We interviewed our CEO Willem Jonker on the COVID-19 pandemic, accelerated adoption of digital technologies and prospects for societal change in the aftermath of the crisis.
Willem, the restrictions imposed on citizens all over the world as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic have one common denominator: they limit our physical mobility and prevent most of us from having direct access to our usual work environment, be that offices, shops or factories. What have these weeks of remote working told us? Will distance working be more common once the immediate crisis is over?
One thing we could observe was how quickly organisations were able to move to online and remote working. The infrastructure apparently was there and can deal with this enormous growth in demand. So, we have to fight an invisible virus on the one hand, on the other hand we also have the often less visible digital infrastructure that now turns out to be an effective weapon to keep large parts of our society and economy going.
My other observation is that the transition to this way of working exposed sectors of our society where home office was far less common. For a pan-European organisation like EIT Digital, with staff and partners dispersed all over the continent, working in virtual offices is normal, but particular areas of our society, for example certain public service providers and authorities as well as the legal sector - notaries and lawyers - weren't used to this. There the focus is still very much on conducting business through on-site, physical interaction with clients. Since these sectors are now exposed, one can expect a faster adoption to digital technologies than we would have witnessed without this crisis. As such the crisis will definitely lead to an acceleration of the digital transformation and I expect to see spinoffs of many new digital services in those domains, such as more online government services, enhanced use of digital identification and certification, virtual legal services.
That being said, even if we will see increased use of remote working after the crisis, it will not replace working from offices entirely. When video rentals entered the markets, people predicted the end of cinemas. When streaming services were launched, linear TV and radio were called dead; not to speak of the predicted exodus of books. None of that happened, on the contrary we see co-existence and often reinforcement. And that's what I expect for remote working. It won't replace office work, because the social factor of direct personal interaction can't be replaced. But we will see co-existence and more flexibility, because we got accustomed to the advantage of the digital technology concerns and hesitations with respect to topics such as remote work will reduce.
What we might see is an impact on business travelling. We will consider more thoroughly whether all physical meetings indeed are necessary or could be conducted remotely. And this in return will have a positive impact on the climate and on companies' budgets.
Home office has clear benefits but renews concerns of cybersecurity and the vulnerability of our data networks. Can remote work ever be as safe as corporate environments?
I wouldn't say that home office in general is a threat to cybersecurity, because we can ensure that our technical environment is equally well protected as in our workplaces. But we see a general trend towards digitisation of services and transfer to mobile platforms and applications. This implies increased responsibility on the users to be safe, make the necessary updates on their devices and care better for security.
This phenomenon as such is not related to the COVID-19 crisis, but it is amplified and more apparent with the increasing amount of use due to the crisis. And by increasing use there is increasing risk, since a larger part of processes are exposed and possibly vulnerable. Also, more use means attracting more attackers. So, working from home is not a risk as such, but the risk lies in the increased digitisation of critical business processes, services and mobile use in less protected networks. For example, processes that currently still require physical personal identification will increasingly move to online and mobile. This creates an increased risk of Identity Fraud and Theft and unsafe online transactions.
The rapid spread of the virus and fast increase in numbers of hospitalised patients is an enormous burden on our healthcare systems. Capacities are limited and thus shifted to most pressing cases, leaving ‘ordinary' patients behind. How can digital technologies help to prevent such phenomena in the future?
If you look specifically at this pandemic, we were not prepared and didn't have the response systems in place for appropriate reaction. To a large extent this had to do with a lack of information, because centralised systems lack capacity in testing and diagnosing. There was also insufficient transparency in countries' different approaches, the mathematical systems they applied to justify measures, etc. It was and is thus difficult to compare and benchmark which models worked best.
Given the fact that a large majority of citizens - at least in the Western world - have access to smart phones and could provide input to central systems, digital tools can help with fast monitoring and early detection. I expect the development of such early warning systems for infectious diseases like they became reality for underwater earthquakes in the aftermath of the 2004 Tsunami.
Solutions to tackle pandemics efficiently can only be developed at international, global levels, and they will have to take privacy concerns into consideration. But they will have to come, because at the moment we observe constant firefighting and we are always a step behind. Current systems work in local outbreaks, but not for global pandemics. We need early detection systems that monitor and identify key indicators and make these data available to a broad range of decision makers, but also to analysts and scientists. If we had more and better data, pre-emptive action would have been possible and appropriate measures could have been implemented easier and at the right time.
Reliable data will also be needed for the scale-down phase, when our systems try to get back to normal. We need to be able to closely monitor key health indicators to avoid a second wave of the pandemic. Here as well, a distributed system could help.
It is also evident that this pandemic is both a health and economic problem. Data modelling should combine both aspects in the best way possible to support decision-makers in finding acceptable compromises. This is difficult, because finding a balance between ‘physical health' and ‘economic health' of our societies has of course substantial ethical implications.
