Reviewing research bureaucracy is a balancing act. And the whole research community is watching.
Tip too far into getting rid of processes, paperwork and oversight you risk making the way funding is allocated less fair, robust and defensible. Tip too far toward tinkering, modifying, and otherwise ironing out some creases, and you risk reducing admin by adding more of it.
The Independent Review of Research Bureaucracy led by Birmingham vice chancellor Adam Tickell reported back in July 2022. In even trying to describe what university bureaucracy is, he undertook the enormous task of bringing into focus the fuzzy boundaries of administration, funding, and partnership working.
Tickell recognised that funding is not just the relationship between funders and universities. It is the relationship between researchers and universities, universities and other universities, collections of universities with civic and governmental partners, UK researchers with international researchers, and innumerable other relationships that are impossible to keep track of.
