Science funding system

I want to touch on a topic that is somewhat sick for me, namely, how inefficiently science is funded in our country. Immediately I warn you - I am not writing this here with the aim of starting a political discussion - at the end of the article a business proposal. Perhaps (I emphasize, perhaps) it will interest someone. Only business, nothing more.

I do not know how exactly it was before, but I dare to suggest that in Soviet times, money was allocated to science centrally, in the 90s and early 2000s, they were not allocated almost at all, now “little money, but you hold on” ( ). Our government was puzzled by the idea of ​​increasing the effectiveness of investments in science. To do this, they came up with such a thing as contests. An example of how this all looks, you can view here or here .

What is the essence of the competition ? There is a lot in the amount of X money, say, 10 million x 3 years = 30 million . This money is allocated to scientific institutions (universities, etc.), which have sent the best, most interesting application. Let in our example be the development of a complex electronic device:

However, this money just like that, under the “interesting project”, is not given out. It is necessary to attract extrabudgetary funding , which provides mainly so-called. "Industrial partner". The documentation clearly spelled out - no industrial partner - no money. This type is done so that the research does not end with a blunt writing of pieces of paper, but is realized in the form of real products.

The amount of extrabudgetary funding is 50% of the total. Those. in our example, also 30 million. In total, 60 million is obtained.
The documentation also states that the industrial partner should have a large turnover, namely: the funds that it allocates for the financing of a research project should not exceed 20% of its average annual gross proceeds. Those. his gross revenue per year should be ≥ 5x10 = 50 million

The demands of a large turnover are probably being made so that the industrial partner is not an organization of the “horn and hoof” type, found only for the purpose of depicting vigorous commercial activity.

In this case, the application is presented with a mountain of requirements: there must be a carefully written technical assignment (TZ), a schedule of works, an explanatory note, an estimate, a justification of the money in the estimate (here is an example of instructions on how to do this). In addition, there is still a mountain of small requirements that must be fulfilled, and it is difficult to do this without experience.

Have you ever tried to make a justification of the price in the estimate, if at the beginning of a research project it is not really clear what, what and how much will be needed? If this is a new kind of activity for you (this is science, is there always something new!)? In 2 weeks! You are a scientist, not the owner of an enterprise with conveyor production of such equipment!

It would be logical to give such work to an industrial partner, but the trouble is - he will not do anything. The application is not necessarily a victory in the competition, there is not such a big chance to win. Contests on the right topics are not every day. The deadline for submission of applications is limited (approximately one month from the beginning of the competition). A commercial organization, and even with a large turnover, and so has enough profit to actively pay attention to this lottery with a miserable chance to win, which fell like snow on the head. The partner finds out that he is a partner at the very last moment. So it turns out - all these papers with the justification should be actually scientists. That this thing - not at all in profile.
Naturally, the prices are paid attention to the poor study of justification, and every year they quibble more and more, they demand more and more detail. This moment dramatically reduces the chances of winning the contest itself, thereby reducing the interest of the industrial partner.

Well, let's say your application has won. You made a bloody sacrifice to black bureaucratic gods, and a subsidy fell on you:

Do you think your torment is over? Of course no!

Learn about further torment

The state begins to demand a REPORT! Report on the actual scientific work, reports on spending, all sorts of documents confirming that, this, fifth, tenth. Naturally, those who check this case should also report how well they look for errors in the reports.

But they do not understand anything at all on the subject of activity, so prepare for comments like “put a comma on the 357th page”, “reduce the font in the table”, “if the table is transferred to another page, there should be an inscription“ continuation of the table such and such and numbers instead of column names ”(and Verd, by default, doesn’t know how to do this, you have to split the table into two parts instead of“ repeating header lines ”, then the whole thing goes, because the verifier said to remove the paragraph such and such and reduce the font there something numbering country the egg moves down, the table is broken into 2 parts, not where it is necessary ... to report many, many pages, and such a thing even do not need to miss).

Get ready for a multi-day design hemorrhoids under threat of execution. With multiple reassembly of the whole thing in pdf.

