KEIT Spearheads Innovation of R&D Support System

Introduces the concept of competition to the R&D management process, which will make planning and distribution more efficient, as well as maximizing impact to factors such as commercialization

The following are excerpts of an interview between NewsWorld and Young-ju Suh, president of the Korea Institute of Industrial Technology Evaluation and Planning (KEIT), in which he spoke about the changes and innovation that the state R&D support system has undergone since KEIT’s establishment in May 2009.
Question: Could you introduce KEIT to our readers?
Answer: KEIT is a government-run agency affiliated to the Ministry of Knowledge Economy (MKE), we are charged with the execution of a large portion of government-funded state R&D programs. KEIT was established on May 4th last year, and is the product of six previous national R&D organizations. The previous agencies worked under the umbrella of the Ministry of Information and Commerce, the Ministry for Industry and Energy - which was the predecessor to the MKE - and the now-defunct Ministry of Communications. We perform planning, evaluation and management for industrial technology R&D with the goal of strengthening national technological competitiveness. KEIT has two offices, one in Seoul, one in Daejeon, with five departments and one separate center for SMEs. We have a total staff of 260.
Q: What’s the background to the consolidation of those previous R&D organizations?
A: Our government’s R&D budget for this year is valued at approximately 13.7 trillion won. Out of that total, 4.4 trillion won is handled by the MKE. Even though the government R&D outlay has seen an annual growth rate of 10 percent into the 2000s, in reality it is one-twelfth that of the United States’ and one-third that of Japan’s. If the nation wants to compete with such limited resources, then enhancing our budgetary efficiency is essential.
This is the reason the government merged several state-financed R&D programs managed by MOCIE and MIC into one under the control of MKE in 2008. It is also the reason it consolidated the previous R&D evaluation and management organizations, which had become decentralized and were not operating as efficiently as they could have been for that reason. The goal was to raise efficiency in supporting R&D while increasing our expertise. KEIT was established by merging six R&D planning, evaluation, and management organizations into one under the control of MKE in May 2009. This was done in accordance with the Industrial Technology Innovation Promotion Act announced in January 2009.
Q: Could you tell us more about KEIT’s major projects?
A: Certainly…The portion of the government’s R&D budget that KEIT will control this year is 2.151 trillion won. This amount is comprised of 1.821 trillion won from MKE ― 41% of that ministry’s entire R&D budget, and 329.7 billion won from the Small & Medium Business Administration. The money is designated for use by companies, research institutes, and universities to develop industrial technology.
KEIT is managing a total of 38 programs with different sets of goals. These include the development of original industry technologies that will create the nation’s future growth engines; the development of parts and materials in order to reduce the trade imbalance which currently favors neighboring Japan; funding for the Advanced Technology Center which fosters the innovative efforts of SMEs; the development of technologies in aviation, textiles, design and other areas; as well as the development of technologies involving the Small & Medium Businesses.
KEIT plans to pour 1.237 trillion won, or 57.5 percent of its total R&D budget, into developing core industry technologies. We believe this will ramp up the competitiveness of key industries and nurture new future industries by reinforcing the development of existing technologies, as well as fostering the development of new technologies. The technology areas involved include automobiles, shipbuilding and other transportation systems; textiles, metals and other industrial materials; robotics, bio/medical devices and other industrial technology sectors; radio frequency identification (RFID), info-tech media, next-generation communication networks, software, computing and ICT areas.
Furthermore, KEIT has set aside 290.3 billion won for the parts and materials technology sector this year alone. We will funnel 200 billion won, developing 20 top core parts and materials, as well as spending 1 trillion won on what we call the Top 10 World Premier Materials Program (WPM) by 2018. The idea is to localize world-class parts and materials R&D and get a jump-start in global markets. If it is carried out successfully, the products from the Parts and Materials Development Program will result in import substitution worth 3.7 trillion won, in addition to the increased exports of parts and materials totaling up to 17 trillion won. This would create around 120,000 jobs. The WPM program will help us take a market share of 10%, valued at around $320 billion at current standings as well as create another 35,000 jobs.
In the second half of the year, KEIT and MKE plan to implement the ‘World Best Software Program,’ which the government announced early this year in a bid to make Korea into a software powerhouse. For three years, starting from this year, 1 trillion won will be ploughed into developing software technologies which have high potential for commercialization within three years. An average of 2 billion won will be given to each technology assessed as having a high chance of development. These technologies will lead to the substitution of imports and an expansion of the nation’s overseas presence.
