The launch of the UK government’s “moonshot” research agency has been delayed until the end of the year because of its incoming chief executive’s decision not to take up the role.
The , billed as a high-risk, high-reward agency independent of current research funding channels, was thrown off course in March after after forthcoming chief executive Peter HighnamĚý. That has delayed timings for when the new ÂŁ800 million research agency will be operational, żěè¶ĚĘÓƵ understands.
Former cabinet minister Andrew Lansley, speaking in front of Sarah Hodgetts, the government official spearheading ARIA’s creation, said at a conference on 25 February that it should be no more than two or three months before the agency “will be up and running”. Hodgetts didn’t disagree with Lansley’s assertion that ARIA should be operational in May.
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Government sources say Lansley’s comments don’t reflect the government’s position and Hodgetts’s lack of comment shouldn’t be interpreted to mean May is the planned launch date.
Nonetheless, ARIA’s launch is now behind schedule and the expectation within government is that it won’t be fully operational until the end of the year.
Neither the agency’s chief executive nor its chair have been appointed yet, though announcements are expected imminently. Hodgetts said on 25 February that ARIA would be “small and fleet of foot” with between 30 and 50 staff. When contacted by żěè¶ĚĘÓƵ, the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy didn’t confirm how many employees had been recruited to date.
“This further delay in getting ARIA off the ground isn’t a huge surprise, after the sudden withdrawal of Peter Highnam,” says at the University of Sheffield, UK. “But it also reflects one of the fundamental flaws in the design and governance of the new agency: that enormous, unprecedented influence over its purposes, priorities and direction is vested in the CEO and chair — to the extent that little can move forward without them. This delay is entirely a problem of the government’s own making.”
ARIA is modelled on the predecessor of the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and was conceived and pushed by Dominic Cummings, Boris Johnson’s former chief adviser.
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