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[Music]
symposium
was held in uh two years ago in march
2029
at the royal
flemish academy for science
and arts in brussels the spot where we
were supposed to meet each other in
persona
but due to pandemic epoch as you
know we had to postpone also several
planned meetings that meeting in the
royal academy was
supported by the royal by the flemish
european
conference by the flemish conference and
by the
research foundation of flanders
we need binoculars binoculars to explore
scenarios for the future
we need binoculars to detect articulate
the role of
science shaping drafting those scenarios
i'm a comparativist i'm a i'm fascinated
by
competitive law and policy
so throughout europe there are best and
good examples practices
on innovative knowledge institutes
that deliver a ground-breaking and
inspiring
thinking for foresight policies
the question is whatever our
status or our mission in life
what kind of society do you want
for our grandkids and the kids of our
grandkids
for the future
are we good ancestors
and how to deal with the tidal
transition from a sustainable
development
to a sustainable future
the more precarious the predictability
of the future
the more pressing the need for knowledge
about development and the impact of
future scenarios
and options become according
to glad in the camera can you be
absolutely beef
the future is voca
the future is volatile uncertain
complex and ambiguous
exploring the future instead of
predicting the future
daring to think about the future
so should scientists be
recognized as a guide or are they seen
as a troublemaker
covet 19 definitely made a difference
statements from political leadership
from the last
month last year during the pandemic
times
is focusing on we follow
signs we
read the statistics and decisions
should be made on evidence-based
research
designing a future perspective
should be a binding sign between
politics and academia
after all scientists and politicians
share the same social mission
although of course they are independent
and they follow their own mission
and the ontology but on shaping
at the international the european the
regional
the national and the local
level we need evidence-based
foresight scenarios
the question raised is if scientists
are convinced to take a long-term
approach into account and of course
there
are differences between academics and
and politicians and in some writings i
try to
to define those criteria but the care
for the future
requires a holistic approach
far away from the familiar pseudos
research often focuses on a single
core domain where public policy by
definition
embraces several concerns
at the same time so this
european conference precedes the
second flemish binocular
symposium and we definitely do hope to
learn
from the best practices europe
the dutch model is
seen as one of the most prominent models
on foresight foresight policies and
it's a privilege to co-chair this
this meeting this conference with
professor cordin
prince who is the president of the dutch
scientific council
for government policy
she is now on our screen
thank you for having us you have
immediately the floor
did you give the floor to me
yeah because i i i could not hear you
thus far i've tried to arranged with the
technicalities i could not hear you
because
can you hear me yeah
okay then i'm i'm sorry that i didn't
know
that i didn't um quite get what you
just um presented in your introduction
but we have on the
the dutch scientific council for
government policy we're
highly pleased that you and your
colleagues organize
uh this event and unfortunately we are
not able to attend
i brought myself a binocular
i don't know whether you can see it but
this
gives me the opportunity to be a bit
close
and thank you very much for
organizing the event because in
particular in these
these difficult and challenging times i
think it is crucial to look ahead
long-term policy advice is crucial in
these
times based on academic and scientific
knowledge what does that mean for policy
advice and i'm
i'm very much looking forward to what um
our colleagues will bring to the floor
in our discussion both this morning
as well as later on this afternoon so
thank you for giving me the floor giving
the wrr the opportunity to reflect on
some of the lessons that we've learned
during
our almost 50 years existence
and i will be touching on that shortly
thank you
professor dekov
the colleague corinne thank you so much
uh being with us and taking the
colleagues
of this uh to hear me right now
i guess you you do
so uh preparing this this symposium we
um
in june last year we invited the the
commissioner
for uh inter-institutional relations
and foresight models self-coverage
and he agreed to be with us last year
unfortunately he is not just
commissioner between brackets but he's
also vice president
and in charge of the brexit negotiations
or the after brexit negotiations
of michel bernier so he had to
to excuse himself i
prepared a short reference to
leading one of the leading european
commission reports
the essential contribution
of research for democracy but you are
following a strict
script who is really detailed
minute per minute so i will
refer to it next time and
may we invite the
director general of the joint research
center of the european commission the
commissioner delegated all this power
between brackets on foresight policy for
this meeting
and we are extremely happy to have
stephen quest
with us um stefan is
quite interesting british and french
but can be intriguing but very
interesting indeed he has a long
record as a
european bureaucrat dealing with several
dgs
and now leading the think tank on
foresight policy stephen you have
immediately the floor
representing the vice president and to
share with you a few thoughts about
about how we embed strategic foresight
into the european commission's
work um the joint research center of the
european commission has long been active
in supporting strategic long-term
thinking
of the commission with foresight and and
i'd like to really just share today
three things
about this work in a sense sharing some
of our binoculars
uh with you today it's pleasure to to do
this the first is to
just sketch out some of the preliminary
findings from our
annual strategic foresight report which
we're planning to publish in july so
it's a bit of a heads up for you and
that the focus this year is on
open strategic autonomy after that i'll
talk a little bit
about some of our megatrends tools and
then finally
a couple of words about how we work with
national governments
on future thinking and on foresight um
on foresight tools
but it's clear that strategic foresight
really has a very firm place in in
european union and national policy
making and i think this
this makes a lot of sense citizens
expect our policies
uh to create long-term benefits and so
government analysis necessarily relies
on
on projecting the the impact of policies
into the future
but in doing this we we know that we
face uh
and struggle with some tensions because
we're under pressure
to act now and to deliver things now
while at the same time we have to look
ahead
and these things are not always
compatible we have to navigate between
sometimes quite narrow policy priorities
while at the same time taking this more
holistic view that you mentioned
professor in your introduction
and of course we have to some sometimes
struggle a bit with with the natural
conservatism of bureaucracy
and at the same time the need often to
to think a new and act anew
in these in these very challenging times
now now foresight doesn't give you the
silver bullet solution to all of this
but i think it can help
in navigating tensions and as you've
said in the commission certainly
foresight is on the map
because president vonderlion gave vice
president shefkovich
a very clear mandate i think the first
time ever a member of the college
has a specific mandate to promote the
use of foresight in policymaking and
we're delighted in the
jrc to be able to support him in this in
this work
now one of the ways we do this is
through the annual strategic foresight
report that the commission produces
the theme of this year's reports open
strategic autonomy i'll say a few words
on this
um what the the crisis that we're going
through has highlighted is that we have
certainly many dependencies in europe
and there's been a lot of discussion
over the last year
and a half about strategic autonomy
technical technological sovereignty
and we've seen this already echoed in
some initiatives coming from the
commission
we saw the the trade policy review
recently and even more recently a new
industrial strategy for europe
where we've gone into quite some detail
already in analyzing
strategic dependencies and then looking
at capacities
in a number of technological and
industrial strategic
strategic areas now foresight
seeks to complement this work and add
value to it
in part by giving a more forward looking
perspective so we're looking up to 2040
and in part by also bringing in a
multi-disciplinary approach
now of course we're not the only ones to
be looking in this area you'll probably
all have seen the recent uh u.s national
intelligence council global trends
report that sets a you know a very big
picture key trends and drivers to 2040
climate change volatile global
government governance
decreasing faith in institutions very
worrying for us
increasing misinformation divisions in
society
inequalities in income and information
so some really big themes
um highlighted there what we are doing
in the in the open strategic autonomy
report
is to be a bit more specific and to try
and build slightly more pragmatic links
uh into eu policies i'll just give you a
few highlights
um as a as an avon premiere of this this
work
um one thing we'll do is is to look at
existing capacities existing
capabilities and vulnerabilities
and then map those against future
opportunities and challenges
now in terms of vulnerabilities and
challenges the trends
up to 2040 indicate quite a lot of
turbulence
we are seeing probably unprecedented
global change in instability
we're seeing a lot of demographic and
social change we're seeing
on ongoing significant technological
advances
and a growing incidence of systemic
crisis
so quite a quite a challenging uh period
ahead
change also seen uh coming up in the
geopolitical front
within with an increasing redistribution
of global power
and a major shifts expected towards a
more
multi-polar and a more contested
international order
and perhaps the the emergence and
positioning of global powers
particularly
uh coming from the east the energy
transition
as well will contribute to a
redistribution of power globally
now on the other side we also in the
report will look at a number of
opportunities
uh because we think that our strategic
autonomy is set to benefit
