Study On The Performance Evaluation Of National Science And Technology Award System

The National Science and Technology Award System (NSTAS) is a very important part of Chinese science and technology policy, which plays as a significant leverage by implementing macro-control on the development of national science and technology. After more than 60 years of development, since 30 years of reforming and opening-up to the world, the NSTAS has gradually grown into a complete system which has as many as five national level science and technology awards:National Supreme Science and Technology Award, National Natural Science Award, National Technology Invention Award, National Science and Technology Progress Award and International Science and Technology Cooperation Award. Each year, hundreds of millions yuan has been invested into the cause of science and technology award. The total investment is extremely tremendous when considering human and material resources and all other types of tangible and intangible inputs. However, compared to its great input, NSTAS only performs restricted influence on our science and technology, economy and culture, which is far more less than expected. Thus, the operating performance evaluation and optimization of NSTAS is beneficial, which can not only encourage scientists and researchers to be more initiative and creative, but also lead the awarding system onto the track of satisfying more social needs.The rationale of operating performance evaluation involves award essence, award effect, award function, award structure, award controlling method, as well as performance evaluation procedure and approaches. After experiencing three developing stages from starting with exploring to recovery and development, and to reform and improvement, NSTAS has established a complete and relatively fixed program, which mainly includes three links:recommendation, review and award.Factors that affect the operating performance of NSTAS are primarily from eight aspects, which are the rationality of award setting, the coordination of award objects, the appropriateness of award time, the stringency of award qualification, the validity of incentives, the dimension of review efforts, the scientificalness of appraisal index, and the norm of work division, Among them, the rationality of award setting, the coordination of award objects and the norm of work division are changing in the opposite direction of operating performance while others are in the same direction. The appraisal indexes for the operating performance of NSTAS are generally divided into two categories:award input and award output. The award input are measured by three aspects:human resource, capital and facility input; while the award output are measured by another three aspects:award-winning project number, award-winning people number and award effects. Every second level index contains several third level indexes. In this paper, we present a method to calculate and determine the weight coefficient of each appraisal index by using AHP model and yaahp 0.5.2 software.From 1979 to 2009, the operating performance of NSTAS never achieve technology effects and scope effect simultaneously, which means that award input had redundancy and award output was relatively insufficient. In terms of award types, no matter from the angle of award-winning projects or people, National Natural Science Award always accounted for the largest amount of award cost. In other words, the numbers of award-winning projects and people in National Natural Science Award should increase under certain award incentives. From the point of every year's award slack variables, human resources and capital are the top two redundant inputs while facility input is relatively insufficient, which indicates that the need for modernization and informatization is urgent and those output indexes such as the numbers of award-winning projects, people and award effects have rising potential.One approach to improve NSTAS performance is to maintain the existing award output and meanwhile minimize the redundancy of award input, which includes human resource, capital and facility input. Another approach is keeping current award input and simultaneously maximizes award output, such as increasing the award-winning projects and people number, optimizing award effects. Nevertheless, the performance optimization should be implemented for overall award system in accordance with the system theory, rather than solely rely on one single influence factor or appraisal index improvement. Therefore, in order to optimize the operating performance of NSTAS, we should reinforce its reform and improvement, enhance its informationization and improve its quality management system.