Module 2 - Strengthening Public Research Institutes

In many countries, institutional reforms are essential to make public research organizations more effective and efficient. A frequent¾and often sound¾strategy for reform involves providing public agricultural research organizations with an independent legal status and mixed public-private system of governance. This strategy can provide operational flexibility essential for sound management of research, diversification of funding, and recruitment of productive scientists. The success of these reforms depends on freedom from political interference, a clear vision and strategy, respected leadership, a stable funding base, and close links to stakeholders.

Public agricultural research systems provide a basis for the innovation and increased productivity that are necessary for a sustainable and competitive agricultural sector. National research systems are becoming increasingly pluralistic, with a growing role for the private sector, new mechanisms for research funding, and more global scientific linkages. Despite these changes, public sector NAROs continue to have a central role to undertake basic and long-term research, to provide public good products, and to support overall development of the research system. However, many public research organizations need to resolve problems of low productivity and relevance if they are to perform these roles effectively.

 

Autonomous National Agricultural Research Organizations

Most public research organizations were established in the 1950s and 1960s as research departments under ministries of agriculture. They grew over time with strong donor support, but they soon ran into problems because of incompatibility between civil service rules and the requirements for efficient research execution. By the 1980s, these problems led many such organizations to seek greater autonomy and sufficient flexibility to efficiently manage financial, physical, and human resources for agricultural research. Autonomy was expected to allow the research institute to get rid of excess staff and improve management systems and personnel policies. Three major types of NAROs have evolved:

• Semiautonomous organizations have a legal status different from the regular civil service but lack a legal corporate identity. Such organizations provide some flexibility in financial and personnel management, but often they continue to follow civil service rules. Their power to set their own business rules is often ambiguous, and they lack adequate flexibility to carry out modern scientific research. Most NAROs fall into this category.
  
  
• Publicly owned corporations have a mixed, public-private governing body that, in principle, has the power to set the rules for financial, personnel, and asset management. Because such organizations remain in the public sector, however, their flexibility is often constrained by political factors, and public funding continues to dominate. Research organizations in Colombia, Uruguay, and Brazil are in this category.