ICTRDF Pakistan bending to Microsoft instead of local entrepreneurs (an open letter)

Following is an open letter by Dr. Ashiq Anjum regarding National ICT R&D Fund Pakistan:

ICT R&D Fund is one of the few institutions in the country that are doing an excellent job. I remain in touch with the people who are actively pursuing research projects at NUST, LUMS, UET and other places and they always appreciate the constructive role and support from the ICT R&D Fund.

Before we make conclusions, we need to understand the role, responsibilities and the procedures which govern the activities of such R&D bodies.

Any funding body will only entertain those proposals that come under its research and development (R&D) programmes.
If a proposal does not fulfil some minimum criteria, it will not even reach the screening phase.

A committee of experts will evaluate the proposal based upon its innovation, technical strength, and future impact. In most cases, the committee members have PhD's, are very senior academics or R &D professionals in industry and have decades of experience. They are neutral, unbiased and have no stakes involved in the proposal that they are reviewing.

All the scores received from reviewers are consolidated and therefore, each of the submitted proposals gets an aggregate/average score. Based upon the average scores they receive, all proposals are ranked.

The principal investigators of top tank proposals are invited for an interview. A panel of experts questions the investigators about the budget, any questions/shortcomings that were brought forward from the review process are clarified, justification of the resources is required etc.

In most cases, funding agencies interview more people than the available funds. For example, if they have to support 10 proposals, they will invite around 20 applicants that were top scorers in the overall ranking.

The successful applications get a contract and then the funding agency monitors the activities against the objectives outlined in the proposal. The funds are released in instalments after reviewing the interim progress.

First, if a researcher/professional/academic does not write a proposal, he/she will never be funded. Second, funding agency can not donate funds to its favourites. Only the top scorers who have an excellent proposal and can defend its objectives and outcomes are eligible.

Third, funding agency can not stop any legal entity from applying for funds. The process should be competitive, transparent and any one in the country can apply. Many Pakistani universities such as NUST are getting funds from European and American funding bodies in collaboration with their European/American counterparts.

Fourth, the role of a funding agency is to idenitfy areas of national interest and then take actions, which can facilitate the academics/researchers in achieving those objectives. No funding agency can build incubators for industry, probably this is outside of their scope.

Fifth, this is the role of a funding agency to encourage collaborations for promoting research cultures and provide help in bringing the best minds closer. Top class universities and sound industrial partners can always collaborate if they have a good idea, they can compete and they can elevate novelty and innovation to new heights. This is the area where European and American funding bodies are striving to make an impact.

Having said that, I think National ICT R&D is rightly doing its job and we should appreciate that. For further information, you may also look at the European Commission's FP7 programme (http://cordis.europa.eu/home_en.html). Under this programme, EC has allocated around 50 billion Euros for research and development and they are following the procedure almost similar to the one I outlined above. More than one billion euros have been allocated to attract bright students from developing countries.

You can also visit UK research council's page at http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/default.htm and more precisely their physical sciences research council (EPSRC) page http://www.epsrc.ac.uk/default.htm. You can also check the details from American funding agencies such as NSF, DOE, DARPA etc.

Hope this helps.

Disclaimer: I never got funding from ICT R&D fund and I am sending this message only with good intentions.

Best Regards,

Dr.Ashiq Anjum
Bristol Institute of Technology,
UWE, Bristol