The Legislative Duma of Tomsk Oblast
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PAINS OF CHANGE
Development of territorial innovation clusters within the INOTomsk project was the subject of a session of the standing Duma Committee on Higher Education, Science and Innovations chaired by Tomsk Oblast Duma Speaker Oksana Kozlovskaya. The discussion was preceded by a substantial analysis of the performance of the existing cluster Pharmaceuticals, Medical Equipment and IT.
“We need to do a comprehensive assessment of the efficiency of governmental support for the cluster,” described the goal of the Committee Oksana Kozlovskaya.
“It won in the federal competition and is included in the federal lists. The cluster is already functioning. In 2015, 30 million rubles was allocated to this cluster. The same amount is budgeted for 2016. It is important to understand to what extent the effective federal and regional legislation reflect our goals.
The report on the performance of the cluster Pharmaceuticals, Medical Equipment and IT was presented by Chairman of Tomsk Oblast Committee for Innovations Aleksey Pushkarenko.
Today, the cluster is made up of 340 companies, including 7 ‘anchors’ (large companies), 311 small and medium firms, 6 universities and 14 research institutes. There is a portfolio of 36 cluster projects which will be funded from the federal and regional budgets.
“Our major accomplishments are the so called ‘end-to-end’ projects such as the Digital Education Center in Medicine and Pharmaceuticals, and the project Code Arctica to set up integrated information and communication systems in the Russian polar zone, with the participation of Micran, EleSy, and Elecard.
I would also like to highlight the project to set up series production and successful marketing of an advanced dental device made of composite materials, and a unique training center in the Siberian State Medical University,” said Aleksey Pushkarenko in his report.
“You have said that the ultimate goal of the government in supporting this cluster should be such ‘end-to-end’ projects which result in the creation of a new product, technology or type of service. Duma deputy Aleksey Fedorov earlier requested to develop a list of successful projects where the government made a contribution and of which it can be proud. Why your projects are not on that list? It should be developed shortly and published online and kept updated. Developers must be shown, too,” noted Oksana Kozlovskaya.
Olga Kobyakova, Rector of the Siberian State Medical University presented a project to set up a Medical Education cluster. She says, the project is approved by the science council of the Russian Health Ministry.
Oksana Kozlovskaya summarized the meeting:
- We participate in two representative federal groups where we can present our positions. One is the working group led by the State Duma Speaker Sergey Naryshkin. This group is currently working on a new law on science and R & D policy. The other is a work group led by Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich which is executing the INOTomsk project concept. I would like to ask the members of the Committee to formulate your proposals based on the results of today’s meeting. And let me also remind you that Tomsk Oblast has a robust performance evaluation system in place for innovative companies, which for some reason has not been used for the last three years. We are losing a lot of opportunity here. We are investing budget money and we have little visibility what comes out of it.
The Committee supported proposals to keep the same levels of governmental support for the cluster Pharmaceuticals, Medical Equipment and IT in 2016 and to resume the evaluation of the efficiency of the government support measures for the priority initiatives implemented by the cluster.
