The NWO organisation and Public Governance
NWO is a legally founded artificial person in public law and as such the legal successor of ZWO, founded in 1950. The NWO Law describes NWO’s duties and powers. An important part of NWO’s duties is performed by providing subsidies to academic researchers.
The financial means for this are for the most part drawn from the budget of the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science. This chapter contains a brief synopsis of the way NWO deals with governance. Reference is made to a number of documents most of which can be obtained through NWO’s website. ‘Good governance’ has NWO’s unstinting attention.
Minister of Education, Culture and Science (OCW)
NWO falls under the responsibility of the Minister of Education (OCW). In order to properly take on this ministerial responsibility the Minister has a number of powers described in the NWO Law:
- to appoint and discharge members of the Governing Board
- to approve changes to the NWO Regulations (which describe the organisation’s management and constitution as well as its relations with the research organisations)
- to form an opinion on the strategic plan
- to approve the budget (in Dutch only)
- to approve the annual accounts (part of the annual financial report) (in Dutch only)
The Minister consults with NWO’s Governing Board once or twice a year. In 2006/2007 NWO’s performance will be evaluated for the benefit of the Minister.
Governing Board
The Governing Board is responsible for carrying out NWO’s duties. The Governing Board is supported by a general director, who is also in charge of the NWO Office.
Under NWO come division boards, subsidy organisations (NCF, WOTRO), research institutes and temporary taskforces (ACTS, NGI, ICTRegie). The Governing Board appoints or approves the appointment of members in the boards of these organisations. The NWO Regulations stipulate the rules to be followed in the NWO organisation. These rules have been further specified in covenants, guidelines and other regulations.
In order to effectively accomplish its public tasks NWO maintains well-regulated relations with other departments and other (intermediary) organisations in the scientific field, such as the VSNU, universities, KNAW, Ministry of Economic Affairs, SenterNovem, the EU, and Research Councils across Europe. The Governing Board is accountable to the Minister. In addition it is self-evident that a public organisation like NWO must administer public means in a responsible way and be publicly accountable for it.
Good Governance Code
NWO regards the Good Governance Code as an excellent guideline in giving account of its public governance structure. Special attention must be given to NWO’s administrative and supervisory structure, which deviates from the ‘ideal model’ described in the code. In the strategy plan 2007–2010 the Governing Board has expressed its intention to look more closely into the governance structure within NWO. To intensify NWO’s interaction with its surroundings NWO, as a first step in changing its governance, will set up a ‘senatorial college’ that has a say in important policy decisions. This college will consist of prominent and authoritative persons from different sectors of society. Governance will also be reconsidered at division level. A number of division boards already contain experts from society at large who have a background in and commitment to science but are not academically employed. Recently a number of measures were taken within the NWO organisation that are in close correspondence with the guidelines from the Good Governance Code:
- Putting in place internal systems for risk management and control
- Setting up a financial committee (containing two members of the Governing Board, the director of Organisation & Planning, and an external accountant)
- Developing an external complaints procedure
- Developing a code of conduct
Regulations as part of good governance
NWO has settled some important governance issues in a number of concrete documents:
Subsidy provision
Important to NWO are the quality, carefulness and transparency of the assessment process and the management of projects. The following documents contain a number of the measures implemented by NWO to achieve this:
- Subsidy regulation
- Appeals and complaints *
- Personal data regulation (in Dutch only)
- Code of conduct on conflict of interests
- Scientific integrity (PDF, in Dutch only)
- Fraud protocol (in Dutch only)
Internal regulations
A number of internal governance issues are (being) settled in the following documents (among others):
The Code of conduct on conflict of interests was modified in 2005. The documents marked with an * are currently being revised/developed.
Internal systems for risk management and control
NWO uses a planning & control system; in the spring the Governing Board discusses with the various boards, on the basis of the submitted annual accounts and long-term estimates, the results of the past year and the plans for the years to come. In the spring the Governing Board fixes the financial framework for the coming years; on the basis of this framework the various boards make a definitive budget for the following year which is submitted to the Governing Board in September. Next the general NWO budget is made and presented to the Minister of OCW no later than 1 November.
As part of this cycle the financial policy and financial risks are extensively discussed. In the guidelines on Financial management the laws and regulations that NWO has to abide by are translated into guidelines used within NWO. Every year in the consolidation protocol the principles are laid down for the financial reporting which all parts of NWO have to follow. At present much labour is being spent on perfecting the descriptions of the primary process, a result of the INK projects that were carried out in the past years. Within the framework of this cycle the new strategy plan for the period 2007–2010 will have to be translated into indicators with which the realisation of the designated aims can be monitored. An important element in this are the recurrent management talks.
