Alliance4Life´s Self-assessment Template Submitted

Only three weeks after the kick-off meeting, Alliance4Life released the first deliverable of its A4L_ACTIONS project, under the leadership of Silvia Pastoreková, Director of Biomedical Center of Slovak Academy of Sciences (BMC SAS). The document provides a basis for the self-assessment of institutional performance and culture. It covers the methodology and design of several online surveys and a profound benchmarking analysis:   

• The institutional managements will be asked to provide SWOT analysis and fill out a self-assessment survey about the status of adoption of best managerial practices recommended by the previous Alliance4Life´s project;
  
• On a voluntary basis, the Alliance4Life´s member institutions will perform anonymous survey on internal research culture and institutional environment to be filled out by their employees; 
  
• Performance indicators of Alliance4Life´s members provided during the previous project for 2015-2017 will be compared with the current data which will be gathered for the period 2018-2020. 
  

The motivation for such a detailed assessment has been described by Prof. Pastoreková in the introductory chapter of the self-assessment template: “In order to make the environment attractive for top scientists we need to imprint a culture favourable for excellence into the “DNA” of institutions in Central and Eastern Europe. We consider evaluation of not only scientific performance, but also of institutional practices as the best grounds to start with the cultural transformation. Fair and open feedback from both internal research personnel and from scientific peers will enable informed decision making by institutional managements, will provide guidance for strategic decisions, and will open up the mind-sets of leaders by bringing in new perspectives.”

The template for the anonymous questionnaire about the perception of internal culture has been inspired by the Welcome Trust survey on institutional culture from 2019 and the anonymous survey was piloted at BMC SAS in November 2020. Now the experience of BMC SAS is being offered to the whole Alliance4Life.

The resulting Self- assessment report is expected to be delivered in November 2021, followed then also with peer-evaluation reports and the reflection of conclusions resulting from the evaluation in institutional strategies and actions of the Alliance4Life.

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