from the acceleration that we're seeing
in the green transition where we're
quite well positioned
we think the energy transition could
also help reduce import dependency on
fossil fuels
and we think that the circular economy
could reduce
needs to import some critical raw
materials
and we're also highlighting the need for
targeted investments in some areas like
digital
artificial intelligence cloud
technologies blockchain and so on
in order to ensure that the required
range of public services
can still be made available to all
citizens
the response to the pandemic
demonstrates that
multilateral cooperation is more
effective than
nationalisms or vaccine nationalism if
you like so we need to reinforce
uh the eu's competencies in health in
order to help mitigate
the impact for health systems and the
economy of aging populations and chronic
diseases and we see quite a lot of
progress in the health sphere at the
moment at european level
now the report will also uh
look at four foresight scenarios that
the jrc team have developed
on the future standing of the eu in 2040
now these are not predictions
but they are designed to be plausible
2040 futures
which help us to question our
assumptions about both
the the present and the future
and by combining current evidence with
the exploration of possible future
developments
we then look to explore possible
implications and priorities
which might flow from these scenarios
and we map them across
different dimensions of open strategic
autonomy and we've identified five of
those dimensions the geopolitical
the economic technological social
and environmental so quite a broad span
and just to give a couple of examples in
geopolitics
we see the landscape evolving with with
developing countries starting to shift
from being policy takers
to being policy shapers we see the
economic weight
of these countries you can call them the
emerging 7
projected to increase significantly by
2030
and starting to exert more influence on
global
economy and global rule setting so one
key decider for us is going to be what
will be the combination
of alliances that will emerge the
economic alliances technological
alliances geopolitical alliances
between the g7 and the e7
so that's one theme we see emerging on
on technology
we highlight the importance of standard
setting as a key factor
for our strategic autonomy we think the
eu needs to use its regulatory and its
soft powers to steer progress towards
global standards
that that will reflect eu values and
interests
because there's a race going on to get
first mover advantage in standard
setting
and the competition is especially
relevant in new areas
artificial intelligence quantum
computing green hydrogen batteries
chemicals and so on where first mover
advantage
can really benefit companies and
technologies
and a final example is on climate and
environment where we have in the eu the
most ambitious legislation on climate
action in the world
but our greenhouse emissions only
account for nine percent of the global
total
so we're not going to win the fights uh
on our own we have to have
a global green diplomacy as a new
type of smart global policy and just one
example there is the work that's going
on on the carbon border adjustment
mechanism
for example to to avoid the
effectiveness of our
eu climate policies being undermined by
carbon leakage
now i'm going to move now to the second
point more briefly the the mega trends
hub that we have in the jrc
because foresight offers a variety of
tools to look at the future
and the mega trends analysis helps us to
look at the big trends
and adjust our actions accordingly now
you probably know that when we make
proposals for legislation in the
commission we do
an impact assessment we look at the
problem and then we we do a description
of how we
what where the solution is going to
resolve these problems and in doing that
we look at trends
but probably in a rather limited way and
what we see is
since the world doesn't work in neat
silos
we need to have a more holistic look at
these mega trends in our competence
center on foresight in the jrc
we have a set of 14 mega trends you can
you can google them
it's the mega trends hub and you can
find it on on the web
and we are encouraging policymakers to
look at them all
as they're making their policy proposals
because what we see is policymakers tend
to
underestimate the impact of some mega
trends
for example the growing role of cities
or or new governance systems
yet when they actually get to explore in
workshops the interactions and
interlinkages between these trends
it becomes clearer that they have a
greater influence than than expected
and that the trends which were initially
thought to be less relevance
can gain importance when you imagine
them as a possible wild card
or a possible disruptive factor and if
you do this it helps you then to build
in
and the resilience of potential policy
solutions
from the beginning rather than having to
respond and react uh
downstream which is obviously a less
effective way of working
so in the in the last year's strategic
foresight report which was on resilience
we actually started to look and see
which of our megatrends have accelerated
and which have decelerated
due to the pandemic because obviously
they they shift in time
we saw last year that the the pandemic
was deepening inequalities
it was accelerating the
hyperconnectivity trend
it was contributing to the growing trend
of shrinking population
and it was boosting the ongoing
diversification of education and
learning
but we also saw that some trends were
being mitigated for example the growing
influence of the east and the south
or increasing consumerism and
urbanization was slowing down
now i'm going to wind up now by by
talking about the links with national
government because it's clear
that strategic foresight capacity is
needed not only european but also
national and i would also say even
regional and local level
to to support and promote this uh in
last year's
strategic foresight report vice
president shefkovich
launched the initiative of having a
ministerial level eu foresight network
uh he calls it the ministers for the
future and he wanted to bring together
intelligence and foresight from the
member states and i'm happy to report
that
the first the very first meeting of this
network was held last week in portugal
under the portuguese presidency
and it will meet now once a year to
discuss strategic foresight priorities
and it'll be supported by a network of
senior officials from national
administrations sherpas for the
ministers
who will meet more frequently and
oversee and follow up and prepare next
steps
so we have in the commission very high
hopes for this network
and the sharing of collective
intelligence amongst member states
which is now starting to accelerate
thanks to the initiative of the vice
president
so in conclusion strategic foresight
we believe is a an invaluable vital
contributor to our efforts to develop
robust and resilient policies it helps
to manage uncertainty and complexity
it builds the capacity to anticipate
change
and to revisit policies in a hopefully
more agile and responsive manner
and i hope that this very quick overview
of the commission's work on strategic
autonomy
has been useful and i wish you all a
very inspiring discussion
for the rest of the morning thank you so
much thank you so much mr territory
general um
for your bright keynote an excellent
example
of how inspiring the multi-level
approaches can be we need more let me
be very frank we need more europe
european dimensional foresight policies
will be definitely crucial and vital for
the next decades let me move
quickly now to uh well the next
part of our conference namely best
practices good practices best practices
europe-wide it's not that evident not
quite simple to make that selection
we followed some objective criteria
on ranking those institutes
and one of the most powerful as i
mentioned already earlier
is the the dutch council
netherlands scientific council for
government policy
headed by our colleague who took already
the floor
as a co-chair this earlier in in earlier
session
professor prince is professor of law
professor of computer law long-standing
credentials within university with
huge number of
publications and and
highly appreciated
[Music]
prices conin prince
was the first woman to hold the position
of chair
at the dutch council uh
we are really impressed by your uh
commitment to
the vr and please couldn't take the
floor
thank you professor the wolf um um
thank you very much for your kind words
um and
again for the opportunity to to share a
few lessons
with you um and
i have to admit that it is a bit
difficult to do this
from an by means of online facilities
and not being there
to share with you the thoughts and the
lessons learned
thus far by the way air i have a
powerpoint presentation and i hope that
the technical facilities can
put them up because i don't see them yet
on my
screen but let me just start because i
can also share with you the
reflections without a powerpoint and
that they will be distributed to you
uh later on um
first um a few general observations as
regards the council
um here's the first image that's um our
building and i
don't share the image um for the very
fact of the building but
to mention at first lesson because it's
foresight is also about learning lessons
learning lessons from the past learning
lessons from our work in the past
um this is our building um a very
beautiful building of course and it's
opposite to um
in dutch and this is the working office
of our prime minister but on the other
side you can't see there
is mcdonald's and i always say in
our strategic advice needs on the one
hand a definite link
a room with a view to the cabinet's
office the prime minister's office
but on the other hand also a room with a
view to society
hands and feet in society first lesson
it's crucial for scientific based policy
advice
to to have your hands and feet in
society and and that's also
uh we as a council uh the members of the
council and please um
the next slide yes that's me um
um um no just
just a a slide in between this is the
advisory landscape in the netherlands
i've included few sheets
for the distribution afterwards so that
you uh are a bit broader informed
but given the very limited time i'm not
going to
detail the various advisory bodies in
the netherlands
and don't share the details there with
you but this is the
broader landscape in the netherlands of
advice
scientific based advice in the
netherlands for policy making
and strategic long-term policy making
as said this is our building um hands
and feet in society is crucial just one
final image
this is the council um
not very for the very fact of the
picture itself but what i wanted to
share with you
is all members of the council have a
position at university
are based in science with their work
