The overall institutional and management platform of the central STI funding system was completely reshaped.
An Inter-Ministerial Joint Council was introduced to coordinate interagency priorities and budgeting, and to prevent overlaps across and within ministries. The Joint Council represents the ultimate and highest authority of the new national STI funding system. It is formed by a total of 31 government bodies, led by the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST), and including the Ministry of Finance (MOF) and the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC). It is mainly responsible for approving the overall development strategy of central government STI funding, as well as the layout, setting, major tasks, implementation schemes and management regulations for specific funding programmes.
The Joint Council is also responsible for:
- Approving the composition of a Strategic Advisory and Comprehensive Review Committee: formed by senior technology, industry, and management experts, it is responsible for providing technical advice and support to the Joint Council, so as to improve the quality of decision-making;
- Approving the selection of project management professional agencies: agencies empowered for the daily management and operation of central STI funding programmes, on behalf of the ministries and other bodies in the Joint Council. They organise and collect applications, organise evaluations, and organise funding allocation. A total of seven state-owned not-for-profit organisations have been selected so far (all of them being shiye danwei); in the next years, efforts will be put into encouraging non-governmental professional service organisations to apply as project management professional agencies. *
- Establishing a unified evaluation, inspection, and dynamic adjustment mechanism: MOST and MOF will supervise, evaluate and inspect the results and performance of all national STI programmes to ensure that the expected outputs are met. A dynamic adjustment mechanism will be triggered in case changes need to be adopted to ensure the project’s delivery, or to respond to unexpected circumstances; it will also determine whether certain funded projects need to be extended or terminated. A scientific credit rating system is also created.
These three mechanisms will drive the operation of the new management platform, under the overall guidance and supervision of the Joint Council. Finally, a unified and comprehensive information management system was developed to centralise fragmented and scattered information on national STI funding programmes. This will be done through two main pillars:
- The National Science and Technology Information System, Public Service Platform (commonly referred to as “National Service Platform”), namely the hub of all information on national STI funding programmes, including calls for comments on draft tenders, official tender guidelines, application and evaluation procedures, as well as list of winners and demographics data. Applications to several funding programmes must be submitted online through this Platform;
The National S&T Report Service, namely the platform through which reports on ongoing or concluded projects are publ
* The seven agencies currently selected are:
- MOST’s China National Center for Biotechnology Development(中国生物技术发展中心);
- MOST’s High-Tech Research Development Center(科技部高技术研究发展中心);
- MOST’s Administrative Center for China’s Agenda 21(中国21世纪议程管理中心);
- MOST’s China Rural Technology Development Center(中国农村技术开发中心);
- MIIT Industry Development Promotion Center(工业和信息化部产业发展促进中心);
- Ministry of Agriculture Science and Technology Development Center(农业部科技发展中心);
- NHFPC’s Development Center for Medical Science and Technology(国家卫生计生委医药卫生科技发展研究中心).
All of them were reformed to have a standardised structure and management mechanisms, each with independent legal personality, an executive council and supervisory board, institutional chart, etc. It is commonly believed that this delegation of the daily management and operations from central government to professional agencies should increase fairness and transparency. These Project Management Professional Agencies will be referred to in this website as °project management agencies”.