Towards an innovation-based knowledge society

This has proven to be a highly eventful and significant year for research and innovation in Malta. Underpinning a new commitment to research and innovation is a major process of change in R&I governance initiated in 2005.

Over this last year, the government has been undergoing a process of deep reflection and rethinking of national policies relating to science and technology, research and innovation and technological development. This process has led to the initiation of a number of changes affecting the structure and organisation of the R&I policy-making framework together with the orientation, development and implementation of policies.

The visible change process started in October 2005, when the Prime Minister announced in the national budget a higher profile and a revised and more specific remit for the Malta Council for Science and Technology (MCST), together with stronger links (through its new chairman) and new location within the Office of the Prime Minister.

MCST was assigned a new, more prominent role to ensure more coordinated and coherent policy approaches in R&I across government ministries and agencies in order to harness synergies and avoid duplication of effort.

Firstly, MCST is to act as a catalyst in defining and facilitating the role of R&I activity as a support to ministerial policies and sectoral strategies.

Secondly, the council is to address the policy gaps and RTDI opportunities that arise at the interface between different ministries.

Thirdly, MCST is to prioritise and orient national R&I investments, public and, where possible, private, to sectors and niche areas with high business potential and relevance to meet pressing economic and social needs.

The official launch of the MCST advisory council by the Prime Minister in January 2006 emphasised a new culture on policy formulation and advice through the engagement of a broader stakeholder base. The PM's seven-point agenda, defining the council's focus of work, included the key parameters, objectives and deliverables as the terms of reference for the development of the national R&I plan (2007-10). The preparation of the plan involved MCST in a long process of consultations with a range of stakeholders including a questionnaire-based survey, nine thematic consultations, numerous MCST advisory council discussions and other high-level meetings.

The year 2006 has thus marked the launch of an ambitious new future-oriented R&I plan entitled Building And Sustaining The R&I Enabling Framework, setting out over a three-year timeframe a strategy for boosting the public spend on R&I to 0.75 per cent of GDP by 2010.

For the first time, a long-term R&I strategy that focuses investments on a defined set of priorities and targets together with key performance indicators for the human capital base in science, engineering and technology, industry-academia collaboration, current and future R&I capacity and growth and wealth creation, has been approved by the government. The new priorities for business-oriented R&I, defined within the plan, namely energy and the environment, ICT, value-added manufacturing, and health and biotechnology, have already made their way into the selection criteria for the recent call for proposals under the MCST R&I programme 2006.

The full implications of the plan as a major driver for building Malta's capacities in R&I have yet to be fully understood and realised, as the full package of measures has still to be launched in 2007. The plan sets out a total of 66 recommendations, addressing a range of demand- and supply-side, direct and indirect measures that fall into four broad categories: leveraging R&I in business, R&I in the public sector, R&I in academia and enhancing entrepreneurship and science popularisation and education.

Beyond defining the focus and priorities for public sector investments, the plan elaborates more strategic governance approaches, including a vision for "research and innovation at the heart of the Maltese economy to support value-added growth and wealth" and a set of strategic principles.

More importantly, the lead political championing for implementation of the national strategy for research and innovation is now in the hands of the Office of the Prime Minister.

This is a major achievement, ensuring R&I a high profile on the national agenda in the coming years and the necessary oversight role for securing cross-ministerial synergies and identifying policy gaps/vacuums where action needs to be taken.

More recently, in order to secure improved coordination of national research and innovation policy, the Office of the Prime Minister set up an intra-governmental committee on research and innovation (IGC-R&I) to: formulate joined up policies on R&I, attain congruency on R&I policy, achieve coherency in R&I action, act as a communication and information sharing forum for R&I activity, and act as an issue resolution mechanism on R&I matters.

The IGC-R&I acts as the primary channel for the routing of R&I government positions at a national, EU community and international level. The IGC-R&I is chaired by the MCST and is constituted of senior representatives of the EU Secretariat (OPM), the University of Malta, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Education, Youth and Employment, the Ministry for Competitiveness and Communications, the Ministry for Health, the Elderly and Community Care, Malta Enterprise, the Malta Environment and Planning Authority and the Malta Resources Authority.

The R&I plan also confirms a new strategic role for the MCST as the "lead administrative entity entrusted with the responsibility to implement the national strategy for research and innovation" and to "work with related entities to ensure joined-up activity of actions taken".

Although the Office of the Prime Minister has become the focal point for R&I policy setting and coordination, a number of competencies relating to implementation are shared with relevant ministries and agencies, primarily the Ministry for Competitiveness and Communications and Malta Enterprise, and the Ministry of Education, Youth and Employment, the University of Malta and the National Commission for Higher Education.

A number of close working links are also to be developed with non-governmental bodies such as National Student Travel Foundation and Young Enterprise Malta.

(The Expo Science Med 2006 will be held at the University of Malta November 13-18.)

Dr Cassingena Harper is director of policy at MCST.

jharper@mcst.org.mt, http://www.mcst.org.mt/RI%20report.pdf

Jennifer Cassingena Harper