Our World-Struck by the Pandemic

STRUCK BY THE PANDEMIC
SHUTTERSTOCK
OUR WORLD | MAY 2020
quality of data. This means that we need to
create reliable data governance methods
with strong but agile privacy safeguards, to
ensure high quality and robust algorithmic
decision making to help health authorities in
their work, to prevent the collapse of supply
chains for vital instruments and inventories
and to ensure a high quality monitoring of
the emergency, in a level of granularity that
is operationally optimal.
The third reflection is about the way
we work. I have already made a comment
on the need to design procedures. It is not
as complicated as it sounds though. At
the end of the day, we all work either on
repetitive tasks, most likely without the
need of collaboration, or on creative tasks,
that we need “studio” types of work so as to
ensure collaboration. Every “teleconference”
type of work can be easily replicated with
simple digital technologies in these two ways
of work. The important here is to be able
to visualize the contributions we make as
individuals in a group effort. In this simple
architecture we can resolve comparatively
easily the problem of “scale”. This allows us
to enter in a new era of crowdsourcing which
is vital when many “brains” should work on
one critical solution, especially in the fields
of biomedicine and pharmaceuticals, and
when significant public money is involved
and the “patenting” is neutralized. EU
should develop this capacity with secure
procedures and in collaboration with other
non-EU governments.
The fourth reflection is about the optimal
use of budget for R&D and the acceleration
of tech transfer, especially in moments of
emergency. EU traditionally has very weak
tech transfer capacity. It funds, rightfully,
long-run research projects that the market
fails to support, but the patents it produces
are few and the number of marketable
products is disappointing. At the same time,
many of the technological projects funded
by the EU budget lack clear KPIs making the
speed of technological adoption very slow.
The current pandemic forces us to think
systematically about these issues.
It is in the center of the work of STOA
in the European Parliament to speed up all
the four areas of concern that I stressed,
to define priorities, procedures and
evaluation standards. We need to prepare
Eva Kaili
Greek member of the
European Parliament
with the S&D Group -
Chair for Science and
Technology, STOA -
Chair EU40 - Member
of OECD Blockchain
Advisory Board, WEF
EU Digital Leaders &
Digital Currency Gov
Consortium, IEEE
Center of Extended
Intelligence Advisory
Board
the ground for standards that are based on
our European values and could be adopted
globally.
To conclude, the COVID19 emergency
has changed the priorities of the EU
budget in the era of “new normality”, and
the digital transformation is higher on the
agenda, including a new paradigm of R&D
in the fields of biotechnology and health
management. Other priorities like the so
called, “Green Deal” should be integral in
a new paradigm of sustainable economy,
rather than a distinct endeavor. Similarly,
exponential technologies like AI, blockchain,
big data, cyber-security, hyper-performance
computing or edge computing, should be
aggressively promoted not in isolation but
in convergence with each other.
I am convinced that Technology is a
significant part of any solution related to the
health and quality of life of the Europeans,
the agility and resilience of their jobs, the
prospect of their welfare and wealth in the
post-crisis period, the coherence of our
society and our role in the global economy
in the post-crisis years. We only need to act
together and be smart on it.
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