Austrian Research and Technology Report 2020

particular face a barrier to using it more widely in 
the form of (high) investment costs and the short-
age of skilled workers as well as the issue of the 
volume and quality of their data relevant for AI pur-
poses.
Culture and practice of evaluation
Evaluations are an important tool in RTI policy and 
governance and help to support transparency, ac-
countability and evidence-based decision-making. 
Austria is 
one of the leaders in Europe
when it 
comes to 
the number of evaluations
in the RTI 
sector. Studies dealing with evaluations emphasise 
the generally high professionalism and quality of 
Austrian evaluations. Overall, however, the RTI 

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Executive Summary
13
evaluation market is small (annual volume of less 
than €1 million). Whilst only a small number of in-
stitutions commission evaluations, there are quite a 
few that can carry them out, some of which oper-
ate internationally. Competition is felt to be grow-
ing increasingly fierce.
During the reporting period, several evaluations 
were conducted, including a number of major ones. 
These include the accompanying evaluation of the 
pilot call for proposals for Ideas Lab 4.0, the evalu-
ation of OSTA Washington and Beijing and the 
evaluation of the Austrian Climate Research Pro-
gramme. The resulting findings have been incorpo-
rated into the formulation of measures and policy 
development.

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1. Current
Trends

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1. Current Trends
15
1.1 Funding and R&D performance in 
Austria
Revised global estimate for 2019
Due to the uncertain economic situation resulting 
from the COVID-19 pandemic, this year’s Research 
and Technology Report does not include a forecast 
for 2020 based on the global estimate by Statistics 
Austria. Instead, the global estimate for 2019 has 
been revised by Statistics Austria and this is there-
fore the basis used for the analysis of R&D funding in 
Austria.
According to the revised global estimate for the 
year 2019, a total of €12.689 billion was spent on 
R&D. The federal government provided approximate-
ly €3.12 billion for R&D, corresponding to around a 
quarter (24.6%) of all R&D conducted in Austria. In 
2019 the regional governments contributed approxi-
mately €0.55 billion (4.3%) of R&D funding, so the 
total amount of public funds allocated to R&D was 
€3.66 billion. Austrian companies provided €6.04 bil-
lion, or almost half (47.6%) of all R&D funding. This is 
slightly less than previous years in percentage terms 
(2018: 48.0%; 2017: 49.0%). €2.02 billion (15.9%) of 
R&D funding came from abroad; the majority of this 
sum comprises financing from foreign enterprises for 
research being carried out in their subsidiaries in 
Austria, but it also includes funds from EU research 
programmes. The research premium contributed 
€758.0 million in 2019, representing around 6% of 
R&D expenditure. Other public funding and the pri-
vate non-profit sector played a relatively minor role, 
with a combined total of 1.6%.
Fig. 1-1 shows the development of R&D expendi-
ture since 2009 by funding source, and the research 
intensity (= R&D expenditure as a percentage of 
GDP). The bars represent absolute expenditures at 
their respective values, and the solid line indicates 
research intensity. 
Since 2014 Austria’s research intensity has re-
mained consistently above the EU target level of 3%. 
It should be noted that research intensity is defined 
as increasing if R&D expenditure grows faster than