Austrian Research and Technology Report 2020

4.1 Current trends 
This section presents the latest evaluations that 
have been completed in the RTI sector – extracts of 
which are reported in Chapter 4.2 – as well as other 
current trends that are significant for the structure of 
Austrian evaluation practice. These are:
1. access to microdata from official statistics and to 
registry data;
2. market situation in the area of RTI evaluation in 
Austria.
Access to microdata from official statistics and to 
registry data 
The current government programme
197
published at 
the beginning of January 2020 contains a separate 
subchapter dedicated to innovation through trans-
parency and access to scientific data. In order to en-
able registry research, a working group was estab-
lished in the Federal Ministry of Education, Science 
and Research (BMBWF) in 2019 with the aim of es-

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4. RTI Evaluation Culture and Practice
185
tablishing a legal basis, identifying registries and im-
plementing a pilot project in 2020. The project will 
be based on a research question about the education 
sector and the goal is to demonstrate the benefits of 
registry research. In addition, the 2020–2024 gov-
ernment programme stipulates the establishment of 
an “Austrian Micro Data Center” at Statistics Austria 
in order to create one-stop-shop data access for the 
scientific community to microdata of official statis-
tics and to registry data from all federal ministries, 
taking into account the requirements of European 
statistics and data protection law.
Market situation in the area of RTI evaluation in 
Austria
The Austrian Platform for Research and Technology 
Policy Evaluation (fteval) commissioned a study
198
in 
2019 in order to examine the market situation in the 
area of RTI evaluation in Austria. The aim of the study 
was to determine the nature of the Austrian market 
for scientific RTI evaluations, particularly with re-
spect to market size and market volume, market 
structure and the characteristics of the market par-
ticipants. Assessments were also gathered from mar-
ket participants related to the market and competi-
tive situation as well as to relevant trends. The study 
included 107 evaluations in the RTI sector over a ten-
year examination period (2009 to 2018). The cen-
trepiece of the study involved empirical findings 
based on secondary data
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and a survey of market