What's the story?

One of the basic templates of thinking that I have found to be quite useful boils down to three questions:

* What's the story?

* Does the story correspond to the facts? And if not sufficiently:

* What can be done to improve the correspondence of the story and the facts in the future?

So what is the story behind the current 500 million budget for FES? 

What is the purpose of this type of spending? What effects, what impact is expected from the many projects?

The general assumption seems to be that if we invest money into scientific research, that this will stimulate innovation, which will ultimately benefit the economy. If you like there is a "mental model" here, a practical theory that justifies the large investment being made.

The question is of course, if this general idea really works out in practice.  Answering that question is of course not so easy.  It would be a good idea to have a look at what evaluations of the former 37 projects have been made, and what conclusions were drawn. 

The most obvious work that was done to evaluate the programs was the the formal "Mid Term Review".  The formal public documents on this review proces are available on: http://www.senternovem.nl/bsik/algemeen/index.asp.

The most recent publication in this series is actually the position of the Dutch Kabinet on the mid term evaluation of the BSIK projects.  ("Kabinetsreactie over de midterm evaluatie van de Bsik projecten"). 

I expect that it is interesting to start here. What is the current formal perception of the Kabinet on these projects? What was expected? What are the perceived outcomes? What are the conclusions for the next time around?

To be continued.