{"id":7005,"date":"2013-07-11T06:49:42","date_gmt":"2013-07-11T06:49:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/praag.org\/?p=7005"},"modified":"2013-07-11T06:49:42","modified_gmt":"2013-07-11T06:49:42","slug":"sa-science-website-outdated-since-2008-despite-r16-million-grant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/praag.org\/?p=7005","title":{"rendered":"SA science website outdated since 2008 despite R16 million grant"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"saasta\"<\/a>Despite a R16-million grant, most information on the SA Agency for Science and Technology Advancement’s website has not been updated in years.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n

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A member of the public visiting the South African Agency for Science and Technology Advancement’s (Saasta’s) website for information about science in the country will find information that is outdated, and in some cases dating back to 2008. This is despite the fact that last year the agency received a parliamentary grant of more than R16-million. Only two links are up to date.<\/p>\n

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Saasta \u2013 a business unit of the National Research Foundation\u00a0\u2013\u00a0is mandated with science and technology communication\u00a0but despite a parliamentary grant, that since 2009 has averaged R15-million annually, it does not appear to have the resources to update its website. The site is\u00a0an important avenue for people interested in science in South Africa.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Science communication has been highlighted as a way to increase interest among school learners in science, technology and engineering, and to encourage them to pursue these subjects in secondary and tertiary education.<\/p>\n

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Since the 2010\/11 financial year, nearly R50\u00a0000 has been spent on upgrading and adding new information to the site, with the most recent being information about National Science Week 2013, which went up last week. However, the main page calls for entries in competitions, whose closing dates were in 2011. Also, according to the “Events” pages, the only events that Saasta has organised since 2009 were a staff meeting and a “Science Unlimited KwaZulu-Natal” event in 2010.<\/p>\n

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Head of corporate communications at Saasta\u00a0Ina Roos\u00a0told the Mail & Guardian<\/em> that she was in charge of updating content, and pointed to the call for National Science Week proposals. “We don’t have a specific budget for the website,” she said, adding that the information and communications technology\u00a0co-ordinator resigned last year and that a new person had just been appointed.<\/p>\n

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Beverley Damonse, group executive for corporate relations and science engagement at the National Research Foundation (NRF) and formerly executive director of Saasta, acknowledged “there is room for improvement”.\u00a0However, she said: “The largest percentage of [Saasta] funding is contract [funding] \u2026 Contract funds are directed to specific projects” rather than core activities.<\/p>\n

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“Science communication is still a developing area \u2026 There are pockets of excellence driving science communications, but [Saasta] is not fully resourced in terms of a science communication entity,” Damonse said, adding that the focus has been on “educators and learners because of the science support needed in the system”.<\/p>\n

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Numerous attempts to contact Saasta managing director Dr Jabu Nukeri were unsuccessful. – M&G<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Despite a R16-million grant, most information on the SA Agency for Science and Technology Advancement’s website has not been updated in years. A member of the public visiting the South African Agency for Science and Technology Advancement’s (Saasta’s) website for information about science in the country will find information that is outdated, and in some … Continue reading “SA science website outdated since 2008 despite R16 million grant”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7006,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,3,4,86],"tags":[3868,3867,12255,12250,2384],"class_list":["post-7005","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business-and-finance","category-news","category-south-africa","category-technology","tag-nrf","tag-saasta","tag-science","tag-south-africa","tag-technology-2"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/praag.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/saasta.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7005","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7005"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7005\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7008,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7005\/revisions\/7008"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7006"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7005"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7005"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7005"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}