Recommendation 19

UKRI is formed of seven research councils, Research England (which supports research and knowledge exchange at higher education institutions in England), and Innovate UK, the UK’s innovation agency.43 Since its establishment, UKRI has faced challenges unifying the separate data systems of its predecessor organisations, including poor and disconnected data.44 UKRI can classify its grants by theme, based on the award title and description, and can produce one-off analyses of parts of its portfolio. For example, in 2024 it produced a review of its portfolio of spending on net zero and climate change. Around 15% of UKRI’s grants, however, do not have a full description on its system, and in other cases the descriptions are poor quality and consequently spending on these grants cannot be accurately classified automatically.45 Professor Grant told us that during his independent review of UKRI in 2022, he found that 37 C&AG’s Report, para 3.4 38 Q 55 39 Q 55 40 Q 34 41 Q 55 42 Q 55, 56 43 C&AG’s Report, para 3 44 C&AG’s Report, para 13 45 C&AG’s Report, para 1.27 13 information was not easily accessible and that he was surprised at how far staff still relied on ad hoc spreadsheets and working on paper, rather than robust IT systems.46 Currently, UKRI’s IT systems and programmes have poor coverage of grants and require a lot of manual quality assurance.47