The Ministry of Economy proposes to develop certain technologies in the Russian Federation in a special manner
[ad_1]
The draft law “On Technology Policy” prepared by the Ministry of Economy should bridge the gap between science and industry with the established practice of “patents on the shelf” and the purchase of ready-made technological solutions. The document is expected to become law in the spring of 2024 and will allow de facto the launch of a new branch of state policy in the Russian Federation – technology policy, subordinating it to two parallel processes – the development of priority technologies (which will be determined by the state, taking into account the needs of the market) and the actual development of infrastructure for free development promising technologies. The bill also discusses the creation of special legal regimes that allow exemptions from general regulation for the sake of accelerated development of technologies and ensuring long-term changes in this development.
“Kommersant” got acquainted with the draft law “On Technological Policy in the Russian Federation” – the document was prepared by the Ministry of Economy in development of the concept of technological development of the Russian Federation until 2030, adopted in May 2023 and setting guidelines for state policy on the path to “technological sovereignty”, innovative economic growth and import substitution . The document must harmonize industrial and scientific policies, subordinating them to a single logic – achieving the goals of technological development. “The logic of the implementation of the law on technology policy will be that on its basis it will be possible to set priorities for both industrial and de facto form orders for scientific and technical policy,” the secretariat of First Deputy Prime Minister Andrei explains to Kommersant. Belousova. The Ministry of Economy adds that the bill was written in such a way that it fits into the existing architecture and there is no need to adjust existing laws.
Priorities for technological development will be formed in the form of lists of critical (necessary now) and cross-cutting (long-term) technologies. The basis for the critical ones will be projects of technological sovereignty (there are currently ten of them – from the production of machine tools, medicines and medical products to ships, aircraft and civilian drones). The principle of determining critical technologies is as follows: the project of “technosovereignty” is decomposed into key stages of production – necessary but outlier technologies are included in the list of critical ones.
At the same time, the design in the field of import substitution becomes more stringent – there must be intellectual rights to the results of intellectual activity (RIA), people and competencies, means of production (this will help eliminate the practice of “re-sticking” labels and disguising supposedly Chinese products as Russian ones). What will become more important is not the transfer of production to the Russian Federation as such, but the provision of production under national control (for example, in other countries under the control of Russian legal entities).
To determine end-to-end technologies, the government is rethinking the foresight mechanism – we are talking about an applied scientific forecast over a horizon of 10-15 years with annual updating (forecasts of the National Technology Initiative can become the basis), and the output should be a list of specific technologies. For the development of critical and cross-cutting technologies, mainly existing support measures will be included, but the logic of their distribution will change. Departments, which now operate de facto as independent verticals with disparate support mechanisms, need, within the framework of their own powers, to concentrate budget assistance on new priorities. There are now about 200 tools for supporting technological innovation that require inventory and focus; the volume of financing for the mechanisms of the concept of technological sovereignty was previously estimated at 3 trillion rubles. When approving the draft budget for 2024–2026, the government named technological development as one of the priority areas.
A Kommersant source in the government considers restructuring the work of departments one of the most difficult stages of implementing the new policy. Departments, we recall, resisted changes in work as part of the reform of control and supervision, hoping to maintain greater autonomy. Not without resistance, a reform of state support in industry took place in 2018, where it was possible to abolish numerous industry subsidies, replacing them with a single criterion of annual export growth. The role of state-owned companies in technology development will also increase – existing innovative development programs, formally carried out and exceeded by state-owned companies due to their link to management KPIs, will be rebooted taking into account priorities.
Another track is the creation of a favorable environment for the accelerated development and implementation of innovations. If in the first case, when creating priorities, we are talking about the coordinating role of the state, then in the second – about the institutional one, that is, the state will provide the conditions under which business will be interested in creating innovations. The bill deals with the infrastructure of technological development – for the design, development and development of technologies, for their testing, for the protection and protection of rights to intellectual property, as well as pilot and small-scale production. The document also clarifies and consolidates the right to risk as an assumption of the possibility of failure to achieve the planned effects; the rules for assessing the effectiveness of funds will still be detailed.
The bill defines the rights and responsibilities in the field of technology policy of the president, federal, regional and municipal government agencies, institutions for innovative development, state corporations and state-owned companies, as well as the Russian Academy of Sciences. The document also introduces the concepts of high-tech products, technological development activities, key technical solutions, technological intermediaries, and so on. One of the major innovations is special legal regimes to support the current level of production of high-tech products, support accelerated technology development, and support long-term changes. The regime is not limited territorially, only in time, involves targeted exemptions from regulation and is assigned to the level of the president. Possible structures include features of the disposal of exclusive rights, accelerated certification of technologies, and special rules for disclosing information when exporting and importing technologies.
In the economic bloc, governments expect that the bill will be adopted no later than the spring session of the State Duma in 2024.
What institutional innovators say about the project
The draft law “On the technological policy of the Russian Federation” was developed with the involvement of the expert and scientific community, the market and interested departments. Rosatom believes that the adoption of the bill will significantly increase the efficiency of implementation of projects for the development and implementation of domestic technologies, including by defining priorities and concentrating state and business resources on their development. “Such priorities include those developed by the state corporation Rosatom, as a subject of technology policy, technologies and products in the field of nuclear energy, nuclear medicine, new promising materials and technologies,” they add. Vice President, Director of Development and Planning of the Skolkovo Foundation Sergei Izrailit points out that the tools contained in the new law will help systematize the roles and increase awareness of all participants in innovation activities – from startups to the state. “Optimization of internal processes will accelerate the formation of chains of transfer of end-to-end and critical technologies from science to industry. Thus, the new law will help pave the way for technology companies to enter the market and strengthen Russia’s technological sovereignty,” he adds. He also expects that Skolkovo’s experience in establishing interaction between manufacturers and customers of technologies and creating legal regimes will allow the fund to act as a technology broker.
[ad_2]
Source link