Digital labour markets: the hard questions

They have potentially positive and negative effects; it's important to debunk some of the hype and rhetoric, writes Cristiano Codagnone. In 1770 Wolfgang von Kempelen presented a sort of robot called the Turk (hidden inside there was, in reality, a person operating it) that could beat humans at playing chess. The robot toured Europe, eliciting contrasting reactions about the future ..

Strategic Intelligence Monitor on Personal Health Systems (SIMPHS): Structure of Available Data and New Measurement Framework with Selected Indicators

This policy brief provides findings from empirical research on market and innovation dynamics regarding Personal Health Systems (PHS) in Europe. Even the already most consolidated of all PHS segments (i.e. RMT) is found to be radically different than the initial assumptions. The research has revealed that the market is in a state far from being mature and as a result there is little standardised data available. RMT contributes only a tiny fraction of the eHealth market revenues. Pilots are still dominating the form of implemented cases. The market is fragmented also in terms of players without distinct segments. This policy brief recognise a huge potential in a modified approach towards evaluation and measurement of eHealth.JRC.DDG.J.4 - Information Societ

ICT for the Social and Economic Integration of Migrants into Europe

This is the final report on a study carried out by IPTS on 'The potential of ICT for the promotion of cultural diversity in the EU: the case of economic and social participation and integration of immigrants and ethnic minorities'. The study explores ICT supply and demand aspects for and by immigrants and ethnic minorities in Europe and the related policy implications in their integration context This report selectively analyses the main findings from 5 previous publications from the study: an overview of digital support initiatives for/by IEM in the EU27 (Kluzer, Haché, and Codagnone 2008); a more detailed analysis of ICT supply and demand in IEM communities in France, Germany, Spain and the UK (Codagnone et al, eds. 2009) and three reports on case studies in France, Germany and Spain. It puts these findings into theoretical perspective, indicates the policy implications and makes recommendations.JRC.DDG.J.4-Information Societ

LA IMPORTACIA DE LA TECNOESTRUCTURA Y EL STAFF DE APOYO EN LA ORGANIZACIÓN DE LAS INSTITUCIONES DE EDUCACIÓN SUPERIOR

La teoría Organizacional ha evolucionado en su esfuerzo por profundizar la relación entre las organizaciones y su ambiente. En particular en las instituciones de educación superior esta evolución ha llegado al grado de ser uno de los factores que hacen a la calidad de la misma. Según un trabajo realizado por Henry Mintzberg a una organización se la puede dividir en las siguientes partes constitutivas: Ápice Estratégico Línea Intermedia Tecno EstructuraStaff de Apoyo Núcleo de Operaciones En el caso de la organización universitaria existen dos de estas sub estructuras como son el Staff de Apoyo y la Tecno Estructura, que por diferentes razones no acompañan totalmente a la evolución de los nuevos paradigmas en las instituciones de Educación Superior. Estos cambios fueron mejor acompañados por el resto de las subestructuras como son el Ápice Estratégico, la Línea Media y el Núcleo de las operaciones. Se trata de analizar las razones que producen esta falta de adecuación en ellas, así como los efectos que esto ocasiona sobre el funcionamiento de la organización universitaria

The Future of Work in the ‘Sharing Economy’. Market Efficiency and Equitable Opportunities or Unfair Precarisation?

This critical and scoping review essay analyses digital labour markets where labour-intensive services are traded by matching requesters (employers and/or consumers) and providers (workers). It focuses on digital labour markets which allow the remote delivery of electronically transmittable services (i.e. Amazon Mechanical Turk, Upwork, Freelancers, etc.) and those where the matching and administration processes are digital but the delivery of the services is physical and requires direct interaction. The former broad type is called Online Labour Markets (OLMs) and is potentially global. The latter broad type is termed Mobile Labour Markets (MLMs) and is by definition localised. The essay defines and conceptualises these markets proposing a typology which proves to be empirically valid and heuristically useful. It describes their functioning and the socio-demographic profiles of the participants, reviews their economic and social effects, discusses the possible policy implications, and concludes with a research agenda to support European level policy making. It alternates the discussion of ‘hard’ findings from experimental and quasi-experimental studies with analysis of ‘softer’ issues such as rhetorical discourses and media ‘hyped’ accounts. This triangulation is inspired by, and a tribute to, the enduring legacy of the work of Albert O. Hirschman and his view that ideas and rhetoric can become endogenous engines of social change, reforms, and policies. This essay tries to disentangle the rhetoric with available empirical evidence in order to enable a more rational debate at least in the discussion of policies, if not in the public arena. To do so, an in depth analysis of 39 platforms was undertaken together with a formal review of 70 scientific sources. These two main sources have been integrated with: a) an exploration of 100 media accounts (business press, newspapers, magazines, and blogs); b) 50 reports and surveys produced by ‘interested parties’ (industrial associations, platforms own reports and public relation materials, think tanks with a clear political orientation, NGOs, trade unions, etc.); and c) about 200 indirectly relevant scientific contributions and policy reports (used as sources to contextualise and integrate the above sources, and to derive theoretical and interpretative insights). While the evidence is limited and inconclusive with respect to various dimensions, the findings of this essay show, among other things, that: a) individuals engage in these activities primarily for money, for a large segment of them this work is their primary source of income, and most are under-employed and self-employed and fewer are unemployed and inactive; b) matching frictions and hiring inefficiencies are widespread and even the OLMs are far from being globalised online meritocracies; c) a behavioural approach to big data exploration should be further applied because there is emerging evidence of heuristic and biases contributing to hiring inefficiencies.JRC.J.3 - Information Societ

