APPROVED FOR RELEASE: 2009/06/16: CIA-RDP01-00707R000200080002-5
submitted before funds are made available instead of the present system where funds are granted to universities and are often used by the universities as general subsidies. However, many professors in parliament have resisted any challenge to their control of research funds. Proposals for increasing the power of this minister have also met with opposition from the Ministry of Public Instruction and from the CNR. The president of CNR believes that strengthening of the Ministry of Science and Technology would place. bureaucratic barrier between CNR and CIPE, from which the CNR obtains support for its program and budget. In September 1971 the Minister of Science and Technology became chairman of the Interministerial Committee for Space Activities (CIAS), which is to control policy and make major decisions regarding the Italian space program.
The National Research Council, which is under the Council of Ministers, has primary responsibility for most types of scientific research, and its president is generally recognized as the spokesman for the government scientific establishment (including the universities) in all fields except nuclear research. The CNR supports its own facilities, consisting of about 50 institutes, centers, and laboratories, and promotes science through grants to groups or centers at university research institutes and independent research institutes. The CNR plans and finances major programs, most of them of an interdisciplinary nature. The CNR has 11 national advisory committees covering various fields of science, engineering, and the social sciences. The CNR president is generally chosen from among the university professors, who constitute the majority of the 140 members of the advisory committees and is appointed by the President of Italy. Although the CNR is responsible for coordinating national science policy, it has limited powers to implement its decisions. It does not have control over the important ministerial laboratories, the nuclear energy program, or the space program. The CNR Committee on Space has only advisory functions. The CNR is second after the Ministry of Public Instruction as a spender of government funds for research and development, accounting for about 21% of the total in 1970, but most of the CNR funds are consumed as grants to university research so that its own laboratories are short of funds. The CNR grants research fellowships in Italy or abroad, provides funds for conducting scientific meetings and conferences, and negotiates bilateral science cooperation agreements with other countries. The CNR is attempting to promote closer collaboration in research between different industrial companies through strengthening of its technological research programs. The CNR administers the National Center for Scientific and Technical Documentation in Rome.
Many of the government ministries play important role in the national research program by administering or supporting scientific research in facilities that are directly or indirectly under their control. Although the universities enjoy considerably autonomy, the Ministry of Public Instruction, which is the leading spender of government funds for research and development (32% of the total in 1970), exercises a considerable influence. The ministry provides funds for the construction of new laboratory facilities at the universities and for the purchase of apparatus and equipment for research. It also provides funds for the maintenance of research facilities at the approximately 2,100 research institutes, centers, and laboratories connected with the universities. More research is undertaken in the universities than elsewhere since the scientific institutes attached to them form the basic infrastructure of public research in Italy. The statutes and rules governing universities and university institutes are based on the premise that research is a complement to teaching. The present statutes determine the number of faculties and set the basic disciplines and the rules. Each institute is directed by the holder of a chair who deals with the administration and supervises the scientific work, but the institutes have no financial autonomy. Thus, the director of an institute has no authority to develop his research center. Generally he has a few research workers on his staff and even fewer technicians and junior staff. Of the total number of institutes, 875 are dependent on 93 scientific and technical faculties, 610 of 23 faculties of medicine and surgery, and 615 are under the 100 faculties of economics and human sciences. Several opinions have been expressed that the number of institutes is excessive and has resulted in duplication of effort. Sometimes there are more institutes than professors.
Substantial research programs are conducted by specific ministries. The Ministry of Health operates the Higher Institute of Health in Rome, which employs a staff of about 800 research personnel conducting research in biosciences as well as air and water pollution. The Ministry of Agriculture and Forests has increased its budget during recent years in order to modernize and expand its approximately 50 experiment stations. The Ministry of Defense has several laboratories subordinate to it, including the Center for Military Applications for Nuclear Energy, the Center for Aeromedical Research of the Air Force in Rome, as well as other research facilities. The
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APPROVED FOR RELEASE: 2009/06/16: CIA-RDP01-00707R000200080002-5
