In the meantime, the government approved an interim budget of NIS 600 for the council, which will allow it to conduct two surveys: one on the issue of national spending on R&D and the other on the issue of scientific and technological personnel. Dan Zaslavsky as the chairman of the council
Avi Blizovsky, The People editor, DailyMaily
Ralav Majadala, Minister of Science, Culture and Sports
On Sunday, the Ministerial Committee on Legislation approved the government bill to transfer the National Research and Development Council (NRDC) and its budget to the responsibility of the Ministry of Science, Culture and Sports. At the same time, an interim budget of NIS 600 was approved for the council, which will allow it in its renewed form to conduct two surveys: one on the issue of spending the National Institute for R&D and the second on the subject of scientific and technological personnel. Next year, it was said in the discussion, the council will demand an activity budget of 10 million shekels and an anchoring in the law of the budget armor, which will not be subject to the decisions of the ministry's CEOs.
In addition, there will be a change of positions at the head of the council: the government approved the appointment of Prof. Oded Abramsky from Hadassah Hospital, who will replace the founder of the council and who has been its head since 2004, Prof. Dan Zaslavsky from the Technion.
According to the Minister of Science, Culture and Sports, Ralav Majadala, the role of the National Council for Research and Development is to advise the government in formulating a policy for the utilization of the civilian scientific and technological pool of the State of Israel. Transferring the council to the responsibility of the ministry, the minister said, will allow this body to handle scientific issues in a systematic and long-term approach in order to provide an adequate answer to the needs of the state.
In a conversation with DailyMaily and the Al-Hidaman website, the outgoing chairman of the council, Prof. Zaslavsky, criticized the Central Bureau of Statistics for the way it calculates the national expenditure on R&D and for the fact that it includes in the calculation activities that have nothing in between with research and development and then makes announcements about Israel's supposed leadership in spending on civilian R&D. Prof. Zaslavsky also suggested restoring respect to professional schools and to retrain generations of engineers and technicians who will also enable production in Israel, "so that the fruits of the developments remain in Israel and are not sold to foreign companies." According to him, "the economic success of a country is not measured by the number of articles - which Israel is proud of, but by the number of technicians."
Prof. Zalasevski also welcomed the arrangement of the budget, because until now, according to him, the MOLMOP budget was passed through the Planning and Budgeting Committee of the Council for Higher Education, which was among the council's auditors, and in turn prevented it from receiving the budget and thus, according to him, actually blocked its activities.
