Session
NRIs Collaborative Session: Future of jobs/work in the digital age
Theme: Inclusion
Policy Questions:
- What are the contemporary challenges for work in the digital age?
- How do environmental issues, such as natural disasters or pandemics, affect the job market?
- Do employers and employees have conditions and skills to adjust to these?
- What are the existing good practices? Learning from experiences of the IGFs in Cameroon, Colombia, Haiti, Italy, Nigeria, Panama, and South Sudan?
Relevance to Theme and Internet Governance:
New technologies are changing our working environments. Some jobs are threatened by redundancy, while others face rapid growth. These challenges come with a number of policy implications. They call for preparing workers for using new tools and even evolving toward new jobs, to improve social protection to ensure inclusion and addressing risks of security, transparency, and privacy, among others, that utilisation of digital technologies often comes with.
Description:
This session will focus on understanding what are the priorities and good practices on local levels. It will specifically look at the examples coming from the national IGFs of Cameroon, Colombia, Haiti, Italy, Nigeria, Panama, and South Sudan. For example:
[Panama IGF input] Panama has developed teleworking without regulation for years. Recently, the National Assembly approved a Law that regulates telework[1], later sanctioned by the President of the Republic. The law is currently in the regulatory phase, however, it has had to start its rapid implementation due to the coronavirus pandemic.
This situation shows us several things: our country is not at the forefront and is quite conservative in its labour policies, it does not take into account that we live in a globalized world and that we live in the digital age. If we do not improve our inclusion or adaptation, this will have immediate consequences for our workforce and economy.
[Italy IGF input] In Italy, during the COVID-19 pandemic, a very significant experience was developed concerning the creation of components for lung respirators and modification of existing breathing equipment through 3D printers. This has been done by sharing the instructions necessary for their reproduction through the "Open Source" logic. This emergency experience shows how a new production method is taking root. It would be interesting to understand how this can generate a universal production model that starts precisely from the logic of the network, its potential and innovation, and what the demand for new skills and future works will be.
To meet the demand and offer of jobs among young people and businesses new initiatives have been developed in Italy including the activation of digital platforms that share the demand for new skills and the related training. As an example, the innovative "Tipo" platform funded by the Tim and Infocamere Foundation was presented during IGF Italia 2019. Tipo platform fosters the activation of young communities, addresses them towards training and job opportunities, promotes dialogue between young people and the businesses (they use Tinder app).
Format of the Session:
60-minutes interactive roundtable discussion with introductory remarks and open floor for questions and answers.
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18:40-18:45 UTC |
Moderators introduce the topic, organizers and speakers
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18:45-19:15 UTC |
What are the contemporary challenges for work in the digital age? How do environmental issues, such as natural disasters or pandemics, affect the job market? Cases of South Sudan IGF and Panama IGF
Do employers and employees have conditions and skills to adjust to these new circumstances caused by emergencies? What are the existing good practices? Learning from experiences of Colombian IGF, Italian IGF and Cameroon IGF
Vulnerable groups: who are those and how to ensure not leaving them behind? Looking at examples from Nigeria IGF and Haiti IGF
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19:15-19:30 UTC |
Open discussion with participants. |
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19:30-19:40 UTC |
Future of work and our jobs at the national levels. Action-oriented concluding commitments from the involved NRIs:
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19:40 UTC |
Conclusion by the moderator and final key discussed concepts presented by a rapporteur |
Expected Outcomes:
Understanding specific challenges and examples of good practices on local levels.
Discussion Facilitation:
The moderator will follow the agreed set of policies and will allow for introductory, case study remarks by the NRIs speakers. This will be followed by engaging other present participants in developing an interactive discussion.
Online participation:
A dedicated online moderator will be placed next to the onsite moderator. All participants will be using the online speaking queue to be treated equally in their requests for interventions. All input presentations will be made available at the IGF website and links will be shared via the online tool.
Co-Organizers and delegate speakers:
- Cameroon IGF
- Colombia IGF
- Haiti IGF
- Italy IGF
- Nigeria IGF
- Panama IGF
- South Sudan IGF
Rapporteur:
Federica Tortorella, Dominican Republic IGF
Onsite and online moderator. Mr. Osvaldo Larancuent, Dominican Republic IGF
Connection to SDGs:
Report
- What are the contemporary challenges for work in the digital age?
- How do environmental issues, such as natural disasters or pandemics, affect the job market?
- Do employers and employees have conditions and skills to adjust to these?
- What are the existing good practices? Learning from experiences of the IGFs in Cameroon, Colombia, Haiti, Italy, Nigeria, Panama, and South Sudan?
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This session offered a diversified view of the main topic, since the speakers were from different countries and sectors. Despite the linguistic, social and cultural differences between all of them, there had been consensus regarding how challenging is the future of job, considering the gaps related to digital skills, connectivity, infrastructure, etc, but mainly for the uncertainty people are actually experiencing. During the session, the speakers mostly explained their local or national situations, adding some good practices implemented or needs faced because of the pandemic. Italy IGF gave two strong examples of good practices, one of them was the use of Open Source with 3d printers to build respirators during pandemic. in any case, they regret more than the 40% of young people between 16 and 17 in Europe has no basic digital skills.
The session ended with some voluntary committments, like Haiti IGF that strongly believes in the participation of women in discussions, and Panama IGF that encourages a gender focused regulation for telecommuting and teleworking. Also, Colombia IGF gave an interesting example of a law they are discussing to regulate the right of employees to have their own private sphere protected.
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- Haiti IGF: Mr. Sindy Obed
- Nigeria IGF: Ms. Onwuamaegbu-Ugwu Edufun
- Italy IGF: Mr. Mattia Fantinati, Member of the Italian Parliament
- Cameroon IGF: Mr. Eric Stephane SIDEU
- Colombia IGF: Dr. Julio Cesar Gaitan Bohorquez
- Panama IGF: Mr. Abdias Zambrano
- South Sudan IGF: Mr. Kennedy Bullen
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