An OECD and European Commission joint project enables monitoring and analysis to further the innovation and technology-related policies of its members.
The objective of the Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) Platform is to become the to-go-to resource for STI related policies. STIP Compass, as the project is called, is constantly collecting quantitative and qualitative data on national trends. The users, which most likely will be policy advisors and researchers, as well as governmental officials, can explore STI policies of around 57 countries/institutions, among which Switzerland is included. The platform already analyses countries’ key benchmarks, which can be interactively compared, the instruments used, and catalogues recent STI related publications. The presented data is freely accessible and follows the Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Re-usable (FAIR) principles.
On the website, users have access to different tools. One is an explorable guide to knowledge transfer and co-creation policy – a tool for policy learning. In addition to the STIP Compass data, the policy learning tool uses broad resources to provide guidance around knowledge transfer and co-creation topics. Another tool is the mission-oriented innovation policies online toolkit. This is still in the Beta phase and will be continuously updated. Currently, the website also provides a COVID-19 watch, which shows STI policy initiatives that countries have reported.
The project was initiated because both the EC and the OECD conducted separate survey to keep track of STI policies. This was not useful and created a double workload for all members. STIP Compass makes the surveys more efficient by harmonising the data on one platform instead of sending paper surveys separately. Thus the process for surveys is more efficient for the EC and the OECD, and the members can themselves use others’ data and information for further analysis.
The above-mentioned survey is rolled out every second year, most recently in July-October 2019. The overarching areas are Governance, Public Research, Innovation in firms and innovative entrepreneurship, Science-industry transfer and sharing, Human resources for research and innovation, and Research and Innovation for society. Government officials can list and describe policy initiatives they initiated to address particular challenges e.g. the innovation deficit in SMEs. A standard template for all policy initiatives allows for comparison across borders.