(D-Land: Danmark 3.0 betegnelse for et gennem-digitaliseret Danmark)
Det er tankevækkende, at nobelprisen i økonomi i år går til Dale Mortensen, Århus Universitet, der er en ledende forsker i betydningen af friktioner som bremseklods for at markedskræfterne kan udfolde sig frit og medvirke til en reduktion af f.eks. arbejdsløshed.
I et digitaliseret samfund – et Danmark 3.0 – skal den slags problemstillinger IKKE forekomme. Men som med så mange forhold i Danmark 3.0, er det ikke BARE et spørgsmål om at udnytte teknologien, den skal også 'enactes', d.v.s. implementeres i en hensigtsmæssig organisatorisk struktur, der bygger på tankegangen om at i et netværk er vidensdeling den hårde valuta, og det der får netværket til at fungere langt bedre end traditionelle bureaukratier. Også bedre end den form for kontrakttænkning, der har sneget sig ind i offentlig forvaltning de seneste 20 år, og som gør det muligt for kommuner at maximere egen profit uden at bidrage synderligt til at nedbringe ledigheden. Incitamentstrukturer alene gør det ikke, vi har brug for en radikal omtænkning af hvorledes informationsflowet kan styrkes og hvilke organisationsformer og alternative incitamenter, der kan etableres i Danmark 3.0.
Lad os starte med virksomhederne – inklusive kommuner og regioner, der i disse dage fyrer i hobetal. I stedet for blot at holde sig til regler om varsling og arbejdsmarkedets regler, kunne man med CSR-holdning in mente foreslå, at kendte og planlagte fyringer fandt sted på en måde, hvor de fyrende virksomheder sørgede for at hjælpe deres medarbejdere bedst muligt: Ved at notere hvilke særlige færdigheder, uddannelser, erfaringer og kompetence de besidder.
Arbejdstageroganisationerne – herunder også private A-kasser – kan i netværkssamfundet være de første til at modtage disse informationer og sammenholde dem med jobmuligheder og kortvarige uddannelsestilbud.
På arbejdsgiverside – inklusive offentlige arbejdsgivere – kan man tilsvarende forvente, at planlagte nyansættelser finder sted efter søgning med en bedre eller bare en generelt accepteret beskrivelse af ønskværdige og nødvendige færdigheder, erfaringer etc.
Kursusudbydere kan udnytte viden om lediges færdigheder til at matche de krævede/ønskværdige færdigheder og i langt højere grad udvikle kortvarige kurser til delvis eller fuldkommen opgradering af jobsøgende. Vi vil se et langt større og varieret udbud af kurser, (i overensstemmelse med EU-strategi på området) og i et netvækssamarbejde mellem virksomheder og kursusudbydere også se en række praktikantjobs, hvor offentlig medfinansiering vil have betydeligt større værdi end et ikke-eksisterende kommunalt kursus i ansøgningsskrivning. (Se artikel om faldet i uddannelse af ledige!)
Hvad bliver der af jobformidlingen? Der vil ikke ske støre skade ved at centralisere den igen, men det vigtigste er måske hele indstillingen til opgaven: Det drejer sig ikke bare om at finde et job til en arbejdssøger, det drejer sig om at medvirke til at optimere udnyttelsen af landets videns-ressourcer – uanset om det er en forsker eller en specialarbejder. Og med et effektivt fungerende informationssystem bør behovene for viden indgå som grundlag for vidensmæssig opkvalificering med alle de muligheder, hvor sådan noget kan foregå. En kombination af et velfungerende, centralt informationssystem og lokale, måske kommunale specialister, der kan hjælpe med at kortslutte kontakter til lokale virksomheder og kursusudbydere er – måske – en del af svaret.
D-land nedbryder friktioner, der skyldes vanetænkning, gammeldags organisationsformer og afgrænsede, lukkede informationskredsløb.
Last week I had the pleasure to participate in Eurocities annual general meeting, this year in den Hague. Eurocities is an EU-partnership between 130+ major cities in Europe, and I have for some years had the honour to represent IBM as a coordinator, as IBM is one of 6 sponsors for a sub-orgasation, formerly Telecities now Knowledge Society Forum. Eurocities as an organization has the objective to support cities’ role in EU as one of the most important focus areas for developing high standards of living, dwelling, working.
To this end the Eurocities a year ago adopted the ‘Leipzig Charter’. This charter states that cities should be seen as cornerstones for development of well-being and a sustainable Europe. It calls for integrated approaches to development (breaking down silos between different parts of the public sector and between the public and private organizations and enterprises). It also calls for new governance principles, democratic participation in policy making and supporting citizen entrepreneurship.
To support these objectives the Eurocities conference started by an award ceremony where 3 cities where awarded for their innovative ways to solve some of these challenges:
The Finnish city Espoo won the award for their practice to bring senior citizens in contact with the cities many cultural organizations: music schools performing for elderly, sports facilities with instructors for elderly etc. a very inclusive and heart warming initiative.
