ST prepares common public sector consultancy procedures

DCA and DCE will be strive to be in line with each other with regard to dealing with public sector consultancy tasks. Harmonisation of the procedures will ensure transparency and arm’s length – two key terms that will help ensure the credibility of the tasks that ST solves for the authorities.   

- It makes good sense to have common guidelines for quality assurance since DCA and DCE are part of the same university, have the same performance agreement, and receive tasks from the same ministry, says chairman of AGRO’s public sector consultancy committee Professor Jørgen Eriksen, JORNÆR. Jørgen Eriksen represents AGRO in ST’s public sector consultancy committee. The committee has worked on describing the quality assurance as one of its first tasks.

The proposal for the memorandum was prepared by the committee members Annette-Baatrup-Pedersen, Department of Bioscience, Hanne Damgaard Poulsen, Department of Animal Science, Niels Halberg, DCA, and Hanne Bach, DCE. The proposal was in hearing in the relevant departments in ST and is expected to be honed and uploaded on the relevant websites in the course of the spring of 2017.

Aiming for harmony

The memorandum describes a common and coherent procedure for ensuring the quality of ST’s public sector consultancy. The harmonised procedure will guarantee a high quality of the products we deliver in each step of the process. The description of the procedure can also be used as external documentation of how quality is ensured in ST’s public sector consultancy.

- The lion’s share of the tasks that ST delivers to the authorities has a really good quality but there have been a few examples of products that were not so good. There are very different cultures in DCA and DCE, so we have discussed how to go about solving the task. There is a need for a concrete and operational system, says Jørgen Eriksen. 

The process in practice

On the practical level, the process will be such that the task will arrive at ST after which a team will be set with the researchers that are involved in the case. In the future, to ensure transparency, DCA and DCE will be able to view each other’s tasks. DCA and DCE departments will thus have access to the questions and tasks that ST receives from the authorities so if there is someone who has expertise in a certain area and feels they can contribute supplementary research-based knowledge, then they can make a bid for it.  

ST will harmonise its expectations with those of the task’s requestor with regard to the questions being asked, but after that, the arm’s length principle will be upheld very strictly while the task is being solved. There must be no possibility of casting doubt on the impartiality and scientific integrity of the contributing researchers in ST’s public sector consultancy.

The memorandum also mentions how to deal with potential disagreements and additionally includes guidelines for who should be noted as the authors of the text and thereby how much each author is expected to vouch for.

Read more about ST’s public sector consultancy committee here.