Mr. LIU Haibo, Professor, Institutes of Science and Development, Chinese Academy of Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences
Outline of Presentation
For the High-level Study Visit to China on STI for the SDGs
Liu Haibo
Institutes of Science and Development, Chinese Academy of Sciences(CASISD)
liuhb@casisd.cn
November 26, 2017
1. What are the key recommendations of the Independent Technical Assessment Report of the Online Platform for its operationalization?
(1) information exchange platform
The information exchange platform should be abundant in aspects of contents and functions than a simple one-way information platform, and a high-level exchange platform will be near a fully integrated one.
(2) functions, users and contents of the platform
Main functions include: information aggregation, periodic updates, contents search, contents delivery, linkages with relevant outside websites, user uploading, user’s interaction, online learning.
The user group should cover a relative wide range, nearly all STI-related parties, including government sectors, business organizations, universities and public institutes, NPOs/NGOs, personal innovators. Among them, users from technology transfer agencies, innovative companies, and universities and institutes are especially crucial (survey result by from CASISD).
Main contents in the platform should cover the areas of STI-related policies, activities, news, cases, publications, education/training resources, or even patent databases.
However, it should be recognized that the realization of some of the contents on the platform depends on linkages with external linkages.
(3) combination of online platform and offline activities
In the management and operation of the platform, online services and offline activities should be integrated.
Examples:
South-South Global Assets and Technology Exchange
Zhejiang Online Technology Market
China Technology Exchange-JiE Website
2. How can the online platform best serve its provider and client communities?
(1) gather abundant information from various providers, and at the same time guarantee the quality.
In essence, an online platform is a package of information, and the effects of this package depends on the amount of the information. High quality scaled information is helpful in attracting more users, and increase of users will bring benefit to information providers.
The source of the content and information include government sectors, companies, universities, research institutes, technology transfer service agencies, and financing institutions, think tanks. Among them, research institutes, universities and companies are thought to be important information sources (survey result by CASISD)
The key scientific & technological fields of the information include drinking water, energy, material, environmental protection, medicine and health, biology, food, transportation, information technology. And other important issues include technology transfer and application, long-time R&D, technological ability of SMEs, match of firm’s requirements and researchers’ research, S&T talents, and welfare of researchers (survey result by CASISD).
(2) self-ability establishment and promotion of aggregation ability.
Combination of self-ability and aggregation can help improve the platform. Self-ability of the platform is reflected on its management and operation of online and offline service. While under the present digital world context, aggregation of information is also important.
(3) key management points
Management is a key step in making the platform attractive, effective and sustainable. Key management points are listed as follows.
a. Information management
Numerical information aggregation is easy but making sense of aggregation is a very complicated challenge. To make full use of the large amount of information, effective information management (eg. Information category, establishment of database) and other relative functions (eg. Contents search) are necessary.
b. User management
The platform may have various kinds of users, and it is aimed at attracting more stakeholders or users. Key points of user management include user registration, user classification, and the protection of user information.
c. Promotion
It is necessary for the platform managers to take measures to promote it to attract more users. One way of promotion is through the quality of the platform, including useful information and services, friendly user inferfaces, and so on. Another way is to push the platform through inter-governmental channels of UN.
d. Performance
The performance of the platform should be evaluated regularly. Factors to be considered in the process of evaluation include technological elements and effect elements. Technological elements are reflected in aspects of accessibility, responsiveness, security, user-friendly, flexibility, scalability and failover management, expandability. And the effect elements can be reflected in aspects of social and economic effects.
e. Operation and funding
The research team recommends that an organization outside UN should be selected to take the responsibility of operation the platform. It will be better if there is a suitable non-profit organization, and the functions of the platform should be free. As for the funding of the platform, both the cost in establishing and operating the platform should be covered by UN.
3. What are the challenges and opportunities in implementing these recommendations, and how can one deal with them?
(1) Quite fast update of technology is a great challenge of the STI platform, this requires periodic update of the platform and application of new technology in designing the platform (eg. Big data, cloud).
(2) to gather information is relative easy, yet to guarantee the quality and make use of them is hard. This requires specialized staff to undertake relative work, checking and classifying the information.
(3) to attract and maintain users is usually difficult for a public web. A key point in realizing a sustainable web is to have some differences from others, which can be reflected in aspects of functions and contents. Of course, the UN background should do some help in promoting the platform.
(4) intellectual property protection will also form some threats. To make clear which is protected be intellectual property right and who are the owners is a premise to avoid risks. For the contents protected by IPR, the platform has to get a license of make sure that there are no IP risks before using them.
