Chi Onwurah – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Chi Onwurah on 2014-04-07.

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what steps he is taking to promote the commercialisation of scientific and technical research undertaken by GCHQ.

Hugh Robertson

GCHQ works closely with business to release Intellectual Properties (IP) which are suitable for more general use in the outside world. For example through its information assurance arm, Communications-Electronics Security Group (CESG), it operates a number of schemes which enable individuals and companies to gain CESG endorsement of products and services via technical assessment.

GCHQ is additionally running a number of pilot cases looking at ways of improving its coordination with SMEs and larger industry partners including on Open Source publishing and licencing to SMEs and larger industry partners. GCHQ is also sponsoring research institutes in Cyber Security and running innovation calls aimed at SMEs. The latter initiative in partnership with organisations such as the Centre for Defence Enterprise and the technology Strategy Board.