Science and education have been declared national projects in Russia - the Presidium of the Presidential Council for Strategic Development and Priority Projects has approved the passport of the national project “Science” and the passport of the national project “Education”. "We have prepared, submitted to the government federal projects that detail the tasks that are in these documents, and discussions are held with community and business councils, with expert groups in various areas of these documents. The draft federal budget is now being discussed, activities of national projects in the next three years," Russia's Minister of Science and Higher Education Mikhail Kotyukov explained.
Now work plans are being prepared for the adoption of the necessary decisions, legal mechanisms, financial and organizational decisions to operationalize these projects by 2019. “In 2016, the Russian President approved the Scientific and Technological Development Strategy by 2035. This is a fundamentally important document of high-level strategic planning. Its legislative status is equated with the national security strategy. Therefore, we assume that all the following documents should be clearly focused on this document's tasks. The national project includes the activities necessary for the strategy to become feasible. And the state program answers the question of how and with what tools we will implement these tasks. Together with the approval of the strategy, the task was to develop a state program for scientific and technological development. Not a state program for the development of science, but for scientific and technological development so that it includes fundamental issues, applied issues, and issues related to the implementation of scientific ideas in specific technological solutions, the creation of new products and services," Mikhail Kotyukov said.
According to him, it was decided that this state program will integrate all the issues of scientific and technological development and development of higher education: "This is a unified state program. We have to conduct interdepartmental coordination by the end of this year and approve this document so that it became our practical draft instrument from January 1, 2019. In addition to the integration of scientific and educational tasks, we must take another very important step - to form a system of interdepartmental interaction when implementing scientific and technological projects and programs. This is one of the key tools to determine the success in achieving our objectives both in the strategy of scientific and technological development, in the passports of national projects and in the new state program. Academic institutes and universities are the basic organizations for us to rely on in this work."
Kotyukov recalled that the strategic goal for Russia to enter the top-5 developed countries by 2024 in the number of serious international publications, including Russian publications with the international version and in the number of patent applications. It is impossible without scientific and educational organizations.
Speaking about organizational decisions, the minister noted that world-class research centers in various areas should be formed: "Mathematics, genetic research and several more are special issues. We should form an operating model for scientific and educational centers, which would integrate the capabilities of scientific organizations, higher education organizations and industrial partners to help us in solving common problems associated with the development of scientific research and technological solutions, as well ass creation of new products. But limiting it to only academic institutions or universities is not possible. Therefore, the national project will be implemented within supra-department frameworks and the mechanisms formed will involve the widest possible number of participants with the necessary competencies, infrastructure, resource base and, most importantly, the desire and ability to implement major scientific and technological tasks."