Oh yeah, part of the report is done electronically, we have innovations, electronic document circulation! But for some reason in the form of scans (!) With signatures and seals. Which need to re-sign a hundred times, because the documents found errors in the design ...

And the criteria by which performance is evaluated ... The average age of project participants! The number of theses! Number of publications in publications indexed by Scopus and Web of Science! The number of patent applications! The number of events for the demonstration and popularization of science!

If you do not understand what the problem is, I will explain: Russian magazines. There are very few people in Scopus and Web of Science that there is a great chance that there are no Russian editions in your specialty. There are various magazines that republish your articles in English themselves (Scopus is owned by Elsevier, there are magazines in Russian that are not on the list, but which also belong to Elsevier). How fast is this happening? Something around the year.

And now imagine - the competition is played in August, the commission meets in September, the contract is concluded in October, November is working, December is already a report, as for the whole year (!), Then next year you need article two articles in this Scopus, it is published a year - and when was it necessary to write it? At the very beginning of work, it turns out. But if you write an article at the very beginning of work, what could be the results? Almost none. And articles need 2 per year. Two articles per year with a publication date per year, Karl! And God forbid, the article will not be that “the work was done with the support of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation, the index is such and such” - fails! You have no article!

The thesis is also a piece of bureaucratic nightmare, cooler than an article in Scopus. When to write it, if you need to do reports? And when to conduct research yourself ?!

And events for the demonstration and popularization of science ... It is necessary to prepare a report, review it with a supervisor, get lost and go somewhere in your free time, instead of working.

Patent applications are also a piece of bureaucracy. I did not come across directly, but I saw how the supervisor was involved in this, and I can say this is a nightmare.

And most importantly, why all these documents? What are these documents? These are pieces of paper explaining to strangers who do not understand anything in this matter, who have no relation to the process of what you are doing. Why is it all they need to know? We are engaged in technical work to obtain a high-tech product of commercial value, or populist nonsense ?!

Obviously, all these requirements for scientific work were written by a typical bureaucrat-populist-office plankton, who had been engaged in fraud all his life and made a career on this, surrounded by people like him. Apparently, it is not clear to such citizens how it can be - making money - WORKING. He considers work only what looks like his own paperwork, and will demand it from others until he gets tired of the number of documents received himself.

Of course, the fight against corruption, which is even worse than Russian corruption, is mixed in here. How does the procurement system in large government offices - a separate conversation. There you need to fill a pile of papers, include in some procurement plan, which is done once a week, justify the price, and if it turns out that if the amount exceeds a certain amount, you need to announce the COMPETITION, form a pile of papers, place them on some that site ...

What is this tender with purchases? This is an explanation to the state, "how well we save money." I just don’t understand how much money is saved, if the state has already donated money to fund research, it has already spent it, that's all, the train has left.

In short, all this work on the "maintenance" of the subsidy requires a large number of "knights of the pen and hemorrhoids" at full time. And on both sides, and on the part of the inspecting documents, and on the side of the Recipient of the grant. They are paid a salary - for a job completely unnecessary to anyone. And someone else is talking about fighting corruption.

Why was it necessary to tighten the bureaucratic nuts in this way? Probably the majority of all these cones are responsible for financing science:

• afraid to fly out of their bread posts for the shoal of their subordinates

  
  

• They piled a bunch of their relatives / gods / brothers / matchmakers / friends / acquaintances into bread posts and are afraid for them. And all these individuals enrolled in a pull - what can they do? Nothing. That is what gives them the post conversion posts. On which they shake and invent, what more petty haunting can be invented.

  
  
• Cut-rolls - by itself. In such muddy bureaucratic water, it is easy to fish for different muddy people. To the accompaniment of their own cries for the fight against corruption. Schemes for sure - the car.

At the same time, despite the ostentatious "rigor" in reporting, getting from them real rigor is a whole problem. For example, you have mistakes in budgeting, the existence of which you learned only when you started to buy something. There is an estimate item, which almost does not matter, it would be merged with another, for which additional expenses are expected (I emphasize - we are not talking about an increase in expenditures for auxiliary needs - the estimated estimate items are the same thing - all sorts of purchases / expenses for something material for scientific research ). Under the contract, you can do it without permission within 25% of the estimate section. But God forbid these sections are of very different sizes. Imagine that you have one section of 100 thousand, and two of 10 million each. I can vary the costs of two sections ± 2.5 million, but I can’t add this 2.5 million to the section by 100 thousand or eliminate this section by 100 thousand! What kind of nonsense ?! Why did these sections even enter, why can not it be done in one section?

