Improving R&D to Operations at NOAA - Tools for Research Program Management

As an agency with an applied research mission, NOAA oversees a large scientific portfolio across a diverse range of topics. The size and scope of the organization necessitates the administration and management of research at the program level. Therefore, a standardized metric of productivity must be established in order to showcase NOAA science, services, and stewardship to the public. Tracking the transition of research and development (R&D) to application, operation, commercialization, and other uses (R2X) is an efficient way to measure NOAA's contributions to society. As such, NOAA leadership conceived and implemented strategic policies aimed at facilitating and streamlining the R2X process. More specifically, Readiness Levels (RLs) are the mechanism by which NOAA standardizes the tracking of R2X progress among many disparate research programs. The recently created NOAA R&D Database (NRDD) goes a step further and consolidates project status and information into one database, improving NOAA's ability to follow and report on R2X. These policies, guidance materials, and database resources have significantly increased proper identification of government-funded R2X within NOAA. The ability to effectively manage these transitions is particularly important to NOAA's Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR), the research-dedicated arm of NOAA. In recent years, OAR has begun to track R2X among its various programs using a series of consistent metrics with the aim of establishing a baseline for emerging R&D trends. The third iteration of this R2X report has recently been completed for OAR projects that reached application, operation, or commercialization in fiscal year 2018. Annual completion of this report will provide key insights into the effectiveness of R2X analysis as a program and research management tool.