A hearing where the Future Panel discussed the main results of the project with invited experts. In other words, there was no institutional link in the OFP between the respective parliaments of the Future Panel members and the project.
Lessons learned and future perspectives
- Establish a connection with parliaments and/or ministries, in addition to their respective individual members
- Establishing a solid evidence base for policy making requires an iterative process that involves direct contact
- Different experience of EU countries with evidence-based policy making are a challenge
- Concerning the role of TA experts, maintain a constructive balance between the role as secretariat and the
Therefore, we strongly recommend to include in the project design of the Future Panel method, an iterative process involving direct contact between all those involved in the project: (1) between the Future Panel and the experts involved; (2) between the future board and the leader. An important aspect of the Future Panel on Public Health Genomics project was the collaboration between PTA and non-PTA countries.
Notes
In practice, however, the TA experts involved in the PACITA Future Panel project had to act as the secretariat of the project mainly due to time and budget constraints. Figuring out how to deal with aging societies is one of the major challenges identified in the Lund Declaration.
Framing the issue of technology and policy in Europe
The technology overview showed that a variety of devices and technologies are used in European healthcare services today. Technological developments are always difficult to predict, but the technology overview highlights some trends that will likely affect the deployment and implementation of technology in the healthcare sector.
Engaging stakeholders in policy discussions
Thus, one of the overall conclusions of this mapping is that long-term policies and strategies will be necessary to implement technology in a productive and responsible way.
Creating scenarios for the future of ageing and new technology
Voluntary communities describe a future where health care services are organized and financed in different ways and where health care services may be affected by increased government control, a stronger private sector, or a better organized volunteer community.
Designing national scenario workshops
While all countries agreed that there is potential in the use of technology in the healthcare sector, several differences became apparent when it came to describing possible barriers and challenges related to implementation and use. In this way, the differences across countries reflected different values and worldviews regarding the use of technology in health care and social innovations.
Recommendations for future sustainable health-care services
These national idiosyncrasies reflected cultural and social aspects in the respective countries and regions and also reflected the extent to which the debate on technology and aging had or had not been prominent. In this way, our experiment was very successful in facilitating dialogue and knowledge exchange between otherwise disconnected stakeholders.
Broadening the knowledge base for policy making
By involving relevant stakeholders in the process, they can give ownership of the process and increase the chances of both adjusted policy prescriptions and the development of relevant products that actually satisfy users.
Cross-European stakeholder involvement
One promising path of development is a consultative form of citizen involvement in the relatively early stages of European policy-making. The essential goal of the consultation was to bring the reflected views of citizens closer to policy makers and thus influence concrete policies in the coming years.
Background
Sustainable consumption is one of the major challenges facing European society, and one where the range of policy options is closely linked to public opinion. The willingness of politicians and policymakers to open many of the meetings showed the political interest this process generated.
Consultation results
The expressed interest of these end users of the citizen consultation made it clear to the participating citizens that the consultation was in fact much more than an academic exercise. In general, the outcomes of the consultation show that the citizens of Europe Wide Views accept the possibility of policy measures aimed at private consumption.
Consulting citizens across Europe
Unfortunately, this often translates into the feeling that citizens are being neglected by decision-makers and are generally not welcome in decision-making processes.5 This is where building trust in open discussion processes through concrete experiences and where practical training of practitioners can be most important. give the greatest value. For Europe in general, although traditions and situations differ between countries, seeking wider citizen involvement in issues that are highly controversial and often not fully understood by decision-makers can help reduce complexity and at least help process of policy options that can be pursued. with a realistic expectation of public acceptance.
Lessons learned from EWViews
All discussions were strongly based on dialogue and respect, which contributed to a sense of fulfillment at the end of the day. Over time, the best remedy for this reluctance is likely to be further attempts to expose an increasing number of citizens to the experience of participation, which would help build capacity and create a virtuous circle of increasing citizen trust in such processes.
Future perspectives and conclusions
In terms of preparation, the biggest challenge proved to be the recruitment of participants. To reap these fruits, a more systematic use of similar methods of participation in the future can help build capacity and pave the way for both the formal and informal acceptance of citizen engagement in the governance institutions of Europe and its member states.
Building Capacities for Cross-European TA
The authors argue that as the 'responsible innovation' agenda gains traction among policy makers, social actors and academics, educational initiatives such as the TA summer school can play an important role in shaping the understandings of this new form of governance. We describe the rationale and format of the summer school in order to present a comprehensive account of how it introduced TA, both its rationales and methods, to a new audience.