Add here that the purchase of software should go through the “other expenses” cost estimate (erasers, pencils, paper, cartridges ...), as it is written in some methodology. It is impossible to attribute software to "hardware"! Its compiler, apparently, dealt with software only in the form of Vyndovs and Verde. The fact that there is an in-house software, he had no idea.

Okay, sections of the estimate can be changed by signing extra. agreement with the Ministry of Trade. Only there, especially at the end of the year (do not forget, the agreement is October, we work in November and in December - a report), there are a whole mountain of such petitioners. Nobody will understand and take the responsibility - there is no reason to receive accusations from the authorities and bortsuny against corruption. Therefore, of course, failure. And next year the unspent money will be taken away. Type savings ...

What is the result? As a result, as a conclusion to all of this, consider the scheme:

I will explain. How do normal people do who want a hi-tech device developed for them and introduced into production (and indeed, have done some work)? They develop an assignment, consider estimates, etc., after which they order this work to someone and pay upon completion.

In our case, there is a performer - a hapless scientific enterprise that can do development, but there are no clients with money. And it should find a client who potentially needs all this (but the client can do without it), then make up all the tasks and estimates, and then run to complain to the state about the lack of money and play some dubious lottery called “competition for provision subsidies " with a tiny chance to win . And which, in case of a win, should STRICTLY BE REPORTED , but for some reason not so much in front of a client who REALLY NEED A RESULT, but in front of a STATE that JUST GIVEN MONEY FROM TAXES!

And someone else claims corruption! But how can she not be if money, instead of going directly, from customer to performer, do not understand how to go through Moscow’s state treasury, to Moscow through Vladivostok, and on this path there are people who strive to bite off something for themselves! .. It’s like taking a bag of money not in a collector’s car directly to the bank, but carrying in your hands the backyard through a criminal area and shouting - guard, like we have many robbers!

The meaning of the proposal is that the state simply has to give tax breaks on the fact of payment of labor to the performer of high-tech works . The size of the benefits - fixed, one-time. An enterprise of the “horns and hooves” type, having no income, will fly past: say, a benefit of 1 million, and taxes of only 10 thousand save 10 thousand, the benefit of 990 thousand burned is unprofitable.

The fact that this work is precisely hi-tech is determined by spec. Commission, analyzing the application on the site. The application is placed by the enterprise itself, the contractor becomes clear in the process.

Of course, you must enter some extra. rules that do not give such a way to zero taxes in general, but here we omit them. It is also worth introducing the incentive tax allowance Δ for the very fact of engaging in high-tech development in order to arouse commercial interest in this business.

And most importantly - there is no lottery here with a tiny chance to win. The customer wanted - the performer did. It is as if the competition would have won all the bids.

Fantasy? I think no. The idea does not involve returning to the mercy of a large number of official people (which is the reason for the failure of most reasonable proposals) - just the introduction of a special type of tax benefits. I think that the introduction of tax breaks is a matter for the state that has been legally worked out and will be implemented without problems.

Again, the idea fits well with the concept of import substitution and does not constitute the leaders under the “where did the money go?” Type disassembly, so there is no reason to expect strong resistance from them either. Those. the idea is more or less “in trend” of the current policy.

What would I like? I will say straight away that I do not belong to any political party, etc., I have neither the strength, nor the time, nor the desire to engage in politics. But I think there are many enterprises in the country, firms that are engaged in or want to produce high-tech products. And tax breaks will surely interest them. In the end, there are different parties, deputies who need to come up with some initiatives (at least for a tick), there is a ROI website. There this kind of initiative can be submitted.

I publish it here, in the hope that representatives of more or less serious companies will pay attention and try to push it further. And, I repeat, I am not a supporter of conversations on political topics. This is exactly the practical rationalization of an economic nature.

Thank you all for your attention.