Advanced Research and Invention Agency Bill (Second sitting)

Jerome Mayhew Excerpts

Wednesday 14th April 2021 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

I am afraid this will probably have to be the last question to this set of witnesses. I call Jerome Mayhew.

[Jerome Mayhew (Broadland) (Con)]

Q We are clearly taking a huge amount of inspiration from DARPA in the creation of ARIA. It is an organisation that has many strengths, but every organisation has weaknesses as well. I would like to give you the opportunity, given your huge knowledge and experience of DARPA, to give us advice on what to avoid. To put it more diplomatically, how can we improve on some of the DARPA processes?

Dr Dugan: One can look at any set of processes and ask, “Are they optimised for the outcomes?” I think ARPA-like organisations are very much optimised for the outcome, which is to catalyse breakthroughs. It is not optimised, as my colleagues have said, for multi-decade-type funding that supports basic research that is foundational and builds a body of knowledge and extends incrementally our understanding of the world. Neither is it optimised for commercial success. I think those things are okay, and there are other organisations and other funding mechanisms that are optimised for those types of activities.

Part of what we see is that the programmes very much take on the character of the programme directors. That is good from the perspective of speed, agility and getting the work done. Sometimes people do not agree with all the things the programme director says. That is the nature of the type of work we do, which is high-risk and breakthrough-oriented. We used to say that the good and the bad of DARPA is that it has no institutional knowledge, which means that we can take a shot at something that has been tried before, and most of the people who tried it before are no longer at DARPA. That is good, as it gives us multiple shots on goal in a changing science and engineering landscape.

[Jerome Mayhew]

Q Finally, to Professor Azoulay, DARPA clearly recognises the benefit of greater integration between the public sector and the private sector, but inevitably that exposes civil servants to political accusations of cronyism. How do you protect DARPA and DARPA servants from those kinds of attacks?

Professor Azoulay: I think there are two elements. One is rules—conflict of interest rules are very important in this regard—and the second, which I mentioned at the beginning, is norms. It is a lot about whom you choose to put in those roles. They typically have credibility and a reputation that is established in the world that they come from—it could be academia or the private sector. Serving as a programme manager at DARPA or ARPA-E is a wonderful opportunity to have an impact—

[The Chair]

Order. I am afraid that brings us to the end of this session, I am sorry. It is a perfect end to the session, but it is the end of the time allocated to the Committee to ask these questions. I thank our witnesses on behalf of the Committee for that evidence. Thank you very much.

Professor Azoulay: Thank you. It was a pleasure.

Examination of Witnesses

Professor Dame Anne Glover and Tabitha Goldstaub gave evidence.