and they share a broad variety of
disciplines
that also links with
strategic long-term policy advice
because
developments in society relate to many
many different
domains uh and those relevant
disciplines from economics laws
ethics to to the more um
um beta-based uh disciplines
so we we have both in our staff as well
as in the council
a broad variety of disciplines
um the council the dutch council
does not by definition
work on works on foresight what what we
do
what our prime task is translate science
to policy
and translate policy to science in that
new insights in science are
translated into what it means for for
policy
challenges and problems
and challenges in society are
through our work translated into
challenges uh for policy and does what
that means
for science or based um our answers and
our um recommendations are based
in science but let me move on to what is
the core of my presentation
and that is four lessons that i would
like um
to briefly reflect on what have we
learned
during our um almost 50 years
of experience four
concrete lessons um first
the topic determines the time frame
long-term strategic policy advice
a key question there of course is how
long
is long term let me give you two
examples
we have currently on our agenda a
project
on climate change we look ahead
until 2050 and beyond
and the challenge there is to find the
right balance between
on the other hand a broad perspective
and enough
room for accommodating changes in
society
changes in climate and changes in
technology and on the other hand
providing a rigor enough
guaranteed enough framework to base its
decisions
on so in here it is the
interaction and the challenge to combine
on the one hand openness and on the
other hand
steering so keep our policy focus as
well as
stay open for developments is in this
project
a a a a key challenge given the time
frame we set
another example here is the time frame
of our covet
um policy making uh at
uh at this moment the time frame is much
um
shorter in that we look ahead only a few
years
um and in doing that we um
and as was just also sketched in the uh
previous presentations we deploy
scenarios
possible future stories
of of possible scenarios for the
upcoming years and what does
means for policy making what is back to
normal what exactly is back to normal
within the upcoming years and what that
does mean what does
that mean for society um for
regulation economics as well as
health care issues
so first lesson is in looking at heart
it is crucial to to determine how long
how far away in the future are we going
to look at because that determines also
the mechanism that you deploy as well as
the challenges and the perspectives that
you deploy in
in in the advisory work
next uh slide
um and i have a bit of a problem because
i see myself on
on on the slide itself um
different ambitions there um and
our way of working in our methodology
should match the ambition
so what we've learned is that in looking
at our methodology
we should look at our ambition what do
we aim for
agenda setting opening up the policy
debate
or private provide direction these are
three different
ambitions and they all have their own
methodology for example agenda setting
the future is open but not empty let me
give you an example
of a project a report i personally
worked on
uh digital disruption we do know that
at some point in time society will be
struck
by a digital disruption or even a
digital disaster
um so in that respect the future is not
empty
but it is open in a manner how is how
how to react
the values at stake there and how to
relate to these values
in opening up a policy debate scenarios
are a methodology and in providing
direction
i'll give you a link in my next
an example in my next sheet of providing
direction
and that is changing the perspective
illustrative here is our report on feud
on food
security um the debate in the
netherlands
very much focused on agriculture on
farming
on the interaction between farming and
agriculture
and climate what we did in this report
is change the perspective
change the perspective in order to have
a clear link with the policy of today
so we focused on the long term but
translated the long term
back to policy of today by changing the
perspective
by changing his perspective from
agriculture to food
to food security and thus being able
to provide an insight in the different
actors and networks
that that that relate to food
and food change to um
security food security um
so more than just the implications for
climate
and and and the really narrow
discussions there are often that are
offered on the policy agenda so
um let me turn
to my final lesson
um and that is professor de grove i in
my introduction um
um which was a bit uncomfortable given
that i didn't
hear exactly what you said what i wanted
to say there
is um long-term strategic policy advice
does not mean that
we can wait with implementing the
lessons that we've learned
that policy making politics and policy
can
not wait because it is for the very fact
it is a long-term
a strategic issue
um knots bullets
are present-day bullets directed at the
longer time
but what we also noted during the past
almost
50 years is that it takes time
to implement a policy to
implement recommendations and that when
being
asked as they are air are you satisfied
with what the government
what politics did with the report the
answer is always
um it's difficult to say within the
first
three months it's even difficult to say
within the first four year let me
let me give you an example of another
report i worked on
i government the electronic government
we published that report in 2011
but we know that only today um the
government is really working
with our recommendations and and that
that is because
um both the realization as well as
preparation realization of what the
future
has in stake as well as preparations for
the future
that takes time um
so final lesson is um in looking back
and
reflecting on our work on and the
effectiveness of our work
that is not a a moments issue
um really soon after the presentation of
report that
also requires time so
um let me share
with you professor de grove
the ambition that in looking ahead
we can look ahead together um because
what we noted during the past few years
is
that whereas we started at veya
um almost 50 years ago with a with a
real
narrow national perspective
these past few years we have really
noted that for various reasons it's
crucial to work again
to work together across borders to learn
from each other
to help each other to inspire each other
for
our work because many of the challenges
in particular the challenges that that
relate to the future
are um cross-border are global
and of course we have our own national
approach our normative frameworks
are a national economic position
but even then lessons
from each other are crucial so thank you
um also for that very reason
for organizing this uh this beautiful
and excellent event
thank you brilliant as always uh
professor corinne
prince thank you so much may i pay honor
and express my gratitude vis-a-vis the
commitment of the dutch council
to include flemish scientists
into thematic approaches from from the
dutch council
you do definitely know that we
appreciate your solid
inspiration for shaping
future policies dealing with foresight
and research based policies we
need definitely the dutch example to
make an excellent proposal to the
government into the parliament
on the flemish council thanks so much
well when i selected
the best examples there is a an
excellent
government chief scientific advisor of
uk the model is is quite relevant
but we opted for an irish chief
scientific advisor
not just for reason of eu approach or
but but for
the strong commitment of the irish
scientific foundation and the irish
council into foresight
policies and when i talked with
professor mark ferguson
with the chief um this
symposium he definitely was very
enthusiastic
and and very willing to participate
um in by all means but is
having now a meeting these uh these days
with the prime minister
um guess what on covet 19
and he excludes himself but we we've got
a
video message we
will have the privilege to to hear him
from distance
in professor mark ferguson
is professor of life sciences he was the
youngest professor of
great britain ever appointed in
manchester university
the age of 27 numerous
us coding prince numerous european
science prizes
let us move immediately to the video of
professor mark
ferguson so thank you for the
opportunity to talk to
you about science advice and foresight
and the future
i'm going to divide my remarks really
into three broad categories
first of all the immediate future
secondly the long-term future
and then thirdly the uncertain future
otherwise known as a crisis
so let's begin with the immediate future
so in the immediate future i think we're
quite good at this i think this is an
area
where science advice mechanisms and
scientific structures
can help so we know that there are
current trends
that are emerging things like artificial
intelligence
robotics digitization the green agenda
the green revolution that's effectively
addressing climate action synthetic
biology you know future food
foods such as synthetic meat and so on
these are all things that we know
they're all trends that are growing and
accelerating
and they have very significant impact
artificial intelligence digitalization
robotics
will affect jobs of the future and
that's of course
an area that many countries including
ireland are addressing
and we have a strategy a strategy called
future jobs
and it really looks at the impact of
automation of artificial intelligence of
digitization
on the workforce of robotics and
automation on the manufacturing
workforce
and like many countries you can conclude
that these new technologies will
actually create more jobs and they
destroy but they will
massively displace jobs there will be
workers that are currently doing things
that will no longer be required and
there will be new jobs and new skills
which we have to train people for and
that's important that's important for
predicting the future
if you're going to do educational change
it's usually a long-term
game you have to convince people to
change the system
and then it's a few years before you see
the output of that system
so that's a really important change and
another really important change that
we're going to have to accelerate
is retraining people people who are
displaced out of one form of work
into another form of work will need
perhaps very significant retraining
and that's interesting because many
educational systems around the world
are not geared up for that they're
geared up in a linear model where you go
to
school to university then you have some
continuous on job training with your
employer
but you're not really in a situation
where you can be radically retrained
