A report on the Institute's activities, including statements by the Chairman and Director-General.
A Message from the Chairman
Our strategic goal remains as firm as when it was set out in 2008; to make RUSI internationally recognised as a research-led defence and security think-tank comparable to the best in the world. I am happy to report that we made good progress this year to achieve that objective. At the end of the 2013/14 financial year our research income was up by £608,000 against the previous year: our research, plus ‘services and consultancy’ directly linked to it, constituted 56 per cent of our total income. Our national profile is high and I am pleased with the demonstrable effects we are having on important policy debates in the United Kingdom.
Our research income was up by £608,000 against the previous year.
Rt Hon The Lord Hutton of Furness
Chairman of the Council
I am also pleased by RUSI’s growing international reputation as our presences in Doha, Washington, DC, Tokyo and now Nairobi get into their stride and as a greater proportion of our work takes us into collaborative research in Asia, Africa and the Middle East. As Chairman of RUSI, I and my fellow Trustees are delighted to oversee this development, which will expand further into the Middle East next year – the initiative, of course, remains under the oversight of the Institute’s Whitehall headquarters.
Our ongoing task – the fourth of the strategic thresholds I outlined last year – is to use this national and international excellence to generate for RUSI a different order of funding that will allow us to underpin our research advances to make them irreversible, as well as invest in our home on Whitehall and in RUSI’s presence as a significant element in the national life of the United Kingdom. This last threshold is primarily the responsibility of the Director-General and the governing elements of the Institute – the Vice Presidents, Advisory Council and the Trustees – and I pay tribute to the continuing work of our various governing officials in helping RUSI to cross this threshold.
Rt Hon The Lord Hutton of Furness
Chairman of the Council
A Message from the Director General
Our immediate objectives for the coming year are to continue to develop our research outputs and respond strongly to all the changes taking place across the Middle East, Asia and Europe, and in the UK’s own calculations of its defence and security. We want to expand on the success to-date of RUSI International in order to put the Institute’s work in front of a global audience and to make a major effort to market the Institute both domestically and internationally.
We aim to invest in the Institute and in its physical fabric during the next two years. We have reached the point where our growing international profile requires an appropriate London base that can make a genuine reality of the hub-and-spoke model we are pursuing.
I pay tribute to the dedication of all the staff at RUSI for their hard and inventive work to get us to this point where it is capable of reaching a new level of performance and recognition. I am confident we can consolidate our recent progress and achieve the ambitious objectives we originally set ourselves in our first strategic plan of 2008 and – as the Chairman outlines in his message – take it forward towards 2016 and beyond.
Professor Michael Clarke
Director-General