Michael Berger at Nanowerk has a look at the the new EU Communication Roadmap and wonders what is is for. I had a similar issue when we were involved with the Nanoforum project years ago, and pulled out when

1. No one involved in it could explain why they were doing it or explain
2. why the EU taxpayers were being billed to try to put other EU taxpayers who were trying to make a living from European nanotech information out of business) and
3. a project officer admitted it was pointless rubbish but refused to kill it and
4. I simply couldn’t stomach the idea of producing meaningless irrelevant drivel and having my name associated with it.

That aside, it does raise the issue of the barrage of documentation where roadmap after roadmap is produced with no reference to the preceding version and with no attempt to measure progress, something a number of people have been grumbling about. As Berger notes:

In case of the EC, if this roadmap fails (which would require to have someone check in a few years time how it has done) nobody will be blamed or even fired. A new group, or the same group, of bureaucrats will then spend a few million euros in taxpayer money to conduct surveys and workshops and seminars and just write a new one.

It’s not just an European Commission problem,  the UK has got so good at this that one speaker from a government department at a conference last week boasted that the UK is a world leader in talking about health and safety aspects of nanotechnologies.

Talking about risk and communication is obviously less hazardous than doing anything, but blowing the entire budget on paperwork is not a particularly brilliant long term plan!

ObservatoryNANO is an EU funded project designed to present reliable, complete and responsible science-based and economic expert analysis, across technology sectors and to give decision-makers in government, industry, and finance objective information for their decisions. I took a look following a press release titled “Shaping European Nanotechnology“  and naturally my eye was drawn towards the sector marked “economic data.”

Flicking through a few of the publications, I was surprised to find that the “complete and responsible science-based and economic expert analysis” consisted of statements like this

Scientists have invented a plastic solar cell that can turn the sun’s power into electrical energy, even on a cloudy day. The plastic material uses nanotechnology and contains the first solar cells able to harness the sun’s invisible, infrared rays. The breakthrough has led theorists to predict that plastic solar cells could one day become five times more efficient than current solar cell technology.

and this

The primary driving force behind flexible displays is to solve the need of humans to interface with electronics that are undergoing continuous miniaturization.
The secondary push for flexible displays is the desire to place computers in objects that they previously did not belong. This could be shirts, golf clubs, or watches.

So, if you want economic expert analysis of nanotechnologies, at least you now know where not to look.