Finally, 329.7 billion won from the SMBA will be steered into the SME Innovative Technology Development Program and the Technology Program with Targeted End-users. The government plans to raise the portion of the R&D budget for SMEs from the current level of 4 percent to 6 percent by 2013. At the same time it plans to nurture 300 world-leading SMEs and 1,000 high-innovation SMEs over the next five years. KEIT always strives to adopt a “choice and concentration” strategy to ensure investment efficiency.
Q: How about KEIT’s responsibilities and business processes? Can you tell us more about those?
A: KEIT is charged with the overall management of industrial technology R&D including projects planning, selection and contracting, monitoring of project milestones, the evaluation and management of follow-up services as well as collecting royalties.
KEIT’s work processes are divided into three main stages ― R&D planning, evaluation, and outcome management. Our efforts to provide quality service led to KEIT being awarded ISO 9001 certification for program management processes in December of last year.
At the R&D planning stage, program directors coordinate 10 IT sectors, while other sectors are handled by their respective technology committees. Program directors and technology committees select candidate projects after performing technology road-mapping or conducting technology demand surveys. The selection of projects and researchers, as well as the responsibility for mid-term and final evaluations is handled by KEIT’s evaluation committee. This comprises of fewer than 10 civilian experts and a KEIT official serving as a coordinator. Milestone monitoring is conducted to check for proper execution of projects, and to give the necessary feedback for successful completion. Follow-up services, including periodic and continuous outcome management are conducted according to an end-product roadmap after the completion of projects.
Q: Have there been any changes in R&D support regimes or methodology?
A: We are very proud of the nationwide increase in scientific and technological achievements, such as the rise in publication of important papers, and the number of patents filled, which have resulted largely from state-funded R&D investments, but subsequent economic impacts, including the creation of new industries, have been disappointing. As of 2009, the rate of commercialization for our programs stood at only 43 percent. Investment in R&D would be said to be more productive and beneficial if activities bring forth commercialization and contribute to the nation’s future growth engines. This is the reason the MKE R&D Innovation Strategy, which calls for a shift into a performance-based R&D support regime, was announced this past March following MKE and KEIT’s joint efforts.
Since its inauguration last year, KEIT has been working toward the advancement and innovation of the industrial technology R&D support system with the goal of efficiently allocating and managing the government R&D outlay while maximizing its impact on Korea’s competitiveness. In particular, it has focused on introducing competition during the course of planning and evaluation, as well as bringing about more practical achievements through an end-product roadmap. Setting priorities is the basis of any competitive well-functioning system. Several consortiums will compete from the planning stages in order to come up with better projects; a project bank will be established (acting as a database of potential projects); the evaluation will be conducted in such a way as to reward researchers with good performance, offering extraordinary incentives and rewards for innovative achievements. We will also put in place a mechanism to help us take lessons from failures, so as to not to repeat any mistakes. We hope that this process will allow more targeted and strategic investment and application of resources.
To be specific, the R&D evaluation process has been revamped in such a way that more expertise and accountability will be applied and competition can be expedited. The pool of evaluation committee members will be better managed; utilizing more experts with specific knowledge and more market experience, and more widely differentiated evaluation criteria will be applied according to the nature of individual projects. These experts will be assigned to the whole life cycle of projects in order to give more consistent and detailed feedback. Such steps to revamp evaluation management have been put into operation starting from this year. For the Industrial Strategic Technologies Program in which more than 1 trillion won will be invested this year, a comparative evaluation system to eliminate the bottom 10-15% of performers will be introduced, while the top 10% of researchers will be given preferential treatment when they apply for follow-up projects. Instead of awarding penalties for not meeting project goals, researchers will be given opportunities to submit a failure report in order to share their challenges and experiences. An end-product roadmap, which has been applied to the 10 PD areas, will be expanded to cover all KEIT programs from this year. A Real-time Cash Management System (RCMS) has been put into practice to better manage R&D expenditure. nw

Young-ju Suh, president of the Korea Institute of Industrial Technology Evaluation and Planning (KEIT)

(clockwise) Minister Choi Kyung-hwan, of the Ministry of Knowledge Economy (MKE), and President Suh Young-ju, of the Korea Institute of Industrial Technology Evaluation and Planning (KEIT), and KEIT executives hold up a certificate of the MOU on innovating R&D support that the MKE and the KEIT signed. A scene of the recent R&D Achievement Show, organized by the KEIT. KEIT executives and staff hold a ceremony to promote ethics management. A scene of the recent R&D achievement exhibition.