By bob antonio on Wednesday, May 09, 2001 - 06:02 am:

A friend told me about an idea of a recently appointed Head of Contracting Activity (HCA). The HCA wants to add performance goals and incentive fees for basic and applied research. His staff gave their views and were told they were roadblocks to innovation. I provided my friend with several places to obtain information on this issue.

Then, knowing that the HCA will face major contractors and higher management with this idea, I told my friend to fully support the HCA with this innovation. Just make sure that the HCA gets full credit for this idea. Sometimes it is better--and more rewarding--to be supportive of a person on their way to slaughter. Especially when they are so bright and unyielding in their ideas.

What would you tell this fellow.

By formerfed on Wednesday, May 09, 2001 - 02:05 pm:

I thought about this on and off this morning. While I don't see how this would work across the board, it might produce benefits for some applied research projects. Some problems could arise with competitive awards though. The tough part is comparing offers incorporating incentives with offers from educational institutions and non-profits, who might be limited.

By Anonymous on Thursday, May 10, 2001 - 06:24 am:

Bob: What's wrong with performance goals and incentive fees for basic and applied research?

By bob antonio on Thursday, May 10, 2001 - 07:49 am:

The requirement is to develop a way to beam humans from one place to another. Set an effective incentive payment? Is it a meaningful incentive or are you attempting to direct the researcher's thought process?

Some goals in basic research are the publication of a paper on the research in a noted journal. That is abstract but with its publication someone may stumble across the article and form an idea for the next level of basic research. Should we pay an incentive for a journal article or is that an expected goal?

Now, if we are talking about applied research where an experiment will be performed, we may have a difference. We might have a performance goal for running an experiment to prove whether the idea works or not. Even here the concern would be running the experiment before it is ready. Do we add an incentive for completing the experiment early?

When Congress passed the Government Performance and Results Act in 1993, they ran into the same problems. There were several studies done and they were posted on various sites. One was on the Office of Science and Technology Policy site years ago. You will also find similar caveats at the Office of Management and Budget site.

By Charlie Dan on Thursday, May 10, 2001 - 12:37 pm:

There are other problems with performance incentives for research. Frequently, research contracts are with the academic community (either universities or consortia of universities). These are typically non-profit entities, and may not be motivated by fees or profits. Even further, the researchers themselves may not be motivated to maximize the profit of the entity. So, even if a contracting officer can craft a very clear, on-target performance incentive, it may not provide the motivation the CO expects.

I once worked for such a consortium. Many of the researchers had no interest whatsoever in financial incentives. I have found some researchers who would gladly give up profits, or even their own salary increases, if they could free up the funds to increase their research budgets.

By Ramon Jackson on Thursday, May 10, 2001 - 02:43 pm:

I've occasionally run across suggestions that the goals and incentives should apply to basic research methadology rather than outcomes. This has usually been in a setting where people with deep misunderstanding of science attempt to apply habit to the situation.

The people making the suggestion often seemed to recognize basic and often even applied research outcomes are not predictable and not subject to these incentives. What they fail to recognize is that constraints on methodology aside from "scientific method" are constraints on the research. It is about the same as calling loudly for innovative approaches while requiring compliance with a detailed design spec. A real look at almost all the great breakthroughs will show an unconventional approach and methodology.