Scientific progress is pertinent to social and economic development, whereas organized strategic and coherent investment of public resource into science, under strong international scrutiny, enables new knowledge production, highly qualified human resources in science and technology, and stimulates social and economic development. Such an importance of science and technology (S&T) was recognized in Portugal in the late 1970s when the Portuguese S&T system started improving its science and technology base especially by enhancing its critical mass. Investment in people through qualified human resources in S&T at research units in Portugal was particularly promoted in the period 2006–2010 and through the Governmental program “Compromisso com a Cie?ncia”. This research paper is going to analyze how the Program addressed the lack of human resources (HR) in S&T in Portugal especially by examining the policy initiative of the Program concerning “contractual arrangements of 1000 doctorates” between 2007-2009 under the policy cycle framework as well as provide some concluding evaluation indicators for the overall Program. The paper contributes to showing that targeted and stable funding for science positively influences science and technology growth and that recent budget cuts are threatening the scientific potential of the Portuguese society and causing yet another era of extreme brain drain.

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