Three years after President Lee Myung-bak abolished the Ministry of Science and Technology to slim down the government, an administrative commission was launched Monday to perform much the same task as the old ministry. Kim Doh-yeon who briefly served as the first minister of education, science and technology under President Lee was named chairman of the new commission.

When the transition committee formed after Lee’s election decided to have the Science Ministry merged into the Education Ministry, the nation’s science and technology circles complained strongly, led by research universities and public and private research organizations. They continued to call for the establishment of far-sighted science and technology development policies and their effective implementation with greater private sector contributions.

Instead of reviving the ministry, the Lee government chose to “upgrade” the existing National Science and Technology Council, which was a presidential advisory panel, to an administrative commission with power to allot most of the government’s research and development budget and steer the direction of science and technology policies. The Basic Law on Science and Technology was revised last December to this effect.

The new commission will be responsible for policy planning, distribution of research subsidies, evaluation of all state-funded R&D projects and promotion of basic science in cooperation with academic institutions. The NSTC will handle about 75 percent of state funding for R&D projects, which amount to 14.9 trillion won ($13.5 billion) in 2011. These were the job of the Science Ministry from the late 1960s until 2008.

Administrative reform is being done by trial and error. The result is a huge waste of bureaucratic energy and expertise, not to mention confusion in policy priority. Science Ministry officials with specialized knowledge and experience, many with overseas training, were reassigned to the Ministry of Education and Science and Technology and are again being transferred to the NSTC.

There will be some differences from the past S&T administration, of course. The new commission’s 140 staff will include about 60 experts recruited from the private sector. Yet, the organization will essentially be a bureaucratic entity with one of its two “standing commissioners” coming from the Education Ministry and the other from the Ministry of Strategy and Finance.

New problems may arise. The commission’s power to allot national R&D funding to individual research organizations and projects could clash with the Strategy and Finance Ministry’s original budgetary authority. The revised basic law asks the commission to deliver its funding plan to the Strategy and Finance Ministry for the ministry’s review under the overall national budget plan. Friction could develop between the two organizations in this process.

This possible conflict aside, the new system should help the goal of accelerating research and development through the public and private sector cooperation. The first task is to have expert voices from academia and industry better reflected in the activities of the new commission.

Upon the launching of the commission, the association of state-funded research organizations recommended that its member agencies currently under control of the Education Ministry and the Ministry of Knowledge Economy be affiliated with the NSTC to ensure better collaboration. The leaders of the new commission should listen to this and other opinions from scientists, engineers and industrialists who are as responsible for the development of science and technology as bureaucrats and politicians.