Generalitat of Catalonia

In order to achieve the aims of the Research and Innovation Plan, the good handling of its resources and of the procedures defined therein must be guaranteed. The fundamental element to guarantee good management, apart from the assessment processes that are presented in chapter 8, is to establish the suitable mechanisms of co-ordination between the different ministries of the Government of Catalonia with competencies in research and innovation matters, in State and European science and technology policy and in general, between the agents of the Catalan research and innovation system.

Consequently, there are several areas of co-ordination. These are interministerial in the Government of Catalonia, co-ordination with the Spanish State General Administration (SGA) and the European Commission, and the relations with the different public and private agents of the research and innovation system.

In the first area, with an aim to obtaining efficient co­ordination in the management and execution of the Plan, different levels of interministerial relations need to be established. In the first place, the co-ordination of all Government of Catalonia ministries is the responsibility of the CIRIT, which undertakes to guarantee and encourage their participation in order to execute the Plan with true cohesion. This Plan’s existence, which affects all ministries with competencies in these areas, requires having fully effective mechanisms of co­ordination that develop in the heart of the CIRIT, which is, therefore, the body that shows the central nature of the policy on science and technology in the Government of Catalonia’s actions. The function of the CIRIT Plenary is to plan the major lines of the Government’s policy on research and innovation. It acts as a governing professional body offering an area for pooling and co­ordination in order to define Catalonia’s priorities for research and innovation, and it develops a strategy of permanent co-operation with the CIRIT Plenary members.

The CIRIT seeks to foment the most essential investment in research and innovation for each of the areas within the competencies of the ministries, and to establish the mechanisms to ensure that these initiatives are taken with guarantees of effectiveness and efficiency in the use of their resources. The idea is to use the Catalan Government’s capacity to contract and finance as a tool in order to extract and yield all of the real potential for research and innovation that Catalonia has in the area of each ministry. For this reason, a horizontal, technical work group will be set up, made up of those in charge of gathering research and innovation data, which are already defined in each ministry, with the aim of ensuring communication, integration and co­ordination between the different professionals.

Secondly, a permanent follow-up and co-ordination committee will be set up consisting of representatives of the Ministry of Universities, Research and the Information Society (DURSI) through the Directorate General of Research, the Ministry of Employment and Industry, through the CIDEM, and the Ministry of Health for the execution and follow-up of the Plan. In addition to this committee, if necessary, representatives of other ministries of the Government of Catalonia with responsibilities in the execution of the Plan’s programmes could be added. The job of the CIRIT, the body in charge of proposing the composition of this committee, will be to guarantee adequate co-ordination between the programmes under the responsibility of each ministry and the execution and control of the joint actions taken between different ministries.

The second area is co-ordination with the Spanish State General Administration and with the European Commission. The science and technology policies that affect the Catalan research and innovation system are developed at three levels of government, which are the European Commission, the Spanish State General Administration and the Government of Catalonia. Consequently, it is necessary to advance towards a distribution of functions with good co-ordination between these three levels of government in order to guarantee the proper functioning of the science and technology policy. The policy on research and innovation of the State General Administration is developed through the Spanish National R+D+I Plan. In the drafting of the Research and Innovation Plan for Catalonia the similarities that exist between the two plans has been taken into account in order to facilitate their complementarity and the development of joint actions. During the execution of the Plan, the mechanisms of co-ordination with the Spanish State General Administration will be reinforced with the instruments contemplated in the Spanish National R+D+I Plan.

In addition to the co-ordination with the Spanish State General Administration, Catalonia must participate in the European Union science and technology policy, and in particular in the European Research Area. The Plan establishes the mechanisms for the promotion of the participation of researchers, institutions and Catalan companies in the EU framework programmes on research and development. Thus, the aim is to advance towards a greater participation by Catalonia in the drafting and development of the European science and technology policies.

The third area of co-ordination is that of the agents of the research and innovation system and, in general, of all of the economic and social agents. In this way, the drafting of the Plan is a suitable framework to respond to the unease of the Catalan society and of the economic and social agents made clear in initiatives such as the strategic Agreement for the internationalisation, occupation quality and the competitiveness of the Catalan economy. The improvement of Catalonia’s scientific and technological level and the good management of the Plan require reinforcing the organisation of the Catalan system of research and technology with the DURSI and the CIDEM as central elements. This is why, in the execution of the Plan, consensus criteria will be followed with all of the system’s agents, and in particular with the universities and the public and private research and technology centres. In this way, the Plan seeks to boost the use of programme contracts in order to promote the best quality groups and the most effective organisations. Thus, it allows the planning of the calls for funding, which provides advantages for the possible recipients of the funding. Finally, the management and execution of the Plan will be made easier with the impetus that should be given to the implementation of electronic Administration and the simplification of administrative procedures.

Finally, in managing the Plan, the aim is to boost the changes to the legislative framework that currently limit the knowledge and technology transfer relations between the system’s different agents. Furthermore, the drafting of the Plan has clearly shown the suitability of advancing towards the drafting of a science and technology Act that will facilitate the co-ordination and planning of the agents, the instruments and the resources of the research and innovation system.