Annual Report 2010 - Comsats

Contribution towards Review of Science and Technology Policy of
Pakistan
COMSATS has the honour of contributing to the S&T policy-making of Pakistan by
virtue of its Executive Director being a member of the Review Committee and
Convener of the Sub-Committee of the draft National Science and Technology Policy
of Pakistan (2009). The Federal Minister for S&T and the Special Advisor to the Prime
Minister on Social Sector are the Chair and Co-chair of the Review Committee,
respectively. The Committee was constituted in pursuance of the directives of the
Prime Minister of Pakistan issued on February 23, 2009.
The Review Committee commenced its deliberations in its meeting held on February
16, 2010, under the Chairmanship of the Minister for Science and Technology.
Acknowledging the importance of the task and the extensive efforts required for it, the
Federal Minister further constituted a Sub-committee for reviewing and improving the
draft National Science and Technology Policy (2009) with the Executive Director
COMSATS as its Convener and Mr. Shahryar Khan, Acting Chairman Pakistan
Council for Science and Technology (PCST) as its member. In order to ensure the
participation of all three concerned sectors i.e. public, private and academia, in the
process of reviewing the National S&T Policy, scientists/experts from 9 governmental
and non-governmental scientific organizations of Pakistan were co-opted in the Subcommittee
as members. Thereafter, the Executive Director COMSATS convened
three meetings of the Sub-committee at COMSATS Headquarters to discuss and
improve the draft policy document of the Government of Pakistan.
In the first meeting of the Sub-committee that was held on April 27, 2010, different
sections of the draft S&T policy were discussed to update their contents. With regard
to overall improvement of the policy document, the Sub-committee deemed it
necessary to: align the draft S&T policy of Pakistan with other national/sectoral
policies; perform a critical analysis of the previous S&T policies of Pakistan and their
implementation status; assimilate the international state-of-the-art S&T
developments and useful elements of the S&T policies of other countries; and
safeguard the interests of all stakeholders. A decision was made to propose an
effective mechanism for policy-formulation and implementation, clearly enlisting the
objectives, policy elements and required actions of the draft S&T policy. During the
meeting, all members of the Sub-committee agreed to review different sections of the
policy that were most relevant to their fields and backgrounds and suggest
improvements.
The second meeting of the Sub-committee was held on June 01, 2010, during which
the members of the Sub-committee presented their proposals and suggestions, in the
form of comprehensive write-ups for improving and updating various sections of the
S&T policy. The major proposals made during the meeting related to the diffusion of
knowledge from strategic organization to the organizations responsible for socioeconomic
development; establishment of Knowledge Dissemination Offices (KDOs)
at universities and strategic organizations; strengthening linkages among R&D
institutions, academia and industry; increasing incentives for research
accomplishments; supporting S&T popularization; aligning the human resource
development efforts with the national needs; and enhancing R&D/S&T collaboration
with developed countries. Moreover, a comparison was drawn between the draft S&T
policy of Pakistan with the S&T policies of other countries at different stages of
Annual Report
2010
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