Excellent ratings for PTB

On December 16, 2002, the Final Report of the Evaluation Commission – composed of several international experts – was submitted to the Federal Minister of Economics and Labour and presented to the public by the chairman of the Commission, Prof. Hartmut Weule, Karlsruhe University.

After one year of work, the Commission certified that PTB pursues and complies with its central mission to guarantee progress and reliability in metro-logy for society, economy and science, to the best advantage for German economy and society. Future PTB activities should therefore also be aligned consistently in terms of this mission. In summary, technical competence and quality of the work of the PTB staff members were assessed as excellent.

According to the Commission’s findings PTB’s technical orientation is widely conform to the present requirements. The Commission recommends restructuring and expanding two fields in view of their increasing importance: “metrology in chemistry” and “metrological information technologies.” Patent applications and technology transfer should be consequently advanced to enhance exploitation of research results.

In respect to the sovereign duties and the neutrality of PTB, the legal form as a central national institute and the basic financing should be maintained as well as the scheme to dedicate 60 percent of the resources to research and development. The changes the Commission calls for – in the sense of increasing the direct responsibilities of PTB – are the implementation of a global budget and an increase in the budgets for materials and equipment, the adoption of the managerial organization structure well-tried and tested in business (Board of Directors and Executive Committee) and an end to the annual staff reduction by 1,5 percent.

Systematic and on-going analysis of customer requirements and of long-term developments in economy and society as well as regular technical assessments of all scientific activities by international experts are considered to be indispensable for the strategic planning of PTB tasks. PTB’s scientific integration into the national, European and international environment is found to be very good. The establishment of an international network of cooperating national metrology institutes should be accelerated.

At the end of the year, the Commission will check the implementation of its recommendations.

The complete evaluation report can be obtained from the PTB Press Office. It is also available on the websites of PTB and of the German Federal Ministry for Economy and Labour (BMWA).
(http://www.ptb.de/, cf. “What’s new”)
(http://www.bmwa.bund.de/)