Science and Innovations in Russia in 2019

The main topic related to science in the previous year was the National Project (NP) “Science” and federal projects implemented under its framework. Considering the speed of budget funds allocation, NP “Science” was one of the most dynamic one among projects of similar status. The National Project “Digital Economy” was on the other side of the spectrum, for which allocation of funds to performers has just started. An interlinking via identical monitoring indicators of NP “Science” and the Strategy for Scientific and Technological Development of the Russian Federation (SSTD) took place making the latter a “living” document. At yearend, a more clear distribution of topics/issues that the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) and the Ministry of Science and Higher Education are focused on, was put in place. The main thing for RAS was the organization of their own activities, that is, clarification of competences, procedure for election of new academy members, organization of expertise of state assignments for all recipient scientific and educational institutions. In addition, RAS was developing a program dedicated to basic scientific research. The Ministry, in turn, was focused on the implementation of federal projects in the pattern of NP "Science", where the major topic could be the establishment of the Research and Educational Centers (hereinafter - REC). Such a focusing is associated with the complexity of the initiative, the need to combine scientific and technological policies of the federal and regional scales. No “breakthroughs” took place in the field of innovation technologies as evidenced by the dynamics of the Russia's position in various rankings, results of the companies' survey as well as indicators of the high–tech companies outflow from the country. At the same time, the Government introduced more measures striving to improve the situation, having initiated new target (development of artificial intelligence) and infrastructural projects (technological valleys)