Tasks and Goals
The tasks and activities of TAB include the design and implementation of TA projects. Additionally,TAB monitors and analyses important trends in science and technology and related societal aspects (Monitoring).
Parliamentary TA also includes - under the responsibility of the Fraunhofer-Institute for Systems and Innovation Research (ISI) - technology foresight (Future reports), analysis of international policies (Policy benchmarking reports) and research into the innovation of new technologies (Innovation reports).
The objectives of technology assessment, as TAB sees it, are the following:
- to analyse the potentials of new scientific and technological developments and explore the associated opportunities,
- to examine the framework conditions for implementing scientific and technological developments,
- to analyse their potential impacts in a comprehensive forecast, pinpoint the opportunities of a certain technology and indicate the possibilities for avoiding or reducing any associated risks,
- to provide policy makers alternative options in the policy-making process.
TAB's aim is to supply the German parliament with information, providing a scientific basis for the policy-making process.
Up to now TAB has conducted research on more than 100 topics and published all its findings (Overview on publications).