3078 Technology, Education and National Innovation systems. Higher Education Institutions (HEIs), Public Research Organisations (PROs) are central actors in the national innovation system, and industry is a principal consumer of research output. Innovation, in this view, is a systemic output based on the synergy between robust identifiable consumer demand, a responsive industry, government, the military, educational institutions, and corporate research components. 63.1 Science Technology and Innovation This policy will cause to be created and maintained an ecosystem of world-class research, technology development and industry. The government will create incentives, provide funding support for research and innovation, recognise and reward outstanding contributions, create and fund challenges and bounties. It is the intent of this policy to mainstream the application of science, technology and innovation in all sectors and processes of the economy to ensure that Kenyans benefit from Science, Technology and Innovation (ST and I) investments. In the ICT domain the government specifically commits to: Biennial Research Priorities: Every two years the Ministry after industry wide consultation will set and review 5 research and investment priority areas. These 5 areas will be renewed and reviewed every 2 years. Government will fund capacity building in Higher Education 7th August, 2020 THE KENYA GAZETTE Institutions (HEIs), create and award scholarships in the priority areas, build research facilities in support of the priority areas in HEIs on a competitive basis, support and subsidize corporate research in the priority areas. National ICT Research Lab System: The government will establish a public research organisation called the National ICT Research Laboratory (NIRL) with the specific goal of developing publicly available technology for use by and in Kenya. This laboratory system, established at multiple locations around the republic, will provide computing support to all other PROs (KEMRI, KARI etc.), conduct research in matters of national interest in computational biology, genomics, defence, intelligence, energy, environmental security, high performance computing, physics and the life sciences and science and engineering modelling. The NIRL will maintain a close relationship with industry, academia and government, and provide special capacity building to HEIs on national research priority areas. Kenya National Innovation System Administration: The government will create a new Kenya National Innovation System Administration (KNISA), which will create, operate, maintain and evolve a digital platform to connect and mediate the interactions of ST and I, stakeholders. The administrations task will be to orchestrate the interactions between stakeholders dynamically and effectively respond to national needs. These stakeholders will include academia at all levels, public research organizations, corporate research departments, government, enterprise (corporate and individual), venture capital and equity funds, and civil society. National Research Medal: The government will recognise and reward outstanding contributions to Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics, Business Innovation and Software Development with a yearly medal. 6.3.2 The Council for the Future The Cabinet Secretary shall appoint an advisory group known as The Council for the Future. The Council shall consist of industry leaders, cutting edge entrepreneurs, academia and global thinkers as key participants dedicated to the generation and development of new thinking and strengthening of new ideas that can be brought to bear on challenges of globalisation in the 21st century and shape the role and future of the ICT landscape in Kenya in the next 50 years. The National Communications Secretariat will be provided with resources to enable it serve as the Secretariat to the Council. 63.3 Emerging Technologies The technology landscape is changing fast, and the rate of change will accelerate. We think it is impossible to prognosticate every change, and thus it is not possible to formulate clear plans for things unknown we can however develop a coherent and consistent approach to the emergence of new trends and technologies as they emerge. In the short-term technology trends in section 5.4.3, we give an overview of immediate trends. These trends point to likely changes in the following areas: Networks: Networks will get faster and faster, we expect wireless peta and terabit networks in the next 5 years. We expect everything to be network enabled and to be a data emitter. Ubiquity: We expect everybody and everything to be connected to the network everywhere in Kenya. We expect all our environments to have network connected sensors and continuous monitoring. Data Volumes: We expect an exponential increase in data volumes on the networks. Data Analysis at scale, and Knowledge engineering will progressively become the value differentiators in business. New Architectures: We can expect a disaggregation and a decolocation of functionality in every device and service. Maybe screens will not have to be in the same place as the computer, maybe all storage will be cloud based and local storage no longer necessary. Near Intelligence: With the rapid improvement in big data machine learning, in the very near term we can expect to see better than human performance of from networked machines on many tasks. Changing Ownership Models: Extreme sharing (compared to now) will become the norm, people will pay less for and own less of each device and have more connected devices in every part of their lives. Informatisation: All aspects of our lives will be digital or digitally mediated, from payments, asset use and rental, work, manufacturing, agricultural, health and mining will all be digitally controlled. We anticipate developments: several challenges to emerge from these Carrying Capacity: As network carrying capacity demands increase, we will constantly have to update our core network. Thankfully physics does not evolve, and we will not in the short term have to put new cables in the ground, just change the routing/switching devices. Interoperability. We need to develop national policies on data sharing and interoperability to ensure that all systems in Kenya can work synergistically to yield the operational and administrative benefits from a coherent national instrumentation. Balkanisation of Systems: Companies will try to lock their customers in my defining proprietary protocols and data formats to try increase the barriers to entry for the competition. These data silos are inimical to our national progress and are strongly discouraged. Data Superpowers: Current and future data sinks will become significant holders of identity, transactional and profile data of the Kenyan citizenry, and will have inordinate power over the analysis, partitioning, understanding, discrimination and fine grained manipulation of public perception. Policy subsidiary to this will create rules and guidelines for equitable sharing and access to profile data by all legitimate and licensed players with the need, and establish principles for the use, disclosure and storage of personally identifiable data. Out-dated Laws: As new models of interaction, concepts of operation and norms of conduct emerge our laws, regulations and statutes need to keep track with and fairly arbitrate the rights, obligations and expectations of our citizens. Our laws should not stand in the way of progress, nor should they use outmoded principles that have been superseded by globalised norms. Significant new principles will have to be established around ownership and use of sharing economy devices and data. Challenges to privacy: As instrumentation increases and the data held about individuals and machines become siloed, enhanced and derived, the data superpowers know more and more about individuals. It is now established as policy, in conformance to the Constitution, that citizens have an indefeasible right to privacy and to ownership of all data about them however and wherever held and to determine how and whether that data is used, distributed, analysed, enhanced or converted to other forms. It is further established as policy that citizens of Kenya may request and will promptly receive a copy of any and all data held on them, by any and all entities public or private, identified or not, and may so dispose, use and store that data as they see fit. The Government of Kenya will retain a copy of such data, and note the demand and establish rules and regulations for the use of such deactivated data. Skills Scarcity: The new technological landscape brings with it new opportunities and challenges, which we need the skills to manage,