Austrian Research and Technology Report 2020

4. RTI Evaluation Culture and Practice
201
economics, professionalisation of internal manage-
ment and above all a new internal structure with 
research groups often with an interdisciplinary fo-
cus along topic-based groupings (also known as 
“grand challenges”). The IHS then set up a new stat-
ute, a new scientific advisory board and a new 
director. A vision (“The IHS in 2025”) was drawn up 
along with targets up to the year 2020.
The IHS is currently a medium-sized social science 
research institute with a focus on important societal 
challenges and policy areas such as higher educa-
tion, health, inequality research and social policy. In 
addition, the focus on the areas of finance policy, se-
lected macroeconomic issues and economic fore-
casts forms an important part of the IHS’s work. The 
total staff numbers approximately 150 (headcount, 
including doctoral candidates), with around 80 of 
these working as researchers. Aside from a number 
of administrative units, the IHS is organised into ten 
research units.
Methods
In order to evaluate implementation of the reforms, 
an international evaluation panel was asked to as-
sess research capacity at the IHS, its reform steps 
since 2014 and plans for the next few years, and to 
make recommendations for next steps in the reform 
process for the IHS. The IHS mission statement was 
used as the cornerstone for the evaluation. In this 
respect, the evaluation was meant to assess the ex-
tent to which the IHS has already made progress in 
implementing its mission and how it can further im-
prove the methods in order to fulfil this mission. 
The evaluation content consisted of three parts: 
a. assessment of IHS performance between 2016–
2018;
b. assessment of the vision for the next few years 
(2025);
c. assessment of the Institute’s overall capacity 
for the purposes of fulfilling its mission.
To assess the Institute’s performance over the last 
three years, the evaluation was based on the list of 
“Objectives for 2020” adopted by the IHS Board of 
Trustees together with the new mission in 2015. The 
“Vision for 2025” was used to assess the ambitious 
goals for the next few years. This serves as a strate-
gic objective as well as a starting point for negotia-
tions with the Austrian government on the next per-
formance agreement. The IHS’s capacity to fulfil its 
mission was ultimately evaluated based on four di-
mensions: organisational structure, focal points for 
research units and research priorities, human and 
financial resources, as well as management process-
es and governance, including digital management.
The evaluation was conducted by a panel consist-
ing of renowned external experts: Achim Wambach 
from the Centre for European Economic Research 
(ZEW) (chairman of the panel), Shaun Hargreaves 
from King’s College London, Merle Jacobs from Lund 
University, Jutta Allmendinger from the WZB Berlin 
Social Science Center and Daniel Gros from CEPS. 
The panel received a self-evaluation report from the 
IHS prior to its on-site visit. 
The members of the evaluation panel were ap-
pointed by the IHS Board of Trustees, to which the 
panel was also required to report. The IHS Scientific 
Advisory Board provided its comments on the as-
sessment report. The panel was supported by the 
Vienna Science and Technology Fund (WWTF GmbH) 
acting as a local secretariat in order to maintain the 
maximum possible independence from the IHS ad-
ministration. The secretariat served as the contact 
point between the IHS and the panel on all con-
tent-related matters.