The government president, Pedro Sanchezannounced last Friday, in A Coruña, at the event Day of Women and Girls in Science: Awakening of STEAM Professions, the creation of a National Scientific Advisory Office, which will promote and coordinate the use of empirical evidence and scientific evidence to improve decision-making and public policy design. The initiative has already been published in the Official Gazette of the State (BOE).
“It will help build bridges between the government and regional or local governments and leverage the talent that exists in universities to improve the assessment of these public policies.” And “It will help our country “to move forward in what we have always wanted and never been able to achieve: a country by and for science,” declared the President. Sanchez was accompanied at the event in Muncyt Coruña by the Minister of Education, Vocational Training and Sports and the government spokesman. Pilar Alegria and the Minister for Science, Innovation and Universities, Diana Morant.
The role of science in the pandemic
With this office, Spain joins countries such as the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Japan and New Zealand, which in recent years have been equipped with scientific advisory units and mechanisms. Sánchez emphasized that “we in politics also need the advice of science to shed more light on the darkness.”
The CEO reminded us of this Covid-19 experience emphasizing that he is “eternally grateful to science because it saved the country, it saved many lives.” He also emphasized the importance of research in the face of climate change, concluding that “every country that prospers wants to rely on science.”