Korean government performs the Pre-feasibility Inspection based on the National Finance Act for National R&D program of which the total budget is over 50 billion won. R&D Program Pre-feasibility Inspection is conducted for the efficient operation of national finance by reasonable decisions on big R&D program investments.

R&D Program has much of uncertainty since it aims at investment for the future, in which we have no experience. It is difficult to prospect the effects, cost and benefit of R&D investment before a specific R&D program is performed. In these contexts, R&D Program Pre-feasibility Inspection would bring bias on direction of national R&D investment if the unique traits of R&D are not considered enough. It is necessary to review whether Pre-feasibility of R&D Program is executed with rationality and the results of this inspection offer useful information for compilation and deliberation of the national budget.

The results of meta-evaluation are as follow; first, R&D Program Pre-feasibility Inspection is not performed by reflecting the characteristics of industry, and science and technology sectors. Second, R&D Program Pre-feasibility Inspection does not have systematic methods for inspection. Third, in the case of some inspections, it is difficult to trust the results of inspection because cost and benefit estimation is inappropriate.