SCIENCE INDICATORS AND WHAT THEY MEAN IN DEVELOPMENT

It is important to measure performance of any sector through indicators.

Science, technology and innovation indicators measure a country's performance and tell the public and the policy makers the state of science and technology in the economy and the society. This indicators as developed by the Organization for Economic Co- operation and Development(OECD) and other international organisations include; Science and Engineering graduates, human resource in science and technology, scientific journal articles, patents, and R&D expenditure.

Research produces new knowledge and is also expected to shape policy. The R&D to GDP ratio is an indicator of how much a nation's economic activities is devoted to innovation through R&D. Publications in journals and  articles enables the  results of research to be disseminated to a wider society.

There is need to document our research work. A lot of research work is going on in our Universities and Research institutions yet we have very few publications to show for it.  What we have is fragmented information rarely would we know how many experts we have in a certain field at the click of a button as is the case in some countries.

There is a growing need for transparency as everything is now being brought into the public domain necessitated by the New Constitution. I urge my colleagues in the science and research sector to account for tax-payers money set-aside for research through publications and innovations which scientific output into solutions.

ST&I Indicators will help the Government develop evidence based policy and understand the state of the scientific system as well as encourage the public to engage in the policy debate. Embedding indicators in policy process will involve interaction between policy makers and scientists. Science indicators make it possible for monitoring, benchmarking, foresight and evaluation.

NEPAD is spearheading the development of  common science indicators in Africa under the African Science, Technology and Innovation Indicators (ASTII) Initiative to allow comparisons among  African countries. The African Innovation Outlook 2010 is an outcome of this initiative and indicates that only a few African countries have substantial scientific output. It also recommends that to be more competitive, we have to increase investment in human capital development, strengthen scientific institutions and also increase funding.

Training on how to improve the process of conducting the ASTII survey and sensitization of importance of such surveys to the institutions concerned with science and technology business will improve subsequent surveys and cases of lack of up-to-date data will be a thing of the past. Indicators will help in identifying gaps that require interventions and areas of capacity building.

NCST has developed an Incentive for publication to encourage Kenyan scientists to increase their contributions to global knowledge by disseminating their research findings through publications.

It is important to measure ST&I performance using indicators for socio-economic transformation. This calls for us to adopt a culture of record-keeping, data collection and develop data banks so that when needed, the information can be quickly retrieved and applied for development.