Abstract

The Netherlands considers itself fortunate for having a culture, tradition and infrastructure enabling intensive interaction and collaboration within the research and innovation (R&I) ecosystem, aexemplified by many public-private programs and projects. This includes all relevant stakeholders, ranging from (technical) university (of applied sciences, medical centers), research organizations, industrial sectors, funding agencies, ministries, regional development agencies, local and regional governments, NGO’s, citizen- and patient-representing organizations. At national level, through the so-called ‘knowledge coalition’, policies and strategies are often discussed and aligned with governmental representatives, including policies and strategies to identify, mitigate and solve actual and future challenges in the R&I ecosystem.
An example of co-creation of policies relates to the phenomenon of ‘system pressure’ in the R&I ecosystem. We encounter pressure on systemic, institutional, and individual levels, including researchers and research management staff. We are being confronted with an increasing pressure in terms of allocating resources to the process of obtaining funding in an increasingly competitive setting. This system pressure has been the topic for discussion at the highest level, inducing the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science calling upon the field to identify areas for recommendations, action and change to provide sustainable solutions for the system pressure and its potential detrimental long-term consequences for the viability of the R&I system. Answers to plea are laid down in an agreement between Universities of The Netherlands (UNL) and The Netherlands Research Council. An important commitment of UNL was to strengthen their Research Support Offices.
To translate commitment to solutions into action and implementation, a ‘systems pressure’ working group and a ‘learning communities’ working group led by UNL were established in 2021. Both working groups consist of representatives of universities including ARMA-NL board members.
As output form the ‘learning communities’ working group, a meeting was organized in 2022 by UNL and ARMA-NL, challenging the audience in work sessions to come up with ideas and solutions to contribute to the objective of strengthening RSO’s. A proposed initiative by members of ARMA-NL was to explore the possibility to co-design with relevant stakeholders a Dutch RM roadmap. This roadmap may be seen as addressing Priority 17 of the European Research Area Policy Agenda, to ‘Enhance the strategic capacity of Europe’s public research performing organisations’ and will provide infrastructure and capacity for the further development, professionalization and recognition of the RM community in The Netherlands.
ARMA-NL will reach out to all relevant stakeholders to start the exploration towards a Dutch RM roadmap in a structured and organized manner, seeking alignment and complementarity with initiatives like RM ROADMAP and CARDEA. The roadmap is not only important to contribute to solving the current ‘system pressure’ issue but is becoming increasingly urgent in light of evolving and most likely long lasting effects of demographic developments on the general workforce and the RM workforce in particular, needed to sustain a viable and competitive R&I ecosystem.
In Prague 2023, we propose to report on progress made presenting a case example for setting up comparable national roadmaps, with lessons learned and future outlook.