Study: “Monitoring strategy and requirements for IST-RTD in the 6th FP”

Objective

The study forms part of the response to the Monitoring Panel’s recommendations and aims to support IST Programme Management in its efforts to improve programme effectiveness and efficiency. In certain cases it will help to re-design and re-adjust programme activities and processes and set new priorities. To this end the study will examine two specific and substantively distinct areas of action. These are set out as two separate themes of the study:

Study theme 1: An assessment of the use of the FP6 instruments (both “new” and “traditional”) and development of best practice guidelines to assist IST programme participants in understanding the best ways to develop and manage the new instrument.

The FP6 “new” instruments and their operation alongside “traditional” instruments have been designed to better optimise the European R&D effort and implement the FP6 Priority Themes, but their immediate and longer-term impacts are yet to emerge. This study theme will provide a significant input into understanding their effects, and special emphasis will be given to:

(1) The extent to which participation in IPs and NoEs engages strongest researchers in critical areas, and mobilises a critical mass of efforts across the ERA; and

(2) The participation of smaller research actors of scientific excellence, including SMEs, as well as research actors from the New Accession States. This quantitative and qualitative analysis should, in particular, cover to what extent the “traditional” instruments such as the Specific Targeted Projects and Co-ordination Actions can be used as a “stairway of excellence“ to facilitate these organisations’ participation in IPs and NoEs. It will also provide the basis for the elaboration of a strategy-level paper on alternative forms for SMEs participation, taking into account the results of the first IST-FP6 calls.

Study theme 2: Analysis of potential Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to support the IST monitoring, evaluation and impact assessments notably at the “Strategic Objectives” level.

This study theme relates to both recommendations R4 and R8 of the 2002 IST Monitoring Panel report. It reflects a growing commitment to attest to the longer-term benefits and utility of IST actions. This study theme will focus on results and impacts at meso-level, namely Strategic Objective level and provide the tools and KPIs for supporting the analysis of outputs, results and impacts at this meso-level.

It will also identify methodologies for continuously and systematically validating these KPIs, provide recommendations on the nature of the mechanisms for feeding them with data, and on how these KPIs could be used to better support the IST programme’s implementation.

Start date: 2003

End date: 2004

Outputs

• Inception report
• Study report:
  • Part A
    • Management report [228 KB]
  • Part B
    • The use of FP6 instruments [631 KB]
    • SMEs participation [296 KB]
    • Annexes [532 KB]
  • Part C
    • Monitoring and Impact Indicators [351 KB]

Background documents

• Tender specifications [108 KB]
• Decision concerning the 6th Framework programme for RTD [194 KB]
• Introduction to FP6 instruments [86 KB]
• 2002 External IST Monitoring Report [503 KB]

Contacts

Ms Isabelle Collins
Senior Consultant
Technopolis Ltd
3 Pavilion Buildings
Brighton BN1 1EE
United Kingdom
Tel: +44 (0)1273 204320
Fax: +44 (0)1273 747299
email: isabelle.collins@technopolis-group.com