ARPA - please explain what this is....

[Notmyrealname855]

I’m no fan of Cummings’ position (one man seemingly holding so much power, and with little oversight from us, wtf...). Personally he seems ambitious, maybe he’s secretly some good guy. I don’t like his recent actions, not really relevant to this post but being upfront.

But one thing I didn’t know about him is the £800m of public money he’s been allocated to set up a new public agency. It’s called ARPA but that’s all I can gather!

I’ve had a google but can someone explain - how is this overseen on the work it does, budget and ethics? On results and people appointed to it? What’s its purpose, what does it do?

It just feels unnecessary and weird... in academic circles is it some great good idea?

www.newscientist.com/article/2227122-revealed-details-of-dominic-cummings-plan-for-new-uk-research-agency/ Found this but still none the wiser!

Thought this might be interesting to know! If it helps on innovation or something? Maybe there’s a sort of business plan out there for it I didn’t find

You may want to read this thread:

mobile.twitter.com/carolecadwalla/status/1264141088010493954

Crikey...

But what does arpa do? Surely he has to say what its plans are? Or who’s working for it? You can’t just get all that money for a pet project and not give out more info?

Can anyone explain! Bump bump

It’s an £800m spend! Does no one know? Can I do a FOI on it?

The modern USA ARPA is a pretty stodgy institution.

some links, me trying to understand better, too

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/mar/11/budget-2020-uk-800m-blue-skies-research-agency

theconversation.com/arpa-what-is-it-and-why-does-dominic-cummings-want-one-in-the-uk-130975

“backing a new approach to funding high-risk, high-payoff research in emerging fields of research and technology”.

That's your money he's playing high risk with. And mine. Taxpayer money. Not his money. Ours. Mostly destined for failure. Who wouldn't like a big budget to play blue sky thinking with that isn't their own money?

And this is nice, "tear up the rule book" about research grants. Peer review & evaluations should have no place in rewarding so much taxpayer money to blue sky thinking projects. Silly me. Thinking that taxpayers were entitled to value for money investments and prudence in public spending. Just fund the projects with the biggest brags. That's the best way to do public spending, sure.

Without broad backing the report says the DARPA proposal could become “yet another short-lived initiative in what has been, throughout the post-war period, a somewhat erratic government approach to science to science and innovation policy”.

Plan is probably stuffed on back of the 'Rona-crisis, anyway, like most public sector spending.

Place marking for the morning. But this isn’t something entirely new. See UKRI. Specifically innovate uk / iscf