The Belgian city of Gent was awarded for a very comprehensive and all-inclusive solution called ‘Gentinfo’ covering all aspects of services and information for citizens from booking books in the library, reserving day care for children, parking spaces, handling complaints and proposals etc.
Newcastle, UK won the third award for a project called ‘Udecide’ – an interesting project to involve citizens in prioritizing the budget and selecting, actually voting, between alternative ways to spend the cities money. There is a detailed study of this project available her: (Case study Udecide)
The ceremony took place in the Haag City Hall, a completely white and beautiful building created in 1995 by the US architect Richard Meier.
The official opening of the AGM took place on Thursday in the old and beautiful Steigenberger Kurhaus in Scheveningen.Mr. Jozias van Aartsen, the mayor of Hague and the next president for Eurocities welcomed the several hundred delegates, followed by Mr. Gerard Collomb, mayor of Lyon, current president and a person that has succeeded in placing the Eurocities agenda very high on the priority list in the EU Parliament and Commission. Also the Dutch Prime Minister, Jan Peter Balkenende, addressed the audience and surprised by describing his first political experiences from a small town close to Amsterdam. Finally, the newly appointed Secretary General, Paul Bevan introduced himself to the audience. He has an exciting career both in EU organizations and in setting up a successful planning cooperation organization in South East England, which he ran for 8 years.
Among other interesting speakers, The EU Commissioner for Competition, Ms. Neelie Kroes, made an interesting speech in the midst of the Financial Crisis, which of course has put a lot of pressure on her and her staff.She stressed that the wise fathers of EU and Jean Monnet in particular already from the outset put into the declaration that State Aid of private companies were forbidden, and could only be tolerated temporarily in case of an identified fault in the market. This has also been a guiding principle in the current support for the European Banks, and it is mandatory, that the EU aid and support MUST be followed by a restructuring. At the end of her speech, the representative from Newcastle rose and praised her flexibility and personal assistance to save the Northern RockBank, which would otherwise have put thousand of citizens in Newcastle on the street.
As the conference unfold, the 4 key areas were handled separately in a very intelligent way, as each of the working areas: Living in cities, Well-being, Environment and Health, and Working in cities were treated in break-out sessions, where each group was taken to a part of Den Hague that illustrated the problems in question, showed how this was being addressed by Den Hague, and then finishing off in meeting halls around the city.
The ‘Living’ working group was sent on a sightseeing to see the program ‘New Approach to priority Neighborhood the Hague Zuidwest’, and together with the speakers from Belfast and Rotterdam they discussed the problems of creating balanced residential areas.
The workshop on ‘Well Being’ discussed how diverse ethnical and cultural background could be seen as cohesive rather than a diverting factor in creating global cities with multi ethnical inhabitants. Den Hague has a large number of immigrants representing more than 52 countries, and together with BristolUK and BarcelonaSpain, this topic was discussed intensely.
The ‘Environment and Health’ workgroup, where I participated, drove through an area that was at a point becoming a ghetto – the Transvaal district – but where a lot of initiatives to tear down debris and build new sustainable houses with far less heat consumption and with a nice and attractive design had helped to bring up the standard. The meeting ended in a former church founded by the late queen Juliane. As the inhabitants were now mostly muslims or hindus, this was now a city service center, and the chapels have been transformed into special offices and information desks for citizens. Also the president for Knowledge Society Forum, Dr. Giuseppe Paolo presented – a case of how to avoid problems when allocation mobile sending stations, and the city of Sheffield’s representative presented a very interesting case showing the key influential factors in people’s health, unemployment being one of the major sources of diseases and health care related costs.
The working group on ‘Work’ also passed Transvaal, and the topics of the discussion were how to leverage public-private partnership to create enough jobs also for the unskilled workers and immigrants. This also included having a number of jobs to secure clean and nice local and dwelling areas, even if the jobs were subsidized, this could be shown to pay off in less crime, better quality of living. From Budapest a description on how an Office for Equal Opportunities were created , and how the cooperation between local officials, high quality social services, NGO’s and private participant could help the underprivileged to get jobs, education and housing.
Finally a Working Group on Innovations in Local Government stayed at the centre and discussed the 3 key topics of developing local community participation, how to develop integrated approaches (breaking down silos between departments and institutions) and how to develop multilevel governance. Among the speakers was the representative from Berlin that described the Quartiersmanagement project. Also Istanbul presented My Project Istanbul, a runner-up for the award on cooperation initiatives.
The last day of the conference was among topics devoted to work on an updated version of the Leipzig Declaration, and the next – Den Hague Declaration – will be published shortly, so I will come back to this in a later blog.
The Conference finished by the mayor of Den Hague, now the President of Eurocities,who thanked the participants and the chairs for the various committees/For a that had developed a status of the results from the last year.
I will look forward to the next meetings in Telecities/Knowledge Society Forum, where the more politically oriented topics will be left out and the focus will be on the practical adaptation of IT technology in the key areas of urban life. This is very much in line with IBM’s initiative called ‘A Smarter Planet’, where cities are in focus for a lot of the development during the next decade.
