Flat World Knowledge

We had the bestseller "The World is flat: A brief History of the Twenty-first century" from Nobel price winner Thomas L. Friedman. Now we have Flat World Knowledge: webpage where extremely high-quality open educational resources can be produced and disseminated in a way that is sustainable over a long term. It combines free access and publishing on demand, so you might have the best of both worlds.  

First books are already online for free, and there is a catalog and a publishing list. 

Economic efficiency of open content

JISC, a committee, funded by Higher Education bodies to support "to provide world-class leadership in the innovative use of of ICT to support education and research" has evaluated different publishing models, focusing, particularly, on the traditional subsrciption or toll access publishing, which involves reader charges and use restrictions, and an open access self-archiving where academic authors post their work in online repositories, making it free available to all Internet users. 

The outcome comes is that significant savings can be achieved, up to 172 million pound or 3 % from overall publishing activities. 

This is not a surprise and it is already significant. More saving is expected. We are at the beginning of a long way. Penetration of the ICT model makes the old model more and more redundant. 

I have no doubts than strategic decision-making for Kazakhstan on favor of open publishing will have a lot of benefits, even considering, that the outcomes of these decision might be appreciated only in 5 - 10 years. As usually, there is no opposition, but lack of knowledge between decision-makers. 

Competitiveness and VET

The Lisbon Strategy of the European Union aims to make the EU "the most dynamic and competitive knowledge-based economy in the world". It was set out by the European Council in March 2000. 

In 2005, Kazakhstan announced the objective to become one of 50 most competitive economies in the World. 

9 years after setting the Lisbon agenda and 4 years after the declaration of the Kazakh government the prelimary results are disappointing. Europa has lost competitiveness and is, nevertheless, fully involved in the current global financial and economic crisis. Kazakhstan has also lost on a wide range of factors, as a current issue of "Expert Kazakhstan" points out.  Accidentially or not, does this raises question whether official announced policies are able to do the job or whether they get used as covers for second agendas? I do not know. 

One success factor is clear: investment in the work force. Regarding VET, Kazakhstan is moving in the right direction. The sector was starving for ressources and attention since independence. We are now in the beginning of the modernization process. From this point of view, the results are no surprise. Unfortunately.