The UK government has confirmed that it still plans to create an independent £800 million “blue skies” research agency as soon as possible, despite the architect of the scheme resigning.
Details of the leadership and funding model of a delayed body modelled on the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA, previously known as ARPA) will come in “due course”, says the government. Sources suggest that it could be launched before the summer.
Dominic Cummings, former chief adviser to prime minister Boris Johnson, first proposed the idea of a and had been the driving force behind its creation, , raising questions over its future.
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The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), in response to a 91av freedom of information request, has now confirmed that it will still happen. “The government continues to progress plans to establish a new research funding agency, based on the US’s ARPA, as soon as possible,” it said.
The response implied that the agency will sit outside institutions managing existing government-funded research, which is overseen by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). The UK ARPA, BEIS said: “Will have the independence to experiment with new funding models to back cutting-edge, high-risk, high-reward science here in the UK.”
91av understands from a government source that proponents of a UK ARPA are keen to avoid the agency being created under the aegis of UKRI. The government’s committed an initial £50 million to UKRI for the new agency, to be spent by March 2022, but the plan is still to create an independent body, the source said.
The aspiration is that a big launch and recruitment campaign for its first director will happen before summer, but there are still negotiations under way within government over the freedoms it needs and Treasury rules over public spending and accountability.
The agency has been mooted as a way to cement the UK’s position as a “science superpower” outside of the European Union, with a focus on tackling big challenges in areas including quantum computing.
UK government research funding has already recently undergone a major overhaul: UKRI was only established in 2018. The new head of UKRI, Ottoline Leyser, she would happily collaborate with ARPA even if it is set up outside UKRI.
However, former science minister Jo Johnson said the success of ARPA depends on how the agency works. “This could be a useful contribution to our overall research and innovation ecosystem, provided it is complementary and supportive of existing institutions rather than destructive in how it is conceived and organised,” .
James Wilsdon at the University of Sheffield, UK, says the departure of the agency’s key proponent may actually help its success. “I think a lot of the tension that surrounded the creation of this new thing has dissipated now Cummings has exited the building. His way of working, and dislike of existing institutions and preference for separate structures was creating its own tensions and difficulties around how it would be governed,” he says. “For me, the jury remains out until we know what the main function and purpose is,” says Wilsdon.