and at ireland like in many countries we
are rethinking that you know continuing
further retraining education
is going to become very important for
dealing with the immediate future
and of course covet 19 has massively
accelerated these trends
we knew about artificial intelligence
automation
robotics and so on before covert but
kova has just accelerated that
with the digitalization with remote
working with people now doing video
conferences and so on
so that trend is accelerating and has
been massively accelerated
by covert so that's an example of
immediate
uh the immediate future reasonably uh
good to get your hands around some
things are a little more uncertain i
mean will we have quantum computing and
when will that be will we have quantum
internet will there be
a quantum cyber security but all of
those things likely to come you know how
fast will synthetic biology uh allow us
to address the circular economy
and have different forms of
manufacturing you know when will
artificial meat really supplant
uh traditional agriculture these are
issues but they're predictable issues
and they're
in the immediate future and they really
need uh some attention
all countries including ireland often
have a risk register so in ireland there
is a risk register
and of course that is about managing
risks but it's also about thinking about
the future
and if you look at our response
ireland's response to its risk register
which we update every year
then i think it's a mixed bag if you
look at immediate
risks for example high on our risk
register was brexit
then we did pretty well we know that
brexit was going to have a big effect on
ireland and our trading and the movement
of people in the land border with
northern ireland and so on
and a lot of work on planning went in
across government and many many other
organizations
to prepare well for brexit and i think
that was
by and large successful but then if you
look
further down the irish risk register
number three or number four
is preparing for a pandemic and there
like many countries we did very little
so covent 19 struck but we really hadn't
put in place
very significant public health screening
measures test and isolation
measures surveillance measures and so on
so those all have to be put in place
very quickly
even though this was predicted and it
was on the register
and then other areas we were not so good
at doing uh
addressing things is where the problem
is chronic or long-term
i mean on the iris risk register is
flooding flooding happens
every year it will increase because of
climate change it's partly because the
shape of ireland it's almost like a
saucer shape
and we get flooding in the midland areas
and our response to that has not been as
good as it could be
so often chronic long-term things like
climate action or flooding
or so on they take a longer time to
address
so i think it's very useful to think
about you know the risk register but
more importantly how do we respond to
that risk register
some countries for example the uk will
practice some of the risks and that's
clearly important for a large country
for a smaller country like ireland it's
important but perhaps not so important
because there are good connections
between the people
and we actually understand where the
players are and can mobilize
quite quickly other strategies deployed
by
countries include foresighting or or
future prediction or scenario planning
exercises
we clearly do that we read other
people's foresight from the world
economic forum
from various international forums from
meetings such as fire which is the
future in review
and we think about scenarios uh for the
future
so they're all mechanisms to try to help
us adjust our scientific advice for
future planning
and that now brings me to the second
topic which is the long-term future
so the longer term future is much more
difficult to get your hands around
rather than the immediate future so
where would be good places to go there
well scientific thunders are often best
placed
to look at the longer term future i mean
the cutting edge of frontiers research
at the moment
may become tomorrow's applied technology
so looking at where the boundaries where
the frontiers of scientific advances are
often a good way of getting a handle on
what might be useful
and in science foundation ireland we do
that our strategy
is about delivering today and preparing
for tomorrow
and preparing for tomorrow is about
predicting the future it's about trying
to see what trends will be important
which ones ireland should respond to
how we can be best place to do that
either in terms of recruiting or
developing
researchers and so on so that's really
important and there are new tools to
help us with that
big data analytic tools from
bibliography from patent searches and so
on
and we know for example there are
algorithms that look at the literature
cited in a patent
and if that literature is over a diverse
number of fields but the patent is about
a fundamental technology
then it's quite likely to be more
impactful than a more narrowly focused
patent application so looking at
frontiers of knowledge systematically
using
detailed bibliometric methods companies
such as elsevier
are prominent on doing this this is a
way of getting a better handle
on the longer term future in addition to
things like scenario planning
and foresight and almost science fiction
ideas this is going to become more
important i mean progress is
accelerating the pace of discovery and
application
is accelerating there's much more
innovation much more
acceleration and if you look at these
trends they kind of fall into two
categories
there are things you need to deal with
nationally and that's important and they
may be things like the examples i've
given of brexit or flooding
or the dairy industry that's quite
important in ireland but then there are
international things like global
global climate change you know are we
going to do geoengineering
what's going to be the situation in
terms of satellites and space
uh what's going to be the situation in
terms of oceans and ocean pollution and
plastics these are
all things that require international
cooperation
international focus on what's going to
happen
and organizations of scientific advisors
like the european uh science advisors
forum isaf like insa
which is an international organization
like the european union mechanisms
i mean there's been much more global
collaboration partly driven by the
pandemic
regular meetings of chief scientific
advisors often chief medical officers
other
technocrats in the system and that's
very good because it can give you
a unified response it's something we
need to build on
for these global problems such as
climate action or climate change
and then the last thing i'll talk about
is uncertain futures
otherwise known as a crisis and they are
going to happen i mean the future is not
completely predictable
unexpected things will come out of the
woodwork or they'll come out of the
or expected things will accelerate in
unexpected ways
and during a crisis such as the current
pandemic
i think science advice has come to the
fore and really
important in that is you know how you
deal with things
when it's uncertain i mean it's really
quite straightforward if there's a body
of knowledge and you have to do evidence
synthesis and you can write a report and
everybody agrees what the evidence is
but that's not the case
in a crisis and it's not the case in an
uncertain future
and so in these uncertain futures i have
six
questions that i always ask the first is
what do we know
the second is how and with what
confidence do we know it
the third is what more do we need to
know
and the fourth is how and when can we
know it brackets and how much is it
going to cost
the fifth is what should we do
and when should we do it and the last is
how best to communicate this
and those are six little questions that
i think are very useful
when you're coming to look at a crisis
because you often have to make a
decision
when there is uncertainty within the
system when the evidence is not there
when there's often very scanty evidence
and it's no use saying we need to do two
years research until we get the evidence
when you need to make a decision in the
next day
but equally if you can get something in
a week that might be helpful
so i think there are really quite
important tools
for dealing with uh crises another very
important tool is international
collaboration
through the organizations that i
mentioned before
such as isaf and the science advisor so
you can learn
from different people i think that
international learning and that very
rapid pivoting
and being able to change attack when
evidence
occurs being clear about uncertainty and
communicating that uncertainty and going
with best efforts
but being able to change your mind when
the evidence
arises those are all things that have
come to the fore
uh during the covet 19 pandemic
and then lastly let me say a few words
about getting societal
buy-in into the future and into future
scenarios
so the age of the internet or of social
media and so on has completely changed
how people
expect to be involved no longer
is it acceptable for distinguished
individuals to write a report
and to give it to people and say here
you go this is what you should do
that's really not how today's society
operates
with the democratization of science with
a power of the internet on social media
people want to be involved they want to
make their own judgments
so supplying curated information
is really important and that's something
as science advisors we need to learn
i mean it's very easy to put together a
group of experts and have an expert
report and generally they kind of agree
or where they disagree is kind
is known but curating information and
letting people come to their own
conclusions
is often very powerful but much more
time consuming and much more difficult
to do
and a very good example of that that i
that i often quote
comes from the united kingdom where the
late professor david mackay
who was the former chief scientific
advisor to the uk department of energy
and climate change as it was known at
that time
he put together the uk and then
subsequently other countries
energy calculator he used basic
information to look at the par
electricity needs of companies of
domestic users he looked at power
generation through wind and solar and
nuclear
and coal and oil and gas and so on and
he put all of this together
in a series of way and then he said to
people you go and see
how the uk's future and our electricity
generation system should look
here are the demands here are the ways
of doing it what's really interesting
about that exercise in that calculator
is that it builds consensus that people
who are coming from
very diverse views like no nuclear or no
coal or no
oil or no gas or all wind or all solar
actually realized you couldn't do this
