Launch of TA portal [23.10.2012]
The PACITA project with ITAS as one of its partners, is establishing an innovative web platform providing comprehensive access to resources in technology assessment (TA): On 22 October 2012, in a meeting of the Council of the European Parliamentary Technology Assessment (EPTA) network, the Technology Assessment Portal was launched officially. The core of the Portal is a searchable database containing records of TA-related publications and projects as well as basics on TA institutions and European TA experts.
Technology Assessment (TA) is an analytic and democratic practice which aims at broadening the knowledge base of policy decisions by the analysis of the socio-economic preconditions as well as the possible social, economic and environmental impacts in the implementation of new technologies. Many European countries have institutionalised TA in different ways and some of them collaborate in the PACITA project to further develop concepts and methods aiming to strengthen their role as an intermediary between science, society and policy making. To share and interchange experiences of what works is beneficial to countries with established TA institutions and those without.
The TA Portal is a tool to support these tasks. Today, it gives access to core information about TA institutes, their experts, their publications and their projects. In the final stage, it will give access to all the available – and up to now scattered – resources, including a TA related events calendar, a virtual library and an open access full text server. Furthermore, it will include a TA forum to connect experts among them, but also with those interested in TA.
At present the Portal contains information provided by the partners of the PACITA project. Following PACITA’s ambition, the project will aim to recruit more institutions to eventually become a central gate to the world of TA.