Are Czech policymakers successful in developing meaningful indicators for monitoring and evaluation of national programmes for applied R&D?

So far, relatively little attention has been paid to indicators for monitoring and evaluation of Czech science policies and R&D&I programmes. This article aims to assess relevance, information value, measurability and appropriateness of specifications and target values of indicators developed for evaluation of selected programmes for applied R&D approved before 2020, i.e. before the full application of the “Basic principles of developing and evaluating R&D&I programmes and groups of grant projects”. At the same time, selected new or newly developed support programmes are assessed in order to find out whether some qualitative changes in setting programme indicators occur. Indicators applied within the observed terminated and already evaluated programmes show certain deficiencies linked with their relevance to evaluated issues, their information value and measurability as well. These deficiencies are evident especially when comparing discussed indicators with general rules and trends in application of indicators for R&D&I evaluations used abroad. Indicators used in the observed programmes were not developed in connection with intervention logic of the programmes or relevant evaluation questions. Additionally, programme outputs and outcomes – and so the corresponding output and outcome indicators – were not distinguished sufficiently. Focus of the used indicators rather corresponds to monitoring indicators than to indicators applicable for evaluating the fulfilment of programme objectives. As for the observed new or newly developed programmes, a qualitative change of indicators is perceptible, especially in connection with a departure from overemphasizing the number of formal results of R&D.