The objective of this project was to comprehensively address the practice of policy advice at ITA, its diversity and change over time. More specifically, we aimed at reconstructing and reflecting on prevalent roles and implicit paradigms shaping our advisory practice. Key questions included: How do implicit paradigms of science-policy interactions impact on TA’s advisory practice? What roles do TA practitioners realise in their interaction with science, publics, administration and politics? Do different modes of science-based policy advice stabilise along specific actor constellations, technological themes or issues? What can we learn from these results for the collective development of quality criteria, standards and optimal settings for acquiring the necessary skills?

To answer these questions, we adopted a multi-disciplinary, empirically grounded approach. Our empirical basis consisted of the experiences and perspectives of ITA’s current practitioners and the advisory projects’ attributes completed at ITA during the past decades. Methodically we started with a literature review and with mapping the institute’s advisory activities via a comprehensive project database. A subsequent series of interviews with all of ITA’s practitioners explores individual motivations, perspectives and experiences, thus allowing for the reconstruction of the collective role repertoire present at ITA. With a further, project-centred series of interviews with ITA staff as well as clients, collaborators and addressees, we reconstructed the project constellations of four lines of advisory projects. All findings were presented to and validated and discussed by the whole ITA team within two one-day workshops and a series of seminars. Initial project outline, preliminary findings and final outcome were presented to the institute’s scientific advisory board.