TECHNOLOGY FORESIGHT SUMMIT - Unido

104 International Practice in Technology Foresight
The practically oriented course will provide participants with the knowledge
of foresight tools as well as hands-on experience in applying such tools
and methodologies to address strategic questions and decisions such as:
What technologies are likely and desirable to be dominant in national
or regional economy?
What priorities should feature national research and development
programmes?
Where should the budget for publicly funded research and development
be allocated?
What skills and competencies should be developed for the future?
What will be the demand of society for industrial products, services,
food, shelter, health, education, lifestyle and welfare over the next
10-15 years?
Additional information on the course is offered through the course promotion
leaflets available to the participants of this Foresight Summit.
To conclude, the Czech Republic considers the technology foresight an
important tool for strategic thinking. Foresight plays an important role in
identifying possible futures, imagining desirable futures and defining strategies.
Results are of principal interest to the public decision-making sphere.
Thinking, debating and shaping the future is even more essential today
because of the complexity of science, technology and society inter-relationships
and the scarcity of financial resources.
Peter Ondrejka
Director, Department of Stratgy, Analyses and Policy,
Ministry of Economy, Slovak Republic
The Slovak Republic obtained an official invitation to be a member of the
European Union in December 2002 at the summit in Copenhagen. The real
membership will become reality in May, 2004. I would like to stress that economic
integration had started several years ago, since the year 1991. In this
year, we had begun transformation of society and the economy from a central
planned economy to a market driven economy. In 2002, the private sector
contributed 86 per cent of the GDP. Nowadays, privatization of the
manufacturing industry has been completed and privatization of banks and
the energy sector is almost completed. Thus, integration of the Slovak economy
into the EU in 2004 will not cause any serious problems for our citizens
and enterprises. On the other side, the Slovak economy is confronting a period
of high unemployment, about 19 per cent, and very high regional differences
in unemployment, between 5 and 35 per cent, a high deficit of foreign
trade, of the current account of the balance of payment, about 8 per cent