Recommendation 18

We asked whether the new systems that UKRI is developing could be adopted by other departments to provide insight across all government investment in research and innovation.39 UKRI noted that, while it invests a substantial amount of taxpayers money, this sum amounts to less than half of what government as a whole invests in R&D.40 UKRI explained that the new system would manage both the investment funding allocated directly to it and the additional £1 billion in funding that UKRI manages on behalf of other departments each year.41 UKRI said that its “Databank”, where data from across the organisation are captured in a common format so that they can be more easily analysed, is being designed so that even if other departments are not using the same system, UKRI can bring those different data sources together. UKRI told us that in the long-term it expects its updated data systems to provide visibility across all of the government’s £20.4 billion funding portfolio. However, UKRI did not give us a firm date by which it would achieve this aim.42 IT systems