Members access

 

Register

Forgotten password

Home >  EU Funding news >  News

Thursday, January 6, 2011

Mid-term assessment of the Security Research and Innnovation (SRI) programme

According to a mid-term independent assessment of the Security Research and Innnovation programme (2007-2013), the results are encouraging. On November 30th, in Brussels, some 70 public and private security research stakeholders gathered to discuss the results of this study which, however, still insists on the need to faster funding of projects and better dissemination to end-users of their R&D results. Mike Coyne, whose London-based firm Centre for Strategy and Evaluation Services (CSES), carried out the assessment and said that the SRI programme has been strongly coherent with the EU’s wider framework policy and appears to be boosting industrial competitiveness in the sector, .

He told the workshop that in general, monitoring of the projects by the European Commission is working well, but more should be done to promote the achievements of these projects. It’s fine for security research consortia to produce long reports on the deliverables achieved, but they need to get the essential message out to stakeholders.

So far, only eight EU member states – Austria, Germany, Finland, France, Netherlands, Romania, Sweden and the UK – have their own national security research programmes, though others are starting to move in that direction.

For example, Julio Martínez Meroño, who works for the Spanish Interior Ministry and chairs the Commission’s Security Advisory Group, said his country is now putting together its own national security research programme. He told workshop participants that the fact that the EU has been doing this is very important because it helps member states structure and define their own national effort.

Another positive factor confirmed by CSES’ evaluation is the high number of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) involved in the programme. Coyne said that access to funding was very much appreciated by the SMEs we interviewed. Many said their participation in research consortia offered ways to develop supply chain relationships as a route to the market.

Some officials involved in their national security research singled out the advantages of working with SMEs. Heike Wagner, head of security research and counter-terrorism within the German Interior Ministry for the province of Brandenburg, said “we are very interested in working with SMEs because they are flexible and innovative. The bigger companies tend to be lame ducks: they are too slow to deliver us the solutions we need.”

But all is not perfect with the SRI programme either. Reacting to the overall CSES findings, Meroño said two pressing changes are needed.

“The speed of [EU] funding for projects is a problem. Things move so fast that if an end-user is told that he’ll have to wait two or more years for research to deliver what he needs, well that is just not on for the end-user. This has got to be speeded up. That’s critical,” declared Meroño.

The other big challenge is to track the take-up of SRI results by end-users, which he said points to national procurement of capabilities.

He observed that the success of an SRI project has to go beyond the fact that a research consortium got the money and achieved the results or produced a well-written report. The use of the results has to be tracked as well. Success will be [achieved] if we create a consolidated security market and if our ministries do not have to look abroad — beyond Europe — to buy the things they need.

Source  European Commission - DG Enterprise and Industry

More information  European Commission - DG Enterprise and Industry

linked programmes:

Also read:

Look for a grant Go Recherche avancée