by Professor Dato Dr. Ahmad Ibrahim,
Institutional reform is back on the government agenda. It is about time too. The earlier attempt by the PH government never saw the light of day. The idea never even left the paper. Despite forming a special committee for institutional reform, it never really took off. Many are hoping the new reform initiative will not meet the same fate. Many are now more confident since a bipartisan committee, comprising of both government and opposition lawmakers, has been formed to drive the change. The MOU has been signed, now waiting for the real actions. It is right that parliament starts the institutional reform process rolling before moving to other government institutions. We need to empower parliament more.
I see government R&D as one sector which is in dire need of reform. As we all know, R&D is a major driver of innovation. A poor governance of R&D can paralyse innovation. Sadly, the current system of governance is not yielding the optimal outcomes. There is too much duplication and wastages in the country’s R&D endeavours. Talents in R&D are also not fully harnessed because of the poor collaboration and sharing of expertise among institutions. No wonder, we keep hearing of low R&D commercialisation, laboratory facilities not optimally utilised, poor linkages among the key stakeholders especially between industry and academia and the low image of the R&D profession, which remains unattractive to the student population. At the rate things are going, we will never fully capture that rainbow of innovation that the nation aspires. We must remember that innovation drives a country’s competitiveness. Nevertheless it is still not too late to reform. There are many working models around the world we can emulate. They all have that common element of strengthening linkages and enhancing collaboration among stakeholders in the wider innovation landscape.
First, all public research institutions must be merged into one central governance entity. This will not only ensure better collaboration among the relevant institutions, but also reduce duplications thus saving the costs of research. In agriculture for example, there exist opportunities for MARDI, MRB and MPOB to share expertise. In manufacturing, there is a lot of synergy between SIRIM and MIMOS. Agriculture is also going digital nowadays. If we include the R&D centres of universities, the talent resource in agriculture and manufacturing is massive. By merging the institutions, the choice of research topics will be done more objectively by the central team, without favouring any particular institution. At the moment, there have been reports of reviewing panels favouring the institutions they come from. This practice not only distorts the allocation of R&D funding, but also deprive good R&D of support.
Second, by having in place a central management of the R&D centres, the linkage with other stakeholders, especially industry can be better organised and managed. The science park concept, which brings together the parties in innovation, should be strengthened. News that the Technology Park Malaysia is under quite massive restructuring is a positive sign. This presents the opportunity for the Park to further strengthen its role in motivating linkages with industry and academia by providing easy access to their facilities including pilot plants and other commercialisation platforms. The government must make sure that the KPI for TPM is not profit, as has been the practice in the past. Instead, the main KPI should be about the number of R&D commercialisation projects realised through academia-industry collaboration, as well the rise of start-ups graduating into full fledged businesses.
Third, the merged R&D entity should invest in centralised laboratory facilities for all R&D talents to access. The centralised laboratory can include dedicated laboratories for IR4.0, digitalisation, biotechnology, energy, water and health. Looking at the country’s spread of R&D talents, there has been a massive rise in the number residing in private universities. Most are young talents, brimming with energy to embark on meaningful R&D. Unfortunately, research laboratories in private universities are not as well equipped as in the public universities. This is quite understandable since investment in laboratories is not cheap. This is where the government can build such central laboratories under the merged R&D entity and make the facilities available to the private universities at reasonable service charges. It would be a big waste if talents in the private universities are not maximally harnessed by the country.
There is no time to waste reforming the nation’s R&D institutions, if we want to avoid the debilitating condition of innovation paralysis.
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