in many of the extreme scenarios
and the number of uh realistic
opportunities
was really quite limited and and it was
a consensus building exercise not by
telling people
but by allowing people to arrive at that
conclusion themselves
and i think that's a very important
lesson for the future and we in ireland
have built on that in a slightly
different way
through the use of citizens assemblies
where people will listen to evidence
they will
synthesize that evidence they will think
about
scenarios they will come up with
recommendations
and i think much more citizen engagement
is going to become
important uh for the future where people
really want to be
involved in a kind of different way
rather than having a group of experts
write a report and say these are our
recommendations of course there will
always be a role
for that but i think increasingly
knowledge curation
allowing people to make their own
decisions to do their own synthesis
in a straightforward way but not taking
extreme biased views
that will become important so i think
those are just a few
ideas about how scientific advice can
contribute to the immediate future
to the more predictable stuff to the
longer term future which by definition
is unpredictable and by the uncertain
future which will
always be with us we will always have
crises thank you very much
thank you so much uh professor ferguson
i will have
a phone meeting tomorrow with mark where
i will get opportunity to express our
highest
appreciation of the critical capacity
and the vision of the irish irish
council
let us move quickly although we are it's
quite a miracle
we are still following the strict
time schedule timetable but let's move
quickly to
another interesting example name namely
the danish council for innovation and
research policy
headed by freddie bleiberg
who is professor of energy technology at
albert university
his research concerns chiefly
applications of power electronics for me
as a
as a modest professor of law it seems
very intriguing
but i guess definitely that we will
be privileged to listen to you to a
lecture yes please
professor library yeah thank you i hope
you
can hear me and first of all thank you
very much for the invitation
and come here and talk about the danish
r d system
what we can say is that uh
tradition in general is difficult
especially about the future
i think this was the danish physics
poor who said that but also among others
and what i i will do here today
this presentation is just to give you a
little insight
in how the danish
r and d system is organized
including the universities and then i
will
tell you a little about how it's how we
do what we can call the kind of
foresight in order to in order to
initiate
different things in the danish system
and then finally i'll come with some
concluding remarks i'm not sure whether
i have the slides
let me see yeah here they come
the first thing is about the danish
council for research and innovation
policy
this has been there for fundamentally
for
for for much more than 10 years in the
beginning it was only researched
but lastly six seven years ago
there was a change and the danish
council for research but became expanded
to
innovation policy tool and the general
thing with
this body is that it's totally
independent however it's
nominated by the ministry of education
and
science so what we do there we do it
on our own initiative in our own
capacity
and then we we give advice
let's say to the public and of course of
course to the ministry and
the government so the way we work is
continuously to look at what is going on
both
in terms of national activities and
international activities
and then we pick up different areas
which we feel that they are the most
important
and we have not covered them before and
then we are
making working groups who are studying
the different cases
the different cases and congress in
general recommendations
we do not have the power let's say to
put it into
let's say acts by by the danish
ministry but but of course we hope
something will happen and the experience
had been so to have such party that
the government are listening to what has
been proposed
but also the whole ecosystem we have in
terms of
r d and innovation policy have had
impact
so so that's of course interesting to
follow
before i start let me give you
one of the big changes and i also i
think we are a little bit different
different compared with many others and
that's something we are also going to
look at soon
and that is where we reorganize totally
the higher education and research
institutions in denmark
there was a new law saying that the
whole governance structure
should be hired we have we will have a
board around
the universities and that was a big
change
so all people are higher let's say the
leadership is higher from the
from the board level and down to the
department head level
so this was a very big change but
another very big change was that
in the past we had 25
research institutions and universities
and the research institutions which were
heavily let's say related to
different ministers they were merged
with the universities
and there was at that time some visions
that all the research which was going on
in the
research institution they could also
let's say be used in the education
but also the idea was that
the let's say the universities became
stronger
if we merged more research capacity into
the
universities so that was a big change so
what come out of it was that after this
merge we had we have
eight universities left and we only have
three
research institutions which are totally
independent so so this is a big change
which we saw
uh many years ago and i can reflect a
little bit uh that
later but uh here is uh then
how we are organized in terms of what we
call national r d
funding advisory system and what you can
see up here to the to the top
we are the danish council research and
innovation policy
we give advice and then we have
fundamentally let's say three strong
bodies
the danish national research foundation
the
independent research from denmark and
then the innovation from denmark
and the innovative independent research
from denmark this is the only one
together with us
who has let's say the fundamental uh
rights or what we call it to give advice
for the uh
for the government as such and while the
two others they have
mostly focus on implementing let's say
a large amount of money which are funded
by the
uh by the by the state budget
and let me then show let's say the last
about
the structure and this is the view of
the total
uh bodies we have
where we can say we have the fundamental
research we have a
more applied like and then we are more
into the into
into the innovation level and what you
can see here how
this is organized is that the innovation
from denmark
has a relatively broad area and
there are a lot of collaboration with
companies we have the independent
research from denmark we have the
national research foundation here way
relatively fundamental research but then
we also have actors
like the pirate foundation which
are working let's say independent but of
course according to
let's say the how the money are released
from the companies they are representing
or what should we call it and
or the foundation they are and then we
have here for the for the
more commercialized area we have
we have a private venture capital we
have business angels we have
a danish growth fund and then we have
here let's say
different programs which are related to
the different ministries for
for example the energy the climate food
and so on and this is the whole
spectrum we are trying to give advice to
when we are working in
our life if we look in the danish
[Music]
foresight system we can say
that we have been running now three
times what we call
research catalogues and research
catalogs
are looking on which kind of needs
there are in the danish society
of research in different areas in
in order to let's say solve problems we
have in our in our daily life
and all the input to those
research catalogs as we say it they are
coming from all kinds of stakeholders
industry universities research
institutions
all kinds we can imagine who has some
interest
and a lot of input is coming there the
danish
ministry of education and research is
then trying to gather all things
together
also to do some kind of priorities we
also heard a little bit as the research
council
and then after this processing
a huge catalogue is is
published and this is a kind of
guideline
for the for the danish system about what
is a good idea to invest in let's say
more
more short term so we can say on one
hand it's a bottom of research
about what process we have but on the
other hand when all things have come in
then it's one way or the other are a
kind of
top down but i would say when and i have
here link
for for the slide you can see that the
list
the broadness is relatively wise
so if we should say
let's say some conclusions about
this kind of process uh this has been
used for
uh prioritizing what we call strategic
research
uh for for new uh let's say when new
money has
have have appeared so in that way we
we have a kind of bottom-up for the for
the
strategic research uh we can
say also that as the catalogue has been
relatively broad not all have been
let's say have been funded but
it has been inspiration for the
universities also
for other stakeholders to put more
effort
into those activities which are listed
in
this one and and
if we look back 15 years back we can we
can say that it has have a
very strong impact on what have happened
happening in terms of
strategic research but also what has
happened at
the universities so so this is a process
being
conducted three times now in the danish
system in terms of forecast then
we have a new let's say agenda
where maybe in the past there was more
focus on making money if we can say so
from research to to to business
but but now we are introducing uh like
the world like europe uh is doing
missions
and there are especially a way very
high attention about this long-term
mission that we want to be carbon
neutral in
2050 and to monitor this we have a
danish climate board and they have
promised that we need to do
initiatives in in different areas
and on last state budget
four missions was defined out of this
list
that the danish climate
act was saying and we are now running
what we can call a process to implement
the mission or oriented research
and there has been a very interesting
process that
and that this is done by the innovation
from denmark
that stakeholders they have been asked
to
put together a plan until 2050 as a kind
of
time plan what do you need what will you
do in the first year what will you do in
the second year what will you do in
10 years in order to solve
the challenges we are having so denmark
can come on
let's say uh on the right track in order
to fulfill
the uh the the targets of
uh yeah 70 reduction of the greenhouse