Nudging lifestyles for better health outcomes: crowdsourced data and persuasive technologies for behavioural change

For at least three decades, a Tsunami of preventable poor health has continued to threaten the future prosperity of our nations. Despite its effective destructive power, our collective predictive and preventive capacity remains remarkably under-developed This Tsunami is almost entirely mediated through the passive and unintended consequences of modernisation. The malignant spread of obesity in genetically stable populations dictates that gene disposition is not a significant contributor as populations, crowds or cohorts are all incapable of experiencing a new shipment of genes in only 2-3 decades. The authors elaborate on why a supply-side approach: advancing health care delivery cannot be expected to impact health outcomes effectively. Better care sets the stage for more care yet remains largely impotent in returning individuals to disease-free states. The authors urge an expedited paradigmatic shift in policy selection criterion towards using data intensive crowd-based evidence integrating insights from system thinking, networks and nudging. Collectively these will support emerging potentialities of ICT used in proactive policy modelling. Against this background the authors proposes a solution that stated in a most compact form consists of: the provision of mundane yet high yield data through light instrumentation of crowds enabling participative sensing, real time living epidemiology separating the per unit co-occurrences which are health promoting from those which are not, nudging through persuasive technologies, serious gaming to sustain individual health behaviour change and intuitive visualisation with reliable simulation to evaluate and direct public health investments and policies in evidence-based waysJRC.DDG.J.4-Information Societ

Overview of Digital Support Initiatives for/by Immigrants and Ethnic Minorities in the EU 27

This report provides an overview of 120 digital support initiatives for/by immigrants and ethnic minorities identified in the EU27 and is one of the outcomes of the study �The potential of ICT for the promotion of cultural diversity in the EU: the case of economic and social participation and integration of immigrants and ethnic minorities� carried out by the JRC-IPTS (DG Joint Research Centre � Institute for Prospective Technological Studies) on request of DG Information Society and Media, Unit H3 (eInclusion) of the European Commission.JRC.J.4 - Information Societ

The Passions and the Interests: Unpacking the ‘Sharing Economy’

Digital platforms generally placed under the ‘sharing economy’ and various other labels match different groups of users and providers and enable the increase in scale and speed for traditional transactions such as selling, renting, lending, labour trade, and provision of services. In many cases, these platform-mediated activities involve peer-to-peer or peer-to-business transactions that occur in a regulatory vacuum. Since 2014, the phenomenal growth of a few large commercial ‘sharing’ platforms, the increasing number of economic sectors affected, and the conflicting interests among the stakeholders involved have made the ‘sharing economy’ a domain of conflictual rhetoric and public controversies, legal disputes, and even violent protests. The various expressions used to refer to ‘sharing’ platforms, by now appropriated by practitioners and stakeholders, are ‘floating signifiers’ for all sorts of different activities, in what can be called the rhetorical politics of platformisation. Terms and concepts are used in such confused and confusing ways that it is at times difficult to ascertain whether advocates, opponents, regulators, and policy makers are discussing the same phenomenon. There is a closed self-reproducing loop between conceptual ambiguity, rhetorical controversies, and lack of sound measurement and empirical evidence. This loop, in turn, limits the space for a rational debate of alternative policy options and contributes to the fragmented regulatory approaches which currently address the ‘sharing economy’. This theoretically-inspired and empirically-informed critical essay (i) unpacks the ‘sharing economy’ rhetoric, (ii) clears the field of semantic and conceptual ambiguity by providing a heuristically-useful and empirically-grounded typology, (iii) maps the controversies against available empirical evidence on the functioning and on the impacts of ‘sharing’ platforms, (iv) reviews the debate and the literature which focuses on regulatory and policy issues, and (v) discusses all these aspects in terms of their policy implications, and of future European research on this topic. It does so in a unique way, because of the extensive evidence base used and the inter-disciplinary approach it takes in which theoretical and empirical economics, sociology, anthropology, regulatory and legal studies, and rhetorical analysis converge. The evidence comprises: a) 120 media items (newspapers and magazine articles; blogs especially by ‘sharing economy’ advocacy groups and organisations; industry briefs etc.); b) in-depth analysis of a purposive sample of 70 platforms (website, blog, public relations and self-reports, etc.); c) 140 sources, consisting of scientific items (115) and broadly defined reports (25), selected using a formalised protocol and systematically reviewed; c) about 60 reports released by interested parties (industrial associations, platforms own reports and public relation materials); d) 70 indirectly relevant scientific contributions and policy reports.JRC.J.3-Information Societ