For the High-level Study Visit to China on STI for the SDGs
Liu Haibo
Institutes of Science and Development, Chinese Academy of Sciences(CASISD)
liuhb@casisd.cn
November 26, 2017
1. What are the key recommendations of the Independent Technical Assessment Report of the Online Platform for its operationalization?
(1) information exchange platform
The information exchange platform should be abundant in aspects of contents and functions than a simple one-way information platform, and a high-level exchange platform will be near a fully integrated one.
(2) functions, users and contents of the platform
Main functions include: information aggregation, periodic updates, contents search, contents delivery, linkages with relevant outside websites, user uploading, user’s interaction, online learning.
The user group should cover a relative wide range, nearly all STI-related parties, including government sectors, business organizations, universities and public institutes, NPOs/NGOs, personal innovators. Among them, users from technology transfer agencies, innovative companies, and universities and institutes are especially crucial (survey result by from CASISD).
Main contents in the platform should cover the areas of STI-related policies, activities, news, cases, publications, education/training resources, or even patent databases.
However, it should be recognized that the realization of some of the contents on the platform depends on linkages with external linkages.
(3) combination of online platform and offline activities
In the management and operation of the platform, online services and offline activities should be integrated.
Examples:
South-South Global Assets and Technology Exchange
Zhejiang Online Technology Market
China Technology Exchange-JiE Website
2. How can the online platform best serve its provider and client communities?
(1) gather abundant information from various providers, and at the same time guarantee the quality.
In essence, an online platform is a package of information, and the effects of this package depends on the amount of the information. High quality scaled information is helpful in attracting more users, and increase of users will bring benefit to information providers.
The source of the content and information include government sectors, companies, universities, research institutes, technology transfer service agencies, and financing institutions, think tanks. Among them, research institutes, universities and companies are thought to be important information sources (survey result by CASISD)
The key scientific & technological fields of the information include drinking water, energy, material, environmental protection, medicine and health, biology, food, transportation, information technology. And other important issues include technology transfer and application, long-time R&D, technological ability of SMEs, match of firm’s requirements and researchers’ research, S&T talents, and welfare of researchers (survey result by CASISD).
(2) self-ability establishment and promotion of aggregation ability.
Combination of self-ability and aggregation can help improve the platform. Self-ability of the platform is reflected on its management and operation of online and offline service. While under the present digital world context, aggregation of information is also important.
(3) key management points
Management is a key step in making the platform attractive, effective and sustainable. Key management points are listed as follows.
a. Information management
Numerical information aggregation is easy but making sense of aggregation is a very complicated challenge. To make full use of the large amount of information, effective information management (eg. Information category, establishment of database) and other relative functions (eg. Contents search) are necessary.
b. User management
The platform may have various kinds of users, and it is aimed at attracting more stakeholders or users. Key points of user management include user registration, user classification, and the protection of user information.
c. Promotion
It is necessary for the platform managers to take measures to promote it to attract more users. One way of promotion is through the quality of the platform, including useful information and services, friendly user inferfaces, and so on. Another way is to push the platform through inter-governmental channels of UN.
d. Performance
The performance of the platform should be evaluated regularly. Factors to be considered in the process of evaluation include technological elements and effect elements. Technological elements are reflected in aspects of accessibility, responsiveness, security, user-friendly, flexibility, scalability and failover management, expandability. And the effect elements can be reflected in aspects of social and economic effects.
e. Operation and funding
The research team recommends that an organization outside UN should be selected to take the responsibility of operation the platform. It will be better if there is a suitable non-profit organization, and the functions of the platform should be free. As for the funding of the platform, both the cost in establishing and operating the platform should be covered by UN.
3. What are the challenges and opportunities in implementing these recommendations, and how can one deal with them?
(1) Quite fast update of technology is a great challenge of the STI platform, this requires periodic update of the platform and application of new technology in designing the platform (eg. Big data, cloud).
(2) to gather information is relative easy, yet to guarantee the quality and make use of them is hard. This requires specialized staff to undertake relative work, checking and classifying the information.
(3) to attract and maintain users is usually difficult for a public web. A key point in realizing a sustainable web is to have some differences from others, which can be reflected in aspects of functions and contents. Of course, the UN background should do some help in promoting the platform.
(4) intellectual property protection will also form some threats. To make clear which is protected be intellectual property right and who are the owners is a premise to avoid risks. For the contents protected by IPR, the platform has to get a license of make sure that there are no IP risks before using them.