. In part, this is a result\nof the limited priority-setting (especially for the Agile Call), which left little scope to consider\ndifferent award types (e.g. sizes, levels of urgency) with different processes for each.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Large parts of UKRI\u2019s COVID-19 funding response were conducted \u2018off-system\u2019, relying in large\npart on application submission via email and administration via MS Word and spreadsheet\ndocuments, until JeS\/Siebel was brought back into most parts of the process in August 2020\n(though it remains out of use for the COVID-19 Urgency Grants scheme launched in Jan 2021).\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A main reason for this decision was that it was not possible with JeS\/Siebel to set up a bespoke\nUKRI-wide COVID-19 response call rapidly, let alone a suite of calls that may have been suited\nto different levels of topical urgency and award \u2018types\u2019.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It also meant a reduced availability of portfolio monitoring data (including EDI data) in the\nearly and mid-stages of the COVID-19 response, which may have provided valuable evidence.\nThe system is now active, and tailored surveys are being carried out on a regular basis to ensure\nprogress reporting on all funded awards, so aside from comprehensive EDI and unsuccessful\napplicants data, UKRI is now well set up for the evaluation of the outcomes of the funded work.\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"template":"","solution":[],"sector":[],"class_list":["post-34517","report","type-report","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n