Required capacity development for measuring and promoting the transformation of the NSSTI

Abstract

Recent experiences regarding institutional linkage related to Observatories of Science, Technology, and Innovation, at the national and international level, allow us to consider that having quality public statistics on STI is critical for providing information of interest to the different actors in the NSSTI. However, this requires that every institution dedicated to the monitoring and observance of STI activity strengthen capacities for measurement, which allow not only to energize the workforce but to contextualize methodologies that eventually seem decontextualized from the essential interest of the NSSTI. Given this reality, this paper aims to answer the following question: What capacities should be developed to measure and promote the transformation of the NSSTI, and from what logic of relationship?To answer this question, the paper provides a critical look at the conception inherited from modernity on the development of STI and the dominant methodologies for its measurement, which are assumed to be the main tools to achieve it.Therefore, the conceptualization of a proposal for the development of measurement capacities emerged, which contextualizes methodological references associated with the measurement process used in Latin America, and incorporates metrics that, organized in attributes and dimensions, give an integral view of the activity of an observatory of STI, to measure not only the traditional products associated with the capacities and activities of the NSSTI, but also those related to the transformation of the subject-object logic of the NSSTI.