EVALUACION DE LA CALIDAD: UNA EXPERIENCIA EN EL POSGRADO

Las instituciones de Educación Superior y los Estados, en las últimas decadas vienen poniendo especial atención en la evaluación y el control de la calidad de sus procesos y productos, a fin de legitimar ante la sociedad el sustento de su pertinencia como también reforzar la adaptación a las nuevas necesidades profesionales de grado y de posgrado. La calidad de la Educación Superior es un concepto complejo y difícil de definir y mucho más aún evaluar. Dicho concepto abarca tanto la evaluación como la acreditación, que puede ser realizado por un organismo externo o la propia institución, que le permitirá a la conducción tomar decisiones para optimizar el funcionamiento de la misma en todas las áreas. En el presente trabajo se analiza el estudio internacional sobre el desarrollo y la utilización de indicadores de rendimiento de la enseñanza superior, realizado por la OCDE, del cual derivan varios criterios, que permiten considerar el uso de estándares preestablecidos donde la autoevaluación y la evaluación por pares son combinadas. La evaluación y/o acreditación puede realizarse bajo tres modalidades diferentes: externa, interna y mixta, en todas ellas existe la figura del agente evaluador y en particular la evaluación por pares. Un caso de evaluación por pares, en nuestro País, es la acreditación y categorización de las carreras de posgrado que realiza la Comisión de Evaluación y Acreditación Universitaria (CONEAU). En este punto se hizo necesario un análisis de los antecedentes , de los objetivos del proceso de acreditación y categorización, y de los procedimientos empleados por la CONEAU , como también de la constitución de los comités de pares evaluadores y sus misiones. Además se expone la experiencia de un par evaluador convocado por la CONEAU para integrar un Comité Evaluador de carreras de posgrado; donde se comenta y analiza el trabajo realizado. En las conclusiones del trabajo se relacionan los criterios más destacados que Pérez Lindo plantea en "Calidad en la Enseñanza de Educación Superior", con la evaluación realizada en la experiencia de Comité por pares. En síntesis, puede afirmarse que más allá de la formación que cada par evaluador traiga de su propia ciencia o profesión, pese a los diferentes criterios planteados, que se cruzan en forma transversal con los objetivos de la organización universitaria, ésta genera en sus integrantes criterios coincidentes a los cuales se adhiere. Al respecto Burton Clark dice: ....."la situación de la profesión académica es fundamentalmente distinta de la de cualquier otra profesión. Campos como la medicina, el derecho, la ingeniería y la arquitectura, por ejemplo, responden a tipos relativamente singulares. Pese a la existencia de múltiples especialidades internas en permanente proliferación, suelen estar unificados, ya sea flexible o rígidamente, en torno a un cuerpo de valores, normas y actitudes que la profesión misma ha ido conformando a lo largo del tiempo y que considera patrimonio propio

i-FRAME – Assessing impacts of social policy innovation in the EU: Proposed methodological framework to evaluate socio-economic returns on investment of social policy innovations

This report presents the final proposal for developing a methodological framework to assess the impacts generated by social policy innovations which promote social investment in the EU, in short i-FRAME. This framework has the objective to provide a structured approach that shall serve as a comprehensive framework for conducting analysis of the economic and social returns on investments of social policy innovations. It also aims to act as a guide to gather insights into replicability and transferability of initiatives which promote social investment across the EU. The report outlines the reviewed and improved theoretical and methodological approach developed by the JRC with help from external experts, and validated by testing the operational components proposed on a number of case studies and scenarios of use. After outlining the conceptual and methodological approach underpinning the i-FRAME (V1.0), the report discusses the proposal for building its operational components according to a structured theoretical framework of a dynamic simulation model for social impact assessment (V1.5). The final proposal for i-FRAME (V2.0) and an overview of the operational components for its implementation are then presented discussing the key elements that should be developed to build a comprehensive i-FRAME Web-Platform and simulator for social impact assessment. Conclusions are then offered in terms of implications for policy and directions for future research. These were drawn after consulting experts from different research disciplines, practitioners and representatives of relevant stakeholders and policymakers, and they include .recommendations for further developing the operational components proposed, paving the way towards building the i-FRAME (V3.0) and beyond.JRC.B.4-Human Capital and Employmen