We cannot govern what we cannot see

We do not have an innovation gap. We have an accountability gap.

Ambitious Australia proposes a National Innovation Council and sector-specific advisory committees. Australia is once again betting on governance reform to fix its innovation system.

We should be cautious.

We have had no shortage of reviews, strategies and advisory bodies. What we have lacked is governance that delivers sustained strategic execution. More layers is not the answer.

And here is the deeper problem: how do you improve what you cannot see?

Australia has 30,000+ publicly funded research projects with no central registry. No way to know what worked, what failed, or why. The EU has tracked 133,000+ projects through CORDIS since 1990, capturing outcomes, spin-outs and commercial pathways in a single searchable system.

We celebrate the spin-outs. We have no idea what happened to everything else.

Now Australia is moving to associate with Horizon Europe. We will finally start tracking research outcomes systematically. Not by design. By association.

The 10-year National Health and Medical Research Strategy promises to embed translation from the start. If it is serious, start with the data. CORDIS could be the foundation Australia never built for itself. But only if we treat it as infrastructure, not a footnote to a funding announcement.

Better governance does not begin with a new council. It begins with knowing what we have already built.

Where Apex Science helps

For boards and funders, an Expert Scientific and Translational Assessment brings the same discipline to a single decision: an independent view of what a program has delivered and whether it has earned the next investment. See services and pricing, or book a 30-minute call.

First published on LinkedIn as part of the #TheCompleteTranslationPipeline series.