At the 4th ESAF meeting it was decided that the 5th ESAF meeting will take place in Dublin. We are delighted that Mark Ferguson, Chief Scientific Advisor to the Irish Government, has offered to host the meeting. The meeting will take place on 26 (evening) and 27 June 2019 (meeting until 17.00) at a venue in the centre of Dublin.

The meeting took place in Tallinn on Amsterdam on 27 June 2018. It was hosted by Tarmo Soomere, president of the Estonian Academy of Sciences. Representatives from 12 member countries of ESAF took part, discussing topics at the interface between science, policy, society and politics. The meeting was attended by Keith Sequira, senior advisor and member of the Cabinet of Commissioner Moedas, Janusz Bujnicki,  member of the SAM Group of Chief Scientific Advisors to the European Commission and Johannes Klumpers and Iphigenia Pottaki, both from the SAM–unit.

Maarja Kruusma, professor of biorobotics and member of the Estonian Academy of Sciences, gave a presentation titled ‘IT technology and society in Estonia: the lessons learned and et to come?’. She explained that Estonia has had the relative advantage of starting from scratch when designing innovative digital services for Estonian civilians, as opposed to digitizing existing ‘analog’ services and legacy systems. The presentation was followed by a lively discussion on topics such as trust and the digital divide.

Johannes Klumpers, Head of SAM Unit, gave an introduction of the new topic of SAM: ‘Making sense of science under conditions of complexity and uncertainty’. Contributions of ESAF in the form of an collection of best practices are welcome.

This collection of best practices will also be used for a reflective practice-session at ESAF-5. Members were invited to send in cases.

Group photo in Tallinn, June 2018