emission in in in 2030 and of course
carbon neutral in 2050 so so this is a
very interesting process and
those four missions all can
let's say say they want to try and
now for the moment they are evaluating
who was
uh who are coming with the best proposal
and then they will
be the key persons to implement
those missions in the society but also
where
it's possible for others to join in if
they were not
a part of it in in the first one so this
is a new experiment and
i'm also very interested to see how
other are doing this in terms of
implementation what we are also looking
at there
in the danish accounts of
research and invasion policy is how is
the right way to do it because the
missions we have defined
they are very different and some of them
are just straightforward technology
oriented
while others are extremely dependent on
that the society is
also prepared or
willing to take the leads in order to
implement
the things we want to do so we are
discussing whether we
like in the past we had trn level in
terms of what we are proposing
we should maybe also introduce mrl level
as a mission
medicine at redis level level
in order to come with the right tools in
order to do the implementation of
the proposal and then the last thing
i would say is that by this merge of
uh of the research
institutions and the universities i
think we also have a
new thing we have to look at and that is
how the government commissioned research
is being done in denmark and this also
both in terms of
short-term and long-term exemplified
also with the
provide 19. so my time is over
i hope you got some inspiration about
how we are trying to look a little bit
into the future
but it's not extremely systematic like
maybe we see in other countries so thank
you very much for
inviting me in here today thank you so
much
professor you focused quite clearly you
detailed quite clearly the involvement
of your foundation of your council
to the main the most important research
areas
for the future we highly appreciated
your
intervention apparently the scandinavian
models are very popular it is focused on
the
on the finish the so-called
science advice initiative of finland
in the mission statement of sophie
is mentioned
building the next generation
scientific advisory systems in finland
this
council is headed by professor esto
nieminen
with professor of physics at the alto
university in
finland it was granted among other
prizes the title of academia
of science in 2014 again a
quite impressive track record on
research
and on commitments to the society
professor you have immediately
the floor
thank you very much and thank you for
the invitation
can i get my slides
on perhaps
thank you
[Music]
yes i'm a professor university and a
former president
of the finnish academy of science and
letters and it's an honor for me to
have the opportunity to tell you a
little bit of our
recent experiences in building
a science advice mechanism in
in finland now science advice
is very much in the dna of honorific
academies like the finnish academy of
science and letters
it's written in our constitution
similarly to how it's written by
thomas jefferson in the constitution of
the national academy of sciences
in the usa in royal society and so on
but during our history
it has mainly been realized
through individual members of the
academy problematic effort
so what we decided to do
a few years ago is to start an
initiative
of building constituting
a next generation science advice system
in the country i'm focusing here
my comments on on the advice
ecosystem i will not talk about the
broader
[Music]
scientific policy foresight system
the ecosystem is obvious obviously a
very complex i will focus on
what the academy of science and letters
wants to do
in the area of advising the government
advising the media advising the general
public
in scientific matters
that obviously
the foresight efforts but it also
includes some
many other issues at the outset
what i want to say is that we feel it's
very important to build an advice system
which is independent in the sense that
it is not
a spokes organ for any
special interest group a special
scientific
area or what whatever
and our feeling is that academies of
science
with the multidisciplinary nature
consisting of the acknowledged experts
in many
areas are the best vehicles for building
a reliable
scientific ecosystem
uh this project uh
what we call sophie
i did a little more than two years ago
and our mandate is during this project
three-year project
to create a permanent science advice
mechanism
in finland and i'm very happy to tell
you that we have already
accomplished this objective
the academy has made a decision
to make this a permanent fixture
in their organization and also
absorb the economic responsibilities
uh for keeping and building uh this
uh mechanism insist
uh what we aim at uh
is broadly uh described as
promoting dialogue between the research
community and the decision makers at
large
and also i want to facilitate further
discussions on on the future of science
advice
so i was specifically asked to
tell us some of our experiences during
this
piloting period of the things that we
have
been doing and what are our experiences
in uh doing them
so far and i've chosen
the three examples which i
consider to be a very positive perhaps
even best practices and where our
experience has been rather encouraging
the first one is what i call scientific
sparring
[Music]
is a dialogical method targeting
system level policy
policy design through early on
facilitated discussions
between policymakers and scientists so
we have
uh arranged and generated
several aspiring sessions uh
sparring programs
and i've mentioned here three example
cases
currently under
construction is a new nature
conservation act
and this has been prepared together
with the civil service political leaders
and the scientific community and we have
organized these
sparring sessions and
found it to be very useful
mechanism system level policy design
and uh i'm very happy to report that
this firing sessions uh have also been
very well
taken by the persons responsible for
preparing
legislation and also for by political
leaders uh
this is this has been done together with
the
ministry of the environment
uh the second example of scientific
sparring
is is the renewal by the prime
minister's
office of the public sector strategy in
the country
and this again has been
subject to sparring sessions uh
mainly between the civil servant
servants
in the public in the prime minister's
office
and the members
of the academy finally another example
is the national transportation framework
piece of legislation which is underway
in
renewing and preparing new legislation
for transportation including cars
trains and so on
these example cases have several
strengths
and they have been found to be very
useful
in exploring complex topics where clear
answers
are evasive especially at this early on
stage where facilitated discussions
are very useful uh
weaknesses they are not always easy to
get started
and uh my emphasis here is that
if you want to have open and directed
the policy makers and and the scientific
community
you have to have a very strong baseline
of mutual trust
now luckily i i believe that in finland
we have a
relatively strong position in this sense
and perhaps this
partly explains our success in
in in the experience so far
but but you need this element of trust
in this early on discussions
the second best practice i want to share
with you
is what we call thematic evidence maps
and these are high quality
knowledge and synthesis on emerging
societal issues
and we have collated them with
co-production
methodologies
so this is to what has been discussed so
far
in in the area of foresight
activities we have two example cases one
has been
concluded and the other one is underway
the first one which we have now
completed
and reported is the digital well-being
of especially children and and
adolescents
and this has been extremely well
received
by the community and by the society of
large
i understand that there is quite a
shared
worries about
too heavy addiction to digital devices
and environments
especially among children and
adolescents
and we want we wanted to explore these
issues more deeply
from the scientists
the other example cases where we are
building
a thematic evidence map is quantum
information
and quantum technologies this is
underway
but we already see that
the question is not only about
technological foresight but
these technologies when adopted will
have very profound
consequences for the society as well
and we have made a special effort in
engaging
social scientists
in the discussions and in building this
thematic evidence map
the strength of this mechanism
it's it's a very streamlined model for
scientific
working groups and it's very easy to
get very strong stakeholder inclusion
i believe that discovery of
immediate or future
that was discussed by mark ferguson
and we also see that this is something
where
it's very very easy to
raise interest and get the participation
weakness weaknesses they are
evidence map building is laborious
and it also requires
a full-time sophisticated qualified
researchers postdocs for example
who who have the possibility of actually
putting things together and making the
synthesis
uh my final first commence
advice
uh
we have targeted young researchers
and actually they have been very eager
also to participate in our activities
young researcher early career
researchers
very typically identify participation
in the societal discussion as something
which is
very interesting and useful to them and
so we have
organized training sessions especially
targeted for
younger scientists on
building their capabilities in
scientific
advice
this is an ongoing going effort and
again
our experience has been
and i think it's also has deepened the
discussions
within the scientific community and
deepen the dialogue in very important
ways
i think this concludes my uh
presentations
presentation thank you i'm happy to
answer if there are
any questions later on
thank you so much professor we will
remember sophie
as a very relevant touchstone for our
future
reflections within
flanders within the flemish community
thanks so much we started with the
dg director general of the competent
agency relevant agency
in the european commission and according
to the principle of subsidiarity
we will give a very end of this
roundtable
the floor to national
and european platform of uh
academies namely
the so-called asap the european science
advisors forum
again there the mission statement is uh
quite detailed and and very interesting
so i'm quite sure
that professor tarmo sommery
chairman of asaf and also a president of
the estonian academy of science
i remember variable our phone call long
phone call
and you were so enthusiastic about
the idea of having this european
