Austrian Research and Technology Report 2020

of R&D 
expenditure in the country for 2019
and analyses 
the 
performance of the Austrian innovation sys-
tem compared to international standards
. The 
report also describes numerous 
strategic mea-
sures and innovations
in the areas of research, 
technology and innovation. 
When the Research Funding Act is passed, the 
circumstances surrounding the central research 
and research funding institutions will change fun-
damentally. For this reason, all the 
key players in 
non-university research and research funding
are 
presented in a monitoring section of this report for 
the first time.
One main focus of the Austrian Research and 
Technology Report 2020 is the topic of 
artificial 
intelligence
. Artificial intelligence is becoming in-
creasingly important in education and research as 
well as at companies and authorities thanks to the 
availability of large volumes of data and the con-
stant improvement in the quality of algorithms. Rel-
evant developments and measures are described 
for each sector.
Austrian RTI policy is characterised by an 
evalu-
ation culture
that is firmly anchored and widely 
applied in the system. The report thus also pro-
vides some insights into this culture and a synopsis 
of recent evaluations of RTI programmes and re-
search institutions.
Revised global estimate of R&D 
expenditure for 2019
Due to the economic uncertainties caused by the 
COVID-19 pandemic, this year’s Austrian Research 
and Technology Report does not include a global 
estimate of annual R&D expenditure. Instead, Sta-
tistics Austria revised its global estimate for 2019 
in April 2020.
In 2019,