Federal Report on Research and Innovation 2022 approved by Cabinet
28th June 2022 — In accordance with a German Bundestag resolution, every two years, the Federal Report on Research and Innovation (BuFI) provides comprehensive information on the research and innovation policies of the Federal Government and the Länder. It gives an overview of the various elements which constitute the German research and innovation system (R&I) and underpins them with facts and figures. In this context, the BuFI also comments on the key statements in the respective current report of the Expert Commission on Research and Innovation (EFI).
DLR Projektträger expands BuFI into an information platform
Since 2016, a team from the Innovation Strategies and Transfer department at DLR Projektträger has been running the BuFI office in cross-departmental cooperation and in a consortium with Prognos AG. This team manages the editorial processes and graphic design, prepares draft texts and coordinates the coordination processes within the Federal Government. In addition, the team has driven forward the digitalisation of the report.
The BuFI website is continuously being expanded into a user-centred, interactive and networked information platform of research and innovation policy in Germany. The most important elements, which were technically designed and implemented by DLR Projektträger, include a map-based database of German science institutions, a portal on the R&D policies of the German Länder, interactive graphics and diagrams, and a web directory of further information.
Research policy contributes to the containment of Covid-19
The content of the current issue of the report focuses on the contribution of German research and innovation policy to the containment of the Covid-19 pandemic. This policy contributed to the development of vaccines and detection methods in Germany in a very short time. Federal Research Minister Bettina Stark-Watzinger points out that many already complex tasks were given a new dimension by both the Corona pandemic and the Russian attack on Ukraine. Therefore, the Federal Government's leitmotif is: "Dare more progress. We want to enable more technological and social innovations, bring ideas from research into practice more quickly and in this way meet the challenges of our time with new courage."
The BuFI 2022 also provides an outlook on upcoming challenges for research and innovation policy. Against the backdrop of the war of aggression on Ukraine and geopolitical and security changes, these include securing technological and digital sovereignty as well as increased research activities and investments in the area of rapidly developing key technologies.
According to preliminary calculations, the government, business and universities together invested a total of 105.9 billion euros in research and development (R&D) in 2020. The preliminary R&D ratio for 2020 is 3.14 percent.