TRANSFORM: an Assessment of Outcomes and Impacts

TRANSFORM is a coordination and support action funded under the SwafS-14 call topic of Horizon 2020 to help implement the principles and practices of RRI – Responsible Research and Innovation – into institutions, policies, and practices of innovation at the regional scale. To this effect, the project involves itself in processes of innovation, policymaking, and practice in three European regions: Lombardy, Catalonia and the Brussels-Capital region, our so-called “clusters”. The project initiatives include efforts to introduce RRI approaches into S3 policies in the three regions. 

This deliverable, D7.6, contains the core chapters of a scientific publication that will be finally submitted in February 2023 (open access academic book to be published in 2023 by Routledge) that is a full-length in-depth study of TRANSFORM. The book will be published on paper and as open access, freely downloadable e-book with Creative Commons BY-NC-ND license. It is provisionally titled Innovation Governance in Three European Regions: Translations of Responsibility, and is a co-authored monography by Thomas Völker, Rasmus Slaattelid and Roger Strand, all at the University of Bergen. 

The main finding of D7.6 is the same as that of D7.4 and D7.5, though documented and analysed in much greater detail: the importance of what we call "often-invisible work" of establishing, nurturing, and caring for relationships conducive of RRI at the local/regional level. Most of such work, which can be of critical importance to the success of RRI initiatives, is hardly visible if one tries to quantify or otherwise capture it by existing RRI indicators. This is why we – in line with the general recent developments of this academic field the latter years – adopted and further developed the qualitative research methodology of evaluative inquiry, as explained in D7.5. 

An important observation is that most of such work, which can be of critical importance to the success of RRI initiatives, is hardly visible if one tries to quantify or otherwise capture it by existing RRI indicators. Our study documents the presence of such work in all three regions of TRANSFORM and explains how the pilots in all three regions are on pathways to achieving impact and, from an RRI perspective, benefit for society. 

At the same time, the TRANSFORM Grant Agreement mentioned a set of MoRRI indicators (GE1, GE3, SLSE4, PE5, PE6, PE7, PE8 and GOV2) to which TRANSFORM might contribute, that is, for which TRANSFORM activities might have had outcomes and impacts that contribute to improving the states of affairs that the indicators were supposed to measure or at least be some kind of proxies for. 

Starting with the Gender Equality indicators GE1 and GE3, these refer to the share of RPOs and RFOs, respectively, with gender equality plans. If we take them as proxies for the state of affairs of gender equality in the E&I ecosystem more generally, we may point to at least two contributions by TRANSFORM. First, in a very direct sense, the endometriosis pilot in Catalonia has contributed to gender equality by being a citizen science pilot that engaged and mobilised women with a much-ignored health condition and thereby improved the gender aspects of the content of research. Secondly, in a more indirect way, TRANSFORM may have contributed to gender equality by means of exemplary learning in the respective clusters, in that all three cluster leaders and the vast majority of persons-in-charge of project partners are female. 

The SLSE4 indicator is a proxy for the presence of citizen science in RPOs. Taken more broadly, TRANSFORM has contributed to increase the presence and importance of citizen science in the Catalan R&I ecosystem, not only in traditional RPOs but more specifically by citizen science becoming introduced in the RIS3CAT2030 strategy. 

PE5-PE8 are all indicators of public engagement. PE5 is a measure of public engagement mechanisms in RPOs; PE7 embedment of PE in RFOs; and PE8 PE in evaluation criteria in research proposal evaluation. TRANSFORM has definitely contributed to the underlying state of affairs for PE5, PE7 and PE8. For instance, the pilots at UC Louvain introduced PE mechanisms in an RPO (PE5). All three clusters contributed to embedding PE in the regional S3 authorities (which can be taken to be “RFOs” in this context, thus contributing to PE7). And while the precise change of evaluation criteria did not take place during the lifetime of TRANSFORM, this was indeed one of the long-term ambitions shaping the work of the Brussels cluster (PE8). 

Finally, GOV2 is a proxy for the presence of RRI-related governance mechanisms. Both in Lombardy and Catalonia, RRI was indeed embedded in practice and policy in the regional authorities during TRANSFORM (and then we already discussed above the methodological difficulties of causal attribution), and positive developments were also observed in the Brussels Capital Region. 

It may be interesting to compare TRANSFORM contributions with the main process indicators that were recommended by the EC expert group (Strand et al. 2015, Table 3.1): 

Indeed, these qualitative process indicators for public engagement, gender equality, ethics and governance are better suited to characterize the positive contributions of TRANSFORM. The project developed and implemented formal procedures for citizens’ involvement in all three regions; it worked on the gender bias of the organisational culture in one Catalan pilot; it introduced transdisciplinary components that addressed societal relevance in all three regions; and it most definitely worked on maintaining, nurturing, and fostering formal and informal networks that promote RRI in the three regions. 

To sum up, in our assessment, TRANSFORM had significant positive outcomes and are likely to have had significant positive impact in line with the SwafS call and the Grant Agreement.