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“Blue Sky II 2006”

What Indicators for Science, Technology and Innovation Policies in the 21^st Century?

September 25 - 27, 2006
The Westin Ottawa
11 Colonel By Drive
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

The Blue Sky II 2006 Forum will examine new areas for indicator development and set a broad agenda for future work on science, technology and innovation (STI) indicators. Emphasis will be placed on indicators of outcomes and impacts in order to support monitoring, benchmarking, foresight activity, and evaluation, applied to policies and programs, and their economic and social impacts. The Forum is expected to provide ideas and guidance for indicators work in both OECD and non OECD countries, as well as in their international organizations. The Forum will include plenary sessions featuring invited guest speakers who are leading authorities in their fields. Break-out sessions will discuss papers on specific themes selected through a call for papers.

Blue Sky is a synonym for thinking creatively, without limiting horizons, about developing new indicators to respond to changing policy and user needs in the STI area. The first Blue Sky Forum was organised by the OECD and held in Paris in 1996. It helped set the agenda for developing STI indicators over the past decade. The intent of Blue Sky II is to review progress made while looking towards development of policy-relevant STI indicators in today's global economy. Statistics Canada, the OECD, the U.S. National Science Foundation and Industry Canada have partnered to host this landmark conference.

The Forum will bring public policy researchers, economists, social scientists and statisticians, together with policy makers, government officials and other stakeholders with an interest in science, technology and innovation indicators.

The Forum covers four broad topics:

• New uses of existing science, technology and innovation indicators;
• New uses of existing non STI indicators for the purpose of STI policy making;
• Completely new science, technology and innovation indicators; and
• A synthesis of findings leading to an agenda for the next decade of work on STI indicators.

Call for papers

All papers are expected to develop metrics and indicators that can be useful to policy making. Proposals must be in the form of a 500-word (maximum) abstract submitted by Friday, March 31, 2006. Submissions should be accompanied by a detailed résumé as well as a brief biographical note of no more than 40 words.