RISIS was presented for the first time to the Czech research community and policy-makers during the national conference on STI statistics and analyses, held on 26 April 2019. This annual conference has been organized jointly by the Technology Centre of the Czech Academy of Sciences (CAS) and the Czech Statistical Office since 2010. The audience traditionally consists of leading research and innovation policy makers from various Czech ministries, agencies, and other governmental bodies, as well as of researchers active in research and innovation policy studies, and statisticians.
RISIS project was entirely new to the Czech STI community and arouses a considerable interest of the audience. In the first part, Michal Pazour, Head of Department of Strategic Studies of CAS Technology Centre, presented the basic concept of the RISIS infrastructure based on developing new datasets, interlinking existing datasets and opening access to the infrastructure to the broad users’ community. Individual datasets and tools for data integration were introduced to the audience in the main part of the presentation. Finally, the presentation concluded with an announcement of the mode of access to the datasets and related services provided by the particular dataset producers.
The community was especially interested in the possibilities of interlinking various datasets in order to get new insights into the nature and behaviour of STI systems. There was a lively discussion about the datasets related to innovation dynamics, and the possibilities of interlinking the CinnoB and Cheetah datasets with the firm register (FIRMREG). The Czech STI community appreciated the openness of the RISIS infrastructure and the opportunity to use it by accredited users not only for research projects but also for specific STI policy studies. Deep understanding of the dynamics of STI systems and related policies is especially important for STI policy-making in the Central and Eastern European countries that have been undergoing fast transformation patterns over the last decade.
