JRC Portfolios – a resource or a problem?

In 2023, a reorganisation of the JRC’s work programme took place, with the introduction of the portfolios as the new building blocks.
JRC’s management idea behind the portfolios is that they are developed around common science and knowledge activities, going beyond Units and Directorates, providing a more coherent, interdisciplinary policy support to relevant DGs. Portfolios are supposed to step up collaboration, stimulate working together, and further promote cooperation within the JRC on cross-cutting themes.
Portfolios should become JRC’s ‘calling cards’ for outreach and for managing relations with external partners.  
Today, the new structure has been in place for over 10 months. The full deployment of portfolios into the JRC’s way of working is a dynamic and still ongoing process but there are some critical aspects that need attention. The degree of integration vary from portfolio to portfolio, but several concerns are widely expressed. The following remarks and concerns are based on feedback received from many colleagues:
-    Over 220 staff members are currently engaged in the portfolio leadership teams. Although being an opportunity for collaboration and getting to know better the organisation, many scientific staff members report that portfolios represent a significant additional (administrative) workload and burden, without any additional allocation of new resources to compensate for it. The work in portfolio leadership teams is time demanding. There are several weekly meetings and various additional portfolio-level activities. It must be acknowledged that this work comes on top of colleagues’ normal tasks, which are often team and/or project leading tasks, and frequently it is done at the cost of their scientific activities.
-    There is lack of clarity in the distribution of roles and responsibilities between Units and portfolio leadership teams.
-    The initiative to create portfolios presumed that there was not enough collaboration between units and directorates within the JRC. This is, however, an unproven assumption. Many cross-unit and cross-directorate professional relations do exist since years at the JRC, including between sites.
-    Most of the portfolios have been established by putting together already ongoing projects related to well-established activities. These projects were not designed to be linked together, so the integration under the umbrella of a portfolio and the identification of common activities and portfolio-level deliverables was an unrealistic and impossible task in many cases. This situation, in our view, questions the fundamental idea behind portfolios, which end up to be an extra administrative layer requiring additional, and already scarce, resources.
-    The portfolios should become the entry contact point for policy DGs and external stakeholders. Nevertheless, this new approach is not so obvious. JRC Units have long-lasting and well-established collaborations, administrative arrangements and/or common projects with partner DGs. These DGs continue to communicate and work directly with Units, as their only formal administrative counterpart, and do not recognise any benefits of the additional portfolio layer.
-    External and internal communication also present difficulties. It is often very confusing what shall be communicated as an achievement and/or deliverable of the Directorate and Unit, and what shall be presented as the outcome of a portfolio. These situations create tensions and misunderstandings between Unit Heads/ Directors/ communication officers in the various Directorates.
We are aware that many of these aspects are acknowledged also by the JRC Senior Management. We sincerely hope that they will be tackled with no prejudice and with the greatest openness to rethink the entire concept, using the results of the ongoing portfolio assessment at DG level to evaluate if and when a portfolio is adding value, and recognising where it only or mostly creates an extra burden.

If you would like to share your observations and concerns, you can always contact our internal working group at JRC-RD-ISPRA@ec.europa.eu . Confidentiality is guaranteed.

Gianfranco Selvagio                               Laura Ciafrè
President                                                 Political Secretary

EUROPEAN COMMISSION    
JOINT RESEARCH CENTRE

The Director-General

Brussels, 19/08/2020
JRC/SQ

Dear Mr Tirendi, dear Mr Kenny,

Thank you for sharing your thoughts about the upcoming launch of the JRC Editorial Review Board.

When I was first briefed about the introduction of a clear editorial review policy in the JRC with the newly created editorial board, I felt that my predecessors had taken an important and well thought through initiative. As a result, we now have an authorisation process with all steps necessary to be able to take full responsibility, as an organisation, for the science and knowledge that we produce. That is a professional approach appropriate for a Commission service. 

My predecessor reacted to most of your questions in an earlier letter and I fully agree with her arguments. The editorial review streamlines the JRC’s publication procedure for scientific manuscripts. It is a tailor-made process, well-documented, transparent with the same criteria across the whole organisation and the shortest possible delay.

That said, I understand that some concerns persist as regards issues have been raised in the past, for instance during the JRC Scientific Integrity Road Show in 2018/2019.We are therefore going to make an additional effort to clarify all questions raised through the planned communication campaign, so as to ensure that the finer points of the editorial review are fully understood by everyone.

From September, the Editorial Board - Koen Jonkers and his team - will continue with a series of meetings with directorates and units where they will discuss the details of the new process. They have already launched their website on Connected, which also deals with frequently asked questions, such as for example the review for articles in peer-reviewed journals.

Our objective remains for the editorial review to start immediately after the September campaign. We believe that it has been designed in a way to fit well with our work, but will of course keep it under careful review in the initial phase. We will also ensure that the process is evaluated in due course, so as to assess its performance, costs, benefits and any potential adjustment needs.

Yours sincerely,

Stephen QUEST

c.c.: B. Magenhann, D. Al Khudhairy, M. Landabaso Alvarez, P. Szymanski, G. De Santi, D. Chirondojan, G. Van den Eede, M. Betti, P. Duponteil, K. Maruszewski, X. Troussard.

NOTE SENT BY R&D TO MR QUEST, DG JRC ON 29/07/2020 - JERB - NUTCRACKER OR SLEDGEHAMMER?