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Knowledge Society Agency (UMIC)
secção: Conhecimento
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Knowledge

Conhecimento - Investigadora em laboratório a utilizar a b-onAccording to the Connecting Portugal programme knowledge projects are aimed at stimulating the creation of new knowledge and facilitating its social appropriation, namely by promoting:

  • Scientific and technological development, promoting R&D activities through international collaboration.
  • Setting up thematic Science and Technology networks.
  • Spreading distributed computing approaches.
  • mobilisation of the scientific community to participate in the European research area, to improve science and technology teaching and to promote scientific and technological culture.

The following are examples of outputs and actions to be achieved:

  • Increasing the number of new graduates in scientific and technological areas in 2010 to 12 per 1000 in the 20 to 29 year old population (8.2 in 2003).
  • Increasing the number of new PhDs in scientific and technological areas in 2010 to 0.45 per 1000 in the 25 to 34 year old population (0.3 in Portugal and 0,55 in the EU15 in 2001).
  • Tripling private investment in R&D (which is currently no more than 0.27% of GDP), creating the necessary stimulus conditions.
  • Doubling public investment in R&D to hit 1% of GDP (today’s figure is roughly 0.6% of GDP).
  • Stimulating new knowledge areas through European collaboration, promoting international S&T networks as well as extending Portuguese participation in international community initiative programmes.
  • Extending access to digital scientific community knowledge sources, namely through the Online Scientific Library, B-on.
  • Stimulating the development of Portuguese processing computing resources and the launch of machine translation into Portuguese.
  • Launching the National GRID Initiative, like other European countries, for research and development and to harness the economic opportunities introduced by the distributed computing paradigm.
  • Stimulating scientific and cultural promotion activities connected with the area via the Ciência Viva Centres network.

On 29th March 2006, via a speech by the Prime Minister in the Portuguese Parliament, the Government launched the Commitment to Science for Portugal's Future initiative. The initiative sets ambitious targets for 2009 and has the following five major guidelines:

  • Investing in scientific knowledge and scientific and technical competence measurable at the highest international level.
  • Investing in Human Resources and Scientific and Technological Culture.
  • Investing in public and private R&D institutions, consolidating them, their responsibilities, organisation and online infrastructures.
  • Investing in Internationalisation, Exigency and Evaluation.
  • Investing in Enhancing the Economic Value of Research.

Last updated (31/07/2008)