conference you have the final words
in this round table yes please
thank you very much professor the growth
complementary to the foresight
activities which have been so
nicely highlighted by stefan guest the
ability to
extract best knowledge from scientists
and experts for policy decisions
is gradually becoming one of the main
pillars of competitiveness of
countries regions and even continents
the problem is that this knowledge is
never spread homogeneously
and neither it's available equally in
all countries and regions
but also external conditions for example
driven by
the pandemic discussed of the audience
today or climate change
they often alter that so rapidly even
the best knowledge could be obsolete in
a few weeks and in some occasions
even in a few days so most countries and
regions
have developed
a system on interfaces between decision
makers and
accumulated knowledge it is common to
have a
robust and well-functioning
international system for shaping and
implementing policy for science this
means basically a roadmap of
how scientific efforts are framed and
financed
the complementary link solves the
reverse question
how to organize the existing pool of
knowledge for the use
in both strategic and everyday decision
making
and we call commonly this channel or
link
science for policy
not many countries or sectors have today
the privilege of having such a
properly functioning channel um
moreover in many european countries the
science for policy efforts
actually mixed with other functions or
links and then usually not
as effective as they could be
and institutionalized science for
policy system apart from gsr
has been rated at the european level
european commission level
actually only a decade ago
and it's equally important as mentioned
earlier today to her properly
functioning and ideally also
harmonized with each other
ecosystems of science advice all around
the country and regional level
and to paraphrase one of the past
presidents only then
i think we can make your upgrade again
european science advisors forum was
technically created in
2015 as one piece
one element in the ecosystem of
science for policy advice basically to
support
nice words against evidence-based policy
making in europe technically
it's a non-legal entity without budget
it's an informal network of
european science-based strategic
advisors every word here is really
important
it is an independent entity as suggested
by
professor esther nieminen but of course
communicates and
and cooperates with all possible players
in the field
including sectoral advice systems
membership is personal
based on country representation
but members do not formally represent
their position in the country
participation of non-eu but european
countries
is in corruption we have many of them in
members one per country already and have
been
invited by the european commission and
the members
must follow
particular rule they must be in a formal
and active position
in their countries the position must
hold or contain providing advice to
their
government and of course that waste must
be of highest quality publicly available
and with a strong national mandate
so these features actually match
the message from the group of you chief
science advisors
in last summer and to
match the requirement for being trusted
as
stressed very strongly by this demon the
advice must have free
properties it must be public or made
public
it must be based on the best knowledge
and third
last but not least it must come from a
body with an absolutely clear mandate
ease of itself doesn't have any formal
advice that tasks it basically provides
a platform for different institutions
that may function in different systems
but which share a common ambition
to provide the very best science based
strategic advice
on national level uh
the goal of is of as
mentioned in its terms and reference is
basically nice words
or bureaucratic words it's to facilitate
sharing and exchange of
exchange of information expertise
practices results etc
it's all seems trivial but you know we
all know that this kind of exchange
never
comes natural it needs efforts and
dedication and this is what uh what
these of members
are providing and just to mention that
additionally to climate change all
pandemic things many fields of activity
today are actually functioning or a
landscape so of say of limited resources
and then it's really important to
address specifically these
fields with great caution and if
possible then to conservate
relevant knowledge from a larger region
and trying to reach consensus with
neighbors
as as an important feature mentioned by
by stephen guest at the beginning
the wider point of
having issue is
a feature not a bug it's
that the ways of formulations format
performance
of messages and channels of
communication to policy level making
the policy making level um are greatly
different
in different countries and regions
there's not a bug
again it's it's a natural feature
because of difference
in how different countries have built
their government
system so a cornerstone
and an important lesson from functioning
office yourself in the last six years
is that uh that the variety of
structures
and institutions for such advice across
different national governments is of
of create great value in itself
there is no solution that would fit all
cases
the query pandemic has actually revealed
how important flexibility is
in the advice system it is therefore a
crucial
for the development and sustainability
and resilience of countries to
to learn from successful cases of
science
based policy recommendation and it's
equally important to
discuss together the reasons for for
failures and i do we do sometimes have
failures
uh the joint research center of the
european commission started a series of
workshops
under the title strengthening and
connecting ecosystems of science policy
in europe last year
the goals are pretty much obvious to map
institutions and processes involved to
build a community of
and to try to collectively develop
the connection of science to to policy
ecosystems
this workshop has workshop series has
two streams
and one focuses on on single elements in
ecosystems across the european union
like academics of science but remember
isa
is not constellation of academic
sciences only one
third of countries have academic
sciences of us their
main main advice providers or advices to
parliament or
universities or whoever is an organ
system
the other stream addresses single pieces
of
ecosystems of countries of all regions
and since the sixth workshop in this
series in march this year
uh entitled this time science for
policymaking in estonia
some events are organized jointly by the
grc
isaf and dg research
and the overall goal of this kind of
cooperation is
again obvious we really want to
synchronize
efforts towards best advice at all
levels if i may a little bit
say about examples
what we have had in estonia or
experience what you have in estonia in
estonia as in many other countries
the policy for science
channel is a robust and very
well-functioning system but science for
policy is
considerably less developed it's it's
fragmented
and i would say it has mainly a
distributed nature
there is no national framing of science
for policy advice
except for a limited mandate to that
kind of sciences in its law
a feature not necessarily a bug is
a mix of science for policy with other
things like
lobby for science or science funding
decisions
and also policy for science in the
country
uh the success of the system relies on
on simple features
smallness of the country like ireland
and which means
personal very tight personal connections
between policy makers and top scientists
technically it really relies on ad hoc
advisory bodies and of course direct
contacts with leading
scientists and expert during
times a dedicated science advisory
committee was formed
to provide operational advice it was
very good scientists but it has
one major problem it didn't really
address society
like korean prince the community
mentioned very strongly
so communication of science-based
evidence during the first wave of
pandemic to society was done in a very
strange
manner done it was done by a daily
newspaper
the newspaper formed the joint academic
board with academy of sciences
and this board provided twice a week
overview of
all new developments and explained their
meaning to society so this kind of very
rare example of saying
hijacking a daily newspaper by
academy for the benefit of national
science advice
could be one of the forerunners of the
towards the future
thank you very much thank you mr chair
we will make use of the experiences of
asaf
and your analysis of strengths and
weaknesses of the estonian case
in non-pandemic times we should open now
the floor
for a vivid a dynamic debate
as we do always for european and for
national conferences
and international conferences but we
have to limit
this panel now to short two short
interventions
i don't know if we could uh get
professor believer stratton
and sasuke avenueful on the screen you
know if
they are present
and voila perfect well thank you so much
being with us
for unfortunately just um
limited time of interventions and
younger generation is always welcome
thank you for that yeah the professor
believe stradan is the chair of the
the flemish research foundation and a
loyal partner
in drafting reflection process
on the flemish council and
he was also appointed as the reporter by
the
government by the previous flemish
government on
articulating proposals dealing with this
flemish
flemish council and saskatchewan is uh
well
quite active in in um economic uh
spheres but also the chi european
digital champion for belgium
highly appreciate that you are willing
not just to take part in the afternoon
session
but also to well to express
a little bit your first let's say
sentiments and ideas about lessons
learned professor
stratton thank you very much
chairman i can you raise your hand if
you hear me is
everything fine yeah thank you three
short remarks
shooting from the hip i will say first
of all
we hear about those beautiful words
about
foresight about evidence based about
autonomy
then we take our binoculars and
what appears at the end of what do we
see then with those binoculars in that
context we see
the scientists and i'm all for i'm
very much for but i like to
now also stress that scientists
are human beings and if we then bring
them in that
context of that foresight and that
relation to policy making
we must protect them we must really also
bring
boundaries around them we must carefully
select them
we must look at their biodiversity in
the
panels which they make we must look at
a delineation of the tasks and the
competences
and we must also make sure that
their accountability is well defined
that is my first
remark science is important scientists
are very capable to help out
in policy making but there are
