Regional and International
Section 20 of the Research Science and Technology Act, 2004 (Act no 23 of 2004), provides for the registration of research institutes, monitoring of research and related activities and the collection of STI information (section. 20, 21, and 22). It also determines that the NCRST should make regular reviews on the state of research, science and technology (RST) in Namibia and identify shortcomings and priorities for RST (section. 18).
The NCRST is working on the establishment of an appropriate STI information platform with several specific requirements. The STIIP can also be considered a useful tool for the democratization of decision-making and public accountability on STI policies. As well as, for promoting knowledge societies, enhancing the effectiveness of democracy and democratic institutions, for providing the public with opportunities for effective public deliberation, promoting transparency, accountability, responsiveness, engagement, inclusiveness, accessibility, participation, subsidiary and social cohesion.
The platform will consist of the following modules:
- STI Indicators Module: a system designed to generate a database of R&D indicators following the standard criteria established at the Frascati Manual (OECD 2002), UNESCO Institute for Statistics and NEPAD’s African STI Indicators Initiative (ASTII). A special back-end system will be developed to collect information on-line from the different institutions at the Higher-Education Sector, Government Sector, Non-Profit Sector and Firm/Enterprises Sector, on the aggregated information on researchers and technicians and R&D expenditures. A front-end system will publish the aggregate information and made it available for the end user.
- STI policies Module: This module will include a normalize description of the STI policy cycle; STI strategic and normative priorities and goals; description of the STI national organization chart (functions and responsibilities); inventory of all STI national institutions; inventory of the complete STI legal framework (with access to complete texts of laws; acts; decrees; international STI agreements; etc.); inventory of all the STI policy instruments and funding mechanisms; inventory of foreign research programmes and funding mechanisms; access to ethical codes; operational manuals; application forms and all the public institutional information about the STI national system.
- Research and Innovation Programmes and Projects Module: a complete inventory of research projects performed at the Higher Education, Governmental and Non-profit sectors will be listed and categorized according to the fields of sciences and socio-economic objectives. This module will also include a list of innovation projects performed within the private sector as well as a list of cooperation programmes between the academic and private sectors.
- Curriculum Vitae Module: This will be a standardized platform (similar to the LATTEST platform developed in Brazil) which organize each individual CV allowing to aggregate the information of tens of thousands CVs and detect patterns for decision making. In this way, the officers responsible of designing STI policies will have access to the complete spectrum of capacities available in the country and most important, the information on the expertise vacancy. From this module it will be relatively simple to detect the best reviewers in each individual topic, detect the cooperation patterns among institutions in Namibia and with other countries; etc.
- STI Global Module: This module will provide users access to international digital libraries of scientific journals; international databases of international scientific production (WoS; WoK; SCOPUS; Medline); international databases on patents (USPTO; EPO; WIPO); access to repositories of scientific papers; international genetic databanks; etc.
Student and Learner Portal
The student and learner portal is an essential online gateway that brings together all of the resources, information and activities that NCRST has available for students and learners.