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 the data of TA-related publications and projects as well as basics on TA institutions and experts around Europe.
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 this practice institutionalised in different ways and some of them collaborate in the PACITA project to further develop concepts and methods and thus improve their role as an intermediate between science, society and policy making. Sharing their successful experiences is beneficial to countries with or without established TA.
The TA Portal is the newest tool to support this task. 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 in the matter, 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.
The Portal contains information provided by the partners in the PACITA project, but it will not be restricted methodologically nor geographically. On the contrary, following PACITA’s path, it aims to recruit more institutions and become the central gate to the world of TA.
Explore the TA Portal here: http://technology-assessment.info
