Quality Management in Science Advice. A Practice Report.

Abstract

Effective science advice relies on quality that is actively produced throughout the advisory process. This practice report examines how the Austrian Council for Sciences, Technology, and Innovation (FORWIT) managed quality during its formative years. Using a narrative reconstruction of two advisory processes applying structured conversations and the CRELE heuristic (credibility, relevance, legitimacy), we demonstrate how quality is enacted through procedural choices, boundary-work, and compensatory strategies. The comparison highlights two patterns: first, quality assurance shifts into ex-post rationalization when consideration of either of the quality attributes is missing from early process design; second, procedural explicitness functions as a resource for both epistemic and political robustness. By making internal practices visible, this article contributes to institutional learning on how advisory bodies organize credible, relevant, and legitimate science advice.