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Advanced Research And Invention Agency Act 2022

Contents

Policy background

  1. In the December 2019 Queen’s Speech briefing notes (opens in new window) the Government set out its ambition for "a new approach to funding emerging fields of research and technology" which "will provide long term funding to support visionary high-risk, high-payoff scientific, engineering, and technology ideas, and will complement the UK’s existing world class research system."
  2. The UK Research and Development Roadmap (opens in new window) , published in July 2020, sets out the Government’s intention to cement the UK’s position as a science superpower. The R&D Roadmap described the Government’s plans to invest £800 million in a unique and independent funding body for advanced research, broadly modelled on the US Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA). This £800 million commitment to the creation of ARIA was reaffirmed at the Spending Review 2020 and Spending Review 2021, most recently as part of the commitment to increase public research and develop (R&D) investment to £20bn per year by 2024-25, as the government builds towards its target of increasing public R&D investment to £22 billion by 2026-27 and economy-wide R&D investment to 2.4% of GDP by 2027.
  3. The R&D Roadmap set out an ambition for ARIA to champion bold and transformative R&D which has a high chance of failure but can produce the greatest long-term rewards. ARIA "will back breakthrough technologies and basic research by experimenting with new funding models across long-term time horizons" and "invest in new ideas and empower researchers to deliver radical technological advancements".
  4. Taking into account the Science and Technology Select Committee (Commons) inquiry into ‘A new UK research funding agency’ (opens in new window) , the Government published a more detailed policy statement (opens in new window) on ARIA in March 2021. This emphasised a set of design principles centred on strategic and operational independence and a focus on high-risk research.

ARIA model

  1. As set out in the statement of policy intent, ARIA is expected to incorporate a set of key features of the "US ARPA" model, tailored to the UK R&D landscape. This includes:
    1. Organising ambitious research goals around the long-term programmes of work which are led by so-called Programme Managers. Programme Managers facilitate cohesion between individual research projects in pursuit of transformational breakthroughs. Programmes may include basic research through to the creation of prototypes and commercialised technologies.
    2. Significant autonomy for Programme Managers who are able to take advantage of innovative and flexible approaches to programme funding.
    3. A tolerance to failure in pursuit of transformational breakthroughs embedded in its culture. Only a small fraction of ambitious goals will be achieved, however ARIA will provide value from its failures, including spill-over benefits gained from intermediary outputs. For example, a particular goal may not prove technologically viable but in pursuing it, scientists may happen across another promising technology.

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