limitations
we have to keep that always down to
earth or otherwise
it might fail pretty soon my second
remark is than the inverse we are now
talking about
bringing brains in an organized way
together to think transversely
and that's very very good i'm all the
way for it
but if i then look back into progress of
science and
particularly in my disciplines uh
where i have knowledge i must recognize
that very often
progress came from lonely
visionaries so we must
make sure that besides those
organized foresight councils which we
lift up
and correctly do so that we still keep
room for what i will call that lonely
visionary
that person on its own who must have
channels to connect with society to
speak
to policy makers and to also be heard so
i like
to bring that second element also uh
into this in the discussion and my third
element
also very briefly is generated by the
fact that
asean prodded so nicely that we
that the w-r-r the dutch our dutch
colleagues are so kind to help
flanders to start with its foresight
council
for which we've i i like to also express
my
my uh sincere appreciation for that
but then i took it one step further
holland dutch the dutch group and also
the finnish and and and
we learn now today from these european
uh
established councils but suppose i was
a scientist now in a third world country
and i
am facing in that third world country
scientific insights which i have to
bring to policy makers
and i'm all alone so my point is if you
really believe
if we really believe and i do and that
importance of these four sides councils
which uh give signals uh well-balanced
signals to policy makers
we must have also the ambition to as
soon as possible
extend not only from the netherlands to
flanders but
to extend this in a broader concept of
forsaken councils particularly also to
developing countries
where scientists might need this very
much more
than uh we think at this moment so these
are my three remarks
thank you thank you so much billy
excellent sasuke your turn
well i'll i will not give it from a
scientist uh corner because that is not
my my set of competencies but
jan let me congratulate you because i
think you've touched on
two subjects which are critical now is
is not only
the future of of research and the future
of foresight but also the link with the
policy advice
and i often say that in a connected
world
every role every job will change
and what i hear today also from the
different presenters is that even the
job of
research will change we will get a new
role
we will get i've heard a next generation
and
i think we must pay attention that we do
not necessarily ask the new generation
of researchers to do it exactly the same
way
as we did yesterday the same for the
ministers of the future what i heard
the same for the next generation of of
policy makers
i appreciate that there is an outlook
which is important
the outlook for the future is important
what i missed a little bit is what did
we
learn from the last year because you
know managing a crisis is like being a
fireman
you can put out a fire but you also need
to take the time
to learn from what we didn't do and not
only
do research towards the future so that
just asides remark
what i appreciated a lot was the action
uh driven so it's
it's um uh one of the one of the
individuals that
we need to go to a kind of a mission and
we can not only stay at
research only somebody said we need to
define a pragmatic
action plan because we need to go from
for example was set from agriculture to
food security
i would translate it with my background
on technology we need to go from
technology to an inclusive society
sorry and not remain only at the
technology himself we need to go from
public sector to what will be the role
of public sector
tomorrow from transport to a national
transportation framework so
i think research can extend to
a more pragmatic link with the action
plan
um the last part i want to say is um
we need the expectations of the citizens
have changed
because of the fact that already today
and and it helps 2020 because we could
continue to work and continue
continue to communicate but the the
citizens are
having informations correct information
fake news whatever but they think they
are the better researcher the better
policy maker than the policy maker
themselves
they think it and this makes a little
bit
the set of expectations from the
european citizens or for the citizens in
the in the regions and the countries
makes it completely different and before
we had a little bit of siloed activity
there were researchers in their car in
their corners doing their research
and then in a certain moment it popped
up to the policy and then we
get a set of rules and regulations we
need to execute
and i think it's important one of the
person said one of the challenges we
have in
europe is trust we need to recreate
trust
i think if we continue to have a
dialogue
if we've done a research and and we've
discussing
is how can we engage the people to
execute on it
and that's point is an important one
i'll give an example of
something we did in belgium to close off
um i was pretty interested
to know how the employment market in
flanders would evolve
not in singapore and not in in in
denmark
or not in spain but in flanders and we
did would be the with
the study of beta change how the
employment market would evolve going
forward
between 2018 and 2030 but the study was
not enough
we had the facts but then we needed to
communicate to it we needed to
communicate to the citizens in a
language they understand
with preferable positive news for
example for each job that will disappear
in flanders 2.7 new jobs will be created
and then like they say in french you
have to repeat it and repeat it and
repeat it and repeat it and i think we
we sometimes underestimate the
the importance of the dialogue the
importance of the communication
and that will help us to really have an
engaged
population to execute on the conclusions
of the of the research
thanks saskia very powerful
thanks so much let us move quickly now
to the very last
moment can we invite uh professor
prince to take the floor for a few
short conclusions yes please
yes thank you um can you put up your
sometime
um you can understand give me okay yeah
let me turn again to the
binoculars that i brought because
i i i'd like to wrap up the discussion
along
four themes i think that in the
different presentations we have
addressed
four themes at least headings first
with the binoculars what are we looking
at
and mark ferguson taught us that
the future as various diversions behind
it the
immediate future the long-term future
and the uncertain future so in taking up
our binoculars
um we're looking at something but what
exactly are we looking at and how sharp
do we have to set our binoculars in
looking at the future
and there's also a difference as mark
ferguson referred to between
national and international level and
does
the interaction between national and
international and the future
that that's one heading what are we
looking at
second handing heading in what we
addressed in the different themes is
i think um what is our tool what type of
binoculars do we have
um mark ferguson referred to big data
um my danish colleague
referred to the catalogues and the
research catalogs as a tool
from finland we had um
suggestions as well as regards tools
that are
uh constructive and an illustrative on
um on on in
in the type of binoculars that we used
so that that's the second heading i
think
of of many of the interventions a third
is but who then takes up the binocular
who watches through the binocular um
with whom do we deal with long-term
science based advice not only scientists
um but as has been stressed in in many
of the
interventions uh the public as well it
is crucial as was
um indicated and stressed in the final
uh important to execute on it
in combination in dialogue with society
and dialogue
with citizens and citizens engagement
was also stressed
in the finnish presentation
finally
then um
it is not countries alone it is the
combination of countries and rightly put
by turmoil
sumeria the ace of example is
illustrative da
on on what we can um learn from each
other so
um i think in in using the the very
quicker
um perspective the very kicker as a
heading for your conference uh
young you've you've taken an excellent
manner of structuring also the debate
along
what are we looking at what tools do we
need in looking at the future scenarios
big data
catalogs and who is taking up that
binocular it's not only
us as paul's uh as the via air or
perhaps in flanders
and future um uh institute but
but but it's also society itself in
dialogue with society in dialogue with
science
academics policy makers it is our common
future
so it's a common um challenge thank you
thank you again corinne you focused
quite
rightly on the next agenda for
uh debate and reflection on foresight
analysis and research
rule of research in it thank you so much
i'm quite sure that
we will be happy to co-chair again a
physical
conference this time in brussels why not
in 2022. thank you so much for your
loyalty
and for the commitment of the vrf into
those those efforts
on on the flemish frameworks
so no time we are a little bit well we
are running out of time
it is not dramatic but still we have to
respect
also the program of this afternoon so it
it was
it was just amazing i plan to focus now
on the
on the fundamental shift
in the dialogue between science and and
policy
due to the sustainability
agenda for the future and
quite simple all international reports
dealing with sustainability
are stressing the critical tool of
science and of research for implementing
those sdgs
we will focus and refer to those
shift into the next meeting and we
really do hope to meet you again in for
a physical meeting
in um in early 2022 we will keep you
informed
thanks so much being with us and we will
keep in touch
[Music]
you

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danish::noun | Spocien Dictionary

danish

noun

/'deɪnɪʃ/

light sweet yeast-raised roll usually filled with fruits or cheese

Type	Words
Synonyms	danish pastry
Type of	sweet roll, coffee roll

danish::noun | Spocien Dictionary

danish

noun

/'deɪnɪʃ/

a Scandinavian language that is the official language of Denmark

Type	Words
Type of	scandinavian language, nordic, norse, north germanic, north germanic language, scandinavian

danish:: | Spocien Dictionary

danish

/'deɪnɪʃ/

of or relating to or characteristic of Denmark or the Danes or their language

Type	Words

How to pronounce danish in Dutch?

danish::noun | Spocien Dictionary

abandonment

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danish::noun | Spocien Dictionary

abandonment

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danish:: | Spocien Dictionary

abandonment

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