Action Plan for new NWO published

Under the responsibility of the NWO transition steering group, the first step will be to work out an integral main design for the new NWO. This will be done through workgroups of employees within the NWO umbrella who will also give stakeholders of NWO the necessary opportunity to engage in the process.

An NWO better equiped for the future
The new NWO will be more effective and more focused on collaboration, will respond more flexibly to developments in science, and it will strengthen collaboration within science and with society. The organisation will be set up in a more efficient and transparent manner: the current disciplines will be clustered into four domains. In the new structure the decision-making at the top of the organisation will take place in an Executive Board. This collegiate board will be closely connected with the domains and the institutes via the four active scientists who, in addition to a president and a member for financial and operational affairs, will be members of this board. In addition these four active scientists will each chair one of the four domains. The Executive Board will be collectively responsible for the institutes that will be supported by an institutes organisation. Advisory councils will stimulate the reciprocal alignment of the institutes with the domains. There will also be a broad advisory board for the dialogue with society and the multidisciplinary alignment.

Funding instruments
For 2016 the continuity of the existing funding instruments for all units of NWO will be guaranteed. In the spring of 2016 changes will be announced so that researchers can prepare for changes in the procedures in good time.

Context of the change
In the Dutch Government's Vision on Science and in the NWO strategy 2015-2018 the renewal of the NWO organisation was already announced with the aim that it could provide a more transparent, flexible, powerful, coherent and sustainable realisation of NWO’s mission: a strong science system in the Netherlands by encouraging quality and innovation in science. The contours of the future organisation were announced on 14 April 2015.

Source: NWO

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