At EIT Digital we decided on concrete actions to help data managing the lifecycle of a pandemic (COVID-19 will after all not be the last pandemic the world will face). This should cover early warning, fast response, curve management and back-to-normal approaches. One of these actions is our global online DeepHack "DATA against COVID-19" that will run May 1-3.
One more thing I'd like to mention when it comes to the enormous pressure on our hospitals is our care robot SARA. In Asia you see a strong focus on robots that take up tasks from humans. During this COVID-19 crisis, we see an increased use of care robots in China to support healthcare and retirement homes. I am happy that with SARA we have at EIT Digital a care robot that is currently deployed during this COVID-19 crisis in old people's homes in The Netherlands.
Internet and cloud capacities are currently undergoing high performance tests in practice. How will our digital infrastructure adapt to these changing use habits? Are current initiatives in terms of 5G deployment, high performance computers, and server capacities sufficient or will more - or different - strategies be needed to secure functioning support systems?
We can observe continuous improvement of the bandwidth and capacity of our network systems. All in all, we are in a good shape and I don't see big problems. Agreements of major streaming services to limit streaming quality and thus to free capacities have further contributed to stabilising the systems.
The deployment of 5G is mostly detached from this development. Of course, 5G offers higher bandwidth to mobile users, however most work from home takes place via the fixed infrastructure. On the other hand, 5G is an enabler for having more connected objects that communicate with each other, the Internet of Things (IoT). But network traffic patterns of, for example, interlinked vehicles and supporting autonomous transport are quite different from current network usage patterns supporting home working, concentrating on video streaming, video conferencing systems, etc.
In the midterm however there is to be expected an impact through IoT technology on remote work, since many machine and factory operations today still require the physical presence of human operators. IoT will certainly enable increased remote operation, opening up to remote work from home for factory and machine operators. As a result, more factories might be able to continue production in the future, avoiding total shutdown of production factories as we witness during this crisis.
This crisis also demonstrated the shortcomings of globalisation and diversification. All of the sudden, we experience shortages in supply of medicines or protective equipment, to name two examples. Can and will further automation and new technologies like 3D printing be able to compensate for these imbalances?
We will see that in particular global players, multinationals, will reconsider their global supply chains, because these make them very vulnerable and the challenges are obvious in this global pandemic. Countries close borders, restrict export and trade, and compete for scarce resources.
Global supply chains will always be needed, especially when looking at raw materials and natural resources. Decentralised production, however, is a different story. Technologies such as 3D printing could be part of the solution, even though access to the raw materials needed for these printers can be affected by disrupted global supply chains as well.
I therefore expect big corporations to review their large global supply chains. Not only are these vulnerable to external, uncontrollable factors like volcano outbreaks or, in our case, pandemics. They also add substantially to companies' CO2 footprints. And in the case of food supply chains, also concerns about production environments, impact on local communities, and use of pesticides, herbicides and antibiotics are reasons for the trend towards locally produced.
From that perspective this crisis adds to concerns about the current globalism and will drive the movement towards more local4local. Maybe a bit surprisingly, where both innovation and digitalisation were drivers of globalisation, they are at the same time important enablers to reverse the globalisation trend.
Current mobility restrictions not only lead to a rise in distance working, but also distance learning. Primary and secondary school pupils as well as university students follow their curricula from home wherever possible. How will current emergency measure influence the way we teach and learn in the future?
We have seen an enormous impact of the mobility restrictions and I am positively surprised of the speed at which the education sector was able to adapt. At the same time the challenges are of course immediately visible. Can exams be taken online? How can we check a person's ID online and ensure the right person is taking the exam? How can we ensure all pupils have access to appropriate hardware and sufficient internet bandwidth?
The current experience with distance learning may lead to more flipped classroom applications. This approach would mean working physically more on group exercises, but to follow lectures online. Right now, the practice is often the way around. I do not expect campuses to disappear, but many more people especially in primary and secondary education are now exposed to digital and will make use of the tools and methods also after the crisis.
But schools are of course much more than simply places where you learn. There, we connect with other human beings, learn to interact, learn for life - and that has to remain. I expect a boost of blended education methods - also because our roles in life are increasingly ‘blended'. We can be parents, children, employees, teachers, students at the same time. So, I don't expect to see established education models disappear entirely, but I do expect more blending through diversity and flexibility of tools and methods.
Last, but not least, what will we remember from this crisis?
Well, this crisis is a reminder that, although we are advanced societies and have advanced technology at our disposal, there are many things in life that simply aren't under our control. What we will realise again is that this world, our health and the climate are really vulnerable systems and that these systems are not always controllable. We can better prepare, but not entirely avoid all unpleasant incidents.
For people that live today, it's a wakeup call that dramatic events can actually happen, even in our world. In some of our countries, several generations were never before exposed to large scale crises of this dimension. We were used to peace, stability, and prosperity.
This will lead to reflection and resilience, but also acceptance. Reflection on how we want our economies and societies to look like, how we are organised and coexist. A reflection that will drive an entire generation towards trying to find ways to shape more resilient societies.
