Science Year 2018 (DE0014)

Description: Science Years are intended to strengthen the public’s interest in science and research and to involve society in academic developments. The aim is to highlight the role of science and research in shaping our future. The Science Year 2018 will focus on the future of work. During that year, many activities will be organized for the interested public: large national hands-on campaigns, exhibitions, competitions, discussions and innovative online formats. This will give citizens and civilsociety organizations manifold opportunities to learn, participate and discuss with researchers, policy-makers and representatives from business and industry. Aim: The Science Year 2018 will highlight how science and research contribute to shaping the way we work by illustrating and encouraging discussion about the variety of opportunities and challenges in the future of work. The activities are intended to increase citizens’ appreciation of the role of research and of scientific jobs and encourage them to share their work experiences. Status quo: Science Years have been carried out and refined since 2000. Activities have become more diverse, including presentations, more participatory activities, discussions, interactive exhibitions, competitions, hands-on campaigns and citizen science projects. The current Science Year 2016*17 – Seas and Oceans will run until autumn 2017. Ambition: The Science Years strengthen dialogue between the research community and society also beyond the individual topic. In particular the funding projects contribute to developing and implementing new forms of dialogue and events. New or ongoing: ongoing Implemented by: Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and Science in Dialogue (WiD) – an initiative of research organizations in Germany Organizations involved in implementation: Partners from research, society, politics and industry; federal ministries Organizational unit and contact: Division 113, Christian Herbst, christian.herbst@bmbf.bund.de Open government values addressed: Participation, transparency Relevance: The Science Years are an opportunity for participation and make science and research accessible for individual citizens and organized civil society.

14. Science Year 2018—Working Life of the Future

Language of the commitment as it appears in the action plan:

“Science Years are intended to strengthen the public’s interest in science and research and to involve society in academic developments. The aim is to highlight the role of science and research in shaping our future. The Science Year 2018 will focus on the future of work. During that year, many activities will be organized for the interested public: large national hands-on campaigns, exhibitions, competitions, discussions and innovative online formats. This will give citizens and civil-society organizations manifold opportunities to learn, participate and discuss with researchers, policy-makers and representatives from business and industry.

“Aim: The Science Year 2018 will highlight how science and research contribute to shaping the way we work by illustrating and encouraging discussion about the variety of opportunities and challenges in the future of work. The activities are intended to increase citizens’ appreciation of the role of research and of scientific jobs and encourage them to share their work experiences.”

Milestones:

14.1 Publishing the call for proposals for funded projects in the Science Year

14.2 Public opening of the Science Year

14.3 Tour of the exhibition ship “MS Wissenschaft” (on behalf of the BMBF)

Start Date: July 2017

End Date: December 2018

Context and Objectives

The governmental initiative Science Years intends to “strengthen the public’s interest in science and research and to involve society in academic developments, with the aim to highlight the role of science and research in shaping our future.” Related activities include presentations and participatory activities, such as discussions, interactive exhibitions, competitions, hands-on campaigns, and citizen science projects. A related funding stream seeks to “contribute to developing and implementing new forms of dialogue and events.” Milestone 14.1 will open the call for proposals under this funding mechanism. Milestone 14.2 refers to the public opening of the Science Year, and Milestone 14.3 covers the tour of a ship that hosts a science exhibition.

This commitment could be valuable for encouraging political deliberation and broader societal discourse around how research and technology can respond to central policy challenges of our time. The call for science proposals makes the commitment relevant to civic participation.

The proposed milestones are verifiable. However, they lack the specificity to assess how they relate to and advance engagement with the public. Some of the projects that receive funding might well contribute to these objectives, yet there are no specific actions or measures that ensure that this is the case. Because of the lack of specificity, it is difficult to determine what potential impact this commitment could have on improving the ability of the public to participate in science beyond the project proposals.

Next steps

The IRM researcher recommends that this commitment not be taken forward to the next action plan. However, the government could consider more outreach to citizens regarding the science projects and could present or exhibit the funded projects at schools and in communities.

14. Science Year 2018—Working Life of the Future

Language of the commitment as it appears in the action plan:

“Science Years are intended to strengthen the public’s interest in science and research and to involve society in academic developments. The aim is to highlight the role of science and research in shaping our future. The Science Year 2018 will focus on the future of work. During that year, many activities will be organized for the interested public: large national hands-on campaigns, exhibitions, competitions, discussions and innovative online formats. This will give citizens and civil-society organizations manifold opportunities to learn, participate and discuss with researchers, policy-makers and representatives from business and industry.

“Aim: The Science Year 2018 will highlight how science and research contribute to shaping the way we work by illustrating and encouraging discussion about the variety of opportunities and challenges in the future of work. The activities are intended to increase citizens’ appreciation of the role of research and of scientific jobs and encourage them to share their work experiences.”

Milestones:

14.1 Publishing the call for proposals for funded projects in the Science Year

14.2 Public opening of the Science Year

14.3 Tour of the exhibition ship “MS Wissenschaft” (on behalf of the BMBF)

Start Date: July 2017

End Date: December 2018

The commitment aimed to raise public awareness and engagement with science as part of the government’s “Science Years” project. The three milestones covered a funding call for projects to support science-society dialogue, the opening of the Science Year initiative for 2018, and a touring science exhibition. A call for proposals was published in July 2017 (milestone 14.1), [96] a public opening took place in February 2018 (milestone 14.2), [97] and an exhibition ship toured Germany from May to October 2018 (milestone 14.3). [98]

While the potential impact of this initiative was difficult to assess in the IRM Design Report, its implementation has led to a marginal change in public engagement with science for the following reasons:

• The Science Year 2018 focused on the “Future of Work”, a widely debated policy issue with high public demands for proactive government action to help avoid the negative consequences from artificial intelligence (AI), recruitment algorithms, and workplace surveillance.
• The initiative sought to strengthen trust in science and evidence-based policy making at a time when fake news, propaganda, and populists’ push to manipulate facts seem to be on the rise.
• There was substantive engagement with and visibility for the project. For example, there were more than 400 partner organizations from academia, civil society, and business, 63,000 visitors to the exhibition boat, [99] and more than 20,000 unique monthly website visitors. [100]
• The diversity and creativity of some of the funded projects attest to a particular openness to embrace alternative and bottom-up engagement formats, often catering to a young audience [101] (e.g. a sing-along contest to energize teamwork and a roving “Turing” bus).

[96] https://www.bmbf.de/foerderungen/bekanntmachung-1389.html.

[97] https://www.bmbf.de/de/arbeit-wandelt-sich---geht-aber-nicht-aus-5652.html

[98] https://www.wissenschaftsjahr.de/2018/fileadmin/WJ18_Zukunftsjahr/Aktuelle-Meldungen/03_Maerz_2018/MSW18_Tourplan_180308.pdf

[99] Federal Chancellery, First National Action Plan 2017–2019, Final Report by the German Federal Government, p 43, https://www.opengovpartnership.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Germany_End-Term_Self-Assessment_2017-2019_EN.pdf

[100] Email questionnaire, government representative.

[101] Examples of funded projects, https://www.wissenschaftsjahr.de/2018/das-wissenschaftsjahr/foerderprojekte/