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Sri Lankan government gets South Korean assistance to develop science, technology and innovation policy making skills

Sri Lankan government gets South Korean assistance to develop science, technology and innovation policy making skills

South Korea is reportedly assisting the Sri Lankan government to develop the skills of senior government officials and scientists in science, technology and innovation (STI) policy making skills.
According to local media reports, Science and Technology Policy Institute (STEPI), a policy think-tank supporting Korean economic growth, has just completed training a team of officials in STI policy formulation and research and development commercialization in Colombo.
The workshop was designed to enhance the capacities of 50 senior – level officials and managers of the related Science and Technology governmental agencies, academia and research institutions, a statement from the Korean Embassy has said.
It was meant to support Sri Lanka’s national vision to become an upper middle-income country by 2025 by transforming the country into the hub of the Indian Ocean with a knowledge-based, highly comparative, social market economy.
“To do so, the country tries to harness science, technology and innovation to create the conditions which will generate economic growth,” the statement has noted.
“In order to realize the vision of national development with sound STI capacity, it is necessary for the government to have the officials equipped with knowledge and expertise in establishing and implementing national STI policy, its action plans and an efficient STI system,” the statement has also said.
“In most of the cases policy formulation and implementation in Sri Lanka are based on ad hoc approaches and intuition.”
The training was held after a request from Sri Lanka’s National Science and Technology Commission (NASTEC) under the Ministry of Science, Technology and Research.
A special team from STEPI has reportedly conducted the training programme with presentations on various policy tools, research and development planning and evaluation techniques and research and development commercialization approaches with relevant case studies from Korea.

Sri Lankan officials have through the programme acquired essential knowledge on framework, concept, schemes and tools involved in developing STI policies and managing national Research and Development programmes.

OSL take:

The assistance by South Korea in the area of skills development of Sri Lanka’s senior public sector officials in science, technology and innovation (STI) policy making skills would result in the overall development of the country’s public service and in turn the state policies as well. Apart from being ensured of a skilled public administration sector in the country that would help when doing business in Sri Lanka, foreign solutions providers could also look at further skills development programmes that would also add to the skills of Sri Lanka’s state sector employees.

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Article Code : VBS/AT/20180628/Z_4

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