Title: The Hiberarchy of Robots: Evaluating the Transfer of Universities' Scientific Research Administrative Obligations via E-mail Analysis

　　Speaker: Professor Jan Youtie, Principal Research Fellow, Economic Development Research Center, Georgia Institute of Technology

　　Time: Thursday, May 10th 9:00-11:00

　　Location: Main Building Room 418

 

　　Guest Speaker Profile:

　　Professor Jan Youtie is a Principal Research Fellow at the Center for Economic Development and Research of the Georgia Institute of Technology and an Associate Professor at the School of Public Policy. His main research interests are emerging technology assessment, innovation and knowledge measurement and assessment, technology-based economic development, and manufacturing competitiveness. She is a professional reviewer of many international journals. She has presided over and participated in more than 30 projects, published 10 monographs, and published more than 30 academic papers. His article “Coordination of Industrial Modernization Services: Impact of U.S. Manufacturing Development Partnership and Analysis" won the American Lang Rosen Excellent Paper Gold Award.

 

　　Lecture Description:

　　The increase in research regulations in American universities raises concerns about whether these provisions give government-funded university researchers more burden on costs and time. (National Science Council, 2014). The private sector has also encountered this problem. They provide software systems for automated university research funding management, including automated reporting and compliance mailings to improve the ability of university researchers to comply with government regulations. These systems, as many information and communication technologies claim, are designed to increase productivity, but for whom? This paper studies these systems to a large extent brought about paradox of productivity, resulting in a computerized scientific research administrative burden and transferred to the researchers. In addition to reporting 100 interviews with NSF researchers, we will also present the results of a new approach based on pilot analysis of e-mails. These emails are related to a small amount of funding received by the author, including email generated by the software system (we call it robot email) and emails sent by human administrators to detect administrative burdens . Using robotic emails, we explore the extent to which the system can serve as an indicator of the transfer of administrative tasks to faculty members, rather than individual-issued e-mails. If so, what administrative areas the transfer took place. The results showed that two-thirds of the emails sent at the start of the project were robotic emails or emails needed to solve problems caused by robotic emails. In addition, the use of robotic e-mail is the most common in the field of compliance and reporting, and is less concerned with project initiation. Although this is a pilot study, it provides some insights into similar research in other areas of policy and management. These studies are about the use of systematic compliance requirements or other mechanized management techniques to understand how these technologies affect research administrative burden.

　　

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