Paris

France's largest and most prestigious research agency, the CNRS, has been severely criticized in a national audit for its alleged lack of strategic planning, weak financial management and flawed human-resources policy.

The audit says that the agency's cumbersome 800-member national committee, and the high degree of autonomy enjoyed by its 1,200 laboratories, prevent it from planning properly.

The criticisms are likely to lead to a major overhaul of the research agency and its governing committee — although the CNRS says that many of them are already being addressed in a new strategic plan that it will endorse this month.

The ability of researchers to move within the CNRS and to conduct interdisciplinary research is stifled, the audit says, by the inflexibility of the agency's discipline-based organization and evaluation system. The audit also charges that the CNRS — whose budget of 2.4 billion euros (US$2.1 billion) makes it the largest supporter of basic scientific research in Europe — is not taking a leadership role in research involving other European countries.

The audit also criticizes the financial management of the agency, pointing out that its laboratories consistently underspend their allocated budgets, holding back the money for a rainy day. It adds that the agency faces a recruitment crisis, with half of its staff due to retire by 2020.

Despite recent reforms at the administrative level (see Nature 404, 426; 2000), the auditors charge that the CNRS and its parent research ministry have been “incapable of getting beyond the stage of collective reflection and group discussions” in enacting reform.

The current management team — Gérard Mégie, the agency's president, and Geneviève Berger, its director-general — were appointed in 2000 to lead a new management structure at the agency.

“This is a key moment for the CNRS,” says Mégie. “We have done the thinking: now we need to translate this into action.”

The agency's strategic plan says it will give priority to interdisciplinary work and to integration into the European Research Area. It introduces four-year contracts between CNRS management and its laboratories, defining their budgets, objectives and evaluation procedures. Mégie says that he hopes the changes “will encourage researchers to take risks in their careers”.

A 1998 plan by former research minister Claude Allègre to reduce the influence of the agency's national committee was abandoned in the face of fierce opposition from researchers (see Nature 396, 607; 1998). Berger says that the agency's own plan will reform the committee in a manner “no less radical than Allègre's, but better prepared”.

The ministry of research, which itself is implicitly criticized by the auditors, says that many reforms have been implemented since the audit started two years ago. A new 'contract of objectives' between the ministry and the CNRS will be signed next month, defining long- and short-term objectives for the agency. “The contract will contain a number of performance indicators” says Ketty Schwartz, research director at the ministry.