Background and rationale
We argue that, as the responsible innovation agenda continues to gain traction among policy makers, social actors and academics, educational initiatives such as TA summer schools can play an important role in the future of science, technology and innovation management. In what follows, we argue that the further development of training activities such as TA summer schools is a relevant tool for doing this.
Overview of the two summer schools
In addition, the summer schools also included participants from countries with established TA institutions who do not always recognize their TA activities because they believe that they are not the main recipient of TA activities. Finally, the summer schools provided an opportunity to open up and raise awareness of TA and knowledge-based policymaking beyond the fifteen countries and regions represented in the PACITA consortium.
Summer school format
The chosen topic was "challenges and opportunities of the aging society: exploring the role of technology". Understanding how to deal with aging societies is one of the major challenges highlighted in the Lund Declaration, and healthcare technologies may be increasingly important for society to provide health and care services in a quantity and quality. that reflects the expectations of the European population.
Main results
Future agenda for TA education in the context of
In a first attempt to discuss the anticipatory management of science and technology, Barben et al. On these grounds, summer schools can be considered practical cases of anticipatory management because they emphasized broadening the community of TA users and improving a distributed capacity to frame cutting-edge issues in terms consistent with TA frameworks and - AIDS.
Note
The authors convey experiences from four PACITA practitioner meetings on principles of knowledge sharing useful for practitioner training in the future. Achieving open, inclusive and transparent governance and evidence-based policy-making in Europe requires the development and further improvement of capacity to provide insight into the opportunities and consequences associated with science and technology by facilitating democratic processes of debate and awareness-raising and by formulating policy options within for Science, Technology and Innovation (STI).
Shared knowledge for a strong and innovative TA community
The PACITA practitioners training seminars
When the participants were asked about the benefits of such trainings, two-thirds of them indicated that they had gained new knowledge about TA, and half of them indicated that they had learned new TA skills. Most of the participants said that they expanded their professional network and found inspiration and new ideas for their work.
Expanding the TA landscape through training
Communication strategies and tools for communicating the results of an AT project were the central topic of the fourth practitioner meeting. Participants can also learn when and how to involve stakeholders, civil society and policy makers in TA processes and how to communicate the results achieved.
Review and perspectives
The idea of covering the main steps of a TA project in the four PACITA training seminars has been considered by the participants as a meaningful approach. It is in these discourse spaces that the conceptual basis for TA is reflected on and further developed.
Making it work – the context of the two European TA conferences
TA conferences within the community to guarantee a high quality of conference inputs, integrative formats and inspiring topics.
No future without a past
Together with institutions from Finland, France, Greece, Italy, Sweden and the United Kingdom, they are organized in the European Parliamentary Technology Assessment Network (EPTA), which was established in 1990 by the president of the European Parliament. 2. The conferences of the 1980s and 1990s provided the first insights into which topics were important for research and policy advice.
Overcoming challenges – making cross-European TA conferences
The two conferences, namely in Prague (2013) and in Berlin (2015), clearly showed that there is a strong European TA community interested in joint work and scientific exchange – despite the sometimes significant differences in TA approaches. that they follow respectively. . A good antidote to any such tendency is for TA practitioners to ask, among contacts in the world outside TA, what these contacts understand is meant by "Technology Assessment".
Fact sheet
Nentwich
The author argues that while technological development is indeed international, there is little effort to address technology assessment (TA) issues internationally; nor are there yet sustainable online platforms for knowledge sharing, dissemination and public debate. While technology development is truly international, there is little effort to address technology assessment (TA) issues internationally; nor are there yet sustainable online platforms for knowledge sharing, dissemination and public debate.
Introduction
Meanwhile, especially in the framework of the PACITA project and the NTA network, new developments are taking place. We argue that an increased online presence of the trans-European TA community would benefit European policy-making.
The main elements of the current TA e-infrastructure
Furthermore, the German TA network experimented from 2006 to 2012 on its previous website with a meta search engine (based on Google Custom Search) covering the content of the websites of NTA member organizations. Tools related to AT: Several EU-funded projects resulted in databases of platforms that serve specific purposes of the AT community.
The PACITA TA Portal
The portal team is currently negotiating with both the openTA team and other EPTA members to provide their news as a feed in English that contributes to the openTA news aggregator and consequently to a broader coverage of the TA news feed on the TA portal . Finally, there is a plan to set up (and include in the search) an open access TA repository for TA-related publications that are not included on one of the member organizations' websites.
The way ahead
This would allow researchers affiliated with non-TA organizations but publishing relevant articles to include them in the TA Portal. The latter will have come to an end with the completion of the PACITA project in the spring of 2015, leaving the future of the TA portal and therefore the backbone of the current international e-infrastructure for TA in limbo.
