The G7 focuses on innovation in Turin
In Turin, the ministerial meeting on Industry/ICT, Science, and Labor chaired by Italy.
The city of Turin in the Piedmont region of Italy is to host the first of the three G7 Ministerial Meetings dedicated to Innovation — specifically to Industry/ICT, Science, and Labor — on September 25–26. The agenda of the meeting includes the transformation enabled by digital technologies, advanced robotics and data-driven production processes.
“The Next Production Revolution (NPR)” as defined by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), is already in place, empowered by developments in robotics, the industrial application of artificial intelligence, the diffusion of 3D printing technologies and real-time big data analytics. The transformations related to the diffusion of Industry 4.0 will have a deep impact on society and on the labor market in the coming years: while the NPR is a crucial opportunity to modernize production, it could lead to negative effects on employment levels if not adequately planned and guided.
The G7 countries have adopted strategies to address NPR’s complexity challenges, such as the “Industrie 4.0” plan in Germany, “Industrie du Futur” in France, “Society 5.0”, “Connected Industries” and “IoT Comprehensive Strategy” in Japan, “Innovation and Skills Plan” in Canada, as well as the “Digital and Industrial Strategies” introduced in the United Kingdom. A similar path was undertaken by the European Union, which in April 2016 launched the Industrial Innovation Plan called “Digitising European Industry — Reaping the full benefits of a Digital Single Market”.
With regard to Italy, on September 21, 2016 the Ministry of Economic Development presented the Industry 4.0 National Plan, with the aim of spreading the benefits of the New Industrial Revolution. The Plan provides Italian companies with a public investment of 13 billion euro, with considerable tax benefits, to stimulate private investment in assets with high technological components. The Plan aims to transform the Italian industrial sector, supporting the widespread diffusion of enabling technologies, such as co-bots (collaborative robots), interconnection between machines, augmented reality, 3D printers and Big Data Analytics Software.
The issue of culture and digital skills is a key point in the Plan, as Industry 4.0 is a new production paradigm based on innovative governance and management models. For this reason, incentives to significantly increase the investments in research and development have been introduced.
The initiatives undertaken by the G7 countries aspire to be considered best practices, to be shared in order to fuel a debate aimed at addressing the challenges posed by the Industry 4.0 in a coordinated way. This theme will therefore play a central role in the ICT/Industry Ministerial Meeting, whose three key words are: inclusion, openness and security. Inclusion means the ability to support Small and Medium-sized Enterprises, which represents at least 70% of the industrial sector of many G7 countries, in their digitization processes. Governments will have to support the transition of SMEs and foster the growth of ecosystems where innovation can prosper, even in cooperation with major companies. The keyword openness is related to the free flow of data and information, interoperability of systems, access to enabling digital infrastructures and, above all, the possibility of sharing the benefits of artificial intelligence, for the well-being of all citizens.Finally, security is another key prerequisite in an ecosystem where companies are increasingly threatened by ICT risks. Security is related also to intellectual property rights, which continue to suffer violations causing economic and social losses.
International cooperation is crucial to ensure a responsive and balanced spreading of the NPR in G7 countries, by defining common policies and strategies.
Artificial Intelligence, Big Data and future of work
On September 25, Turin will also host the first meeting of the “I-7 Innovators’ Strategic Advisory Board on People-Centered Innovation” , the engagement group launched last May during the G7 Summit in Taormina. The group is in charge of providing guidance on emerging innovation issues.
The creation of this group proves Italian G7 Presidency’s attention towards the multiple challenges that innovation poses and that cannot be faced only at national level.
The format of the Advisory Board requires that each G7 country and the EU should appoint a Focal Point who is in charge of selecting up to 5 innovators. Each country and the EU have designated their own group of innovators. Italy Focal Point is Diego Piacentini, Commissioner for the Digital Transformation.
The I-7 Innovators should call governments to action by drawing attention to the gap between the current potential of technological advances and the actual adoption from institutional organizations. The I-7 will also discuss possible measures to mitigate potential downsides of the new technologies.
The meeting will be divided in tree sessions. The first one will focus on the potential of the Artificial Intelligence for governments and citizens.Big Data will be the core theme of the second session, while the third one will deal with the future of work and how new technologies are shaping the employment models.
Labor and technological developments
One of the main topics of the G7 Ministerial Meeting on Labor — Turin, September 29–30 — will be the changes on the labor market triggered by technological development. According to the World Economic Forum’s “The Future of Jobs” report published on January 2016, 37% of the leading professional skills will deeply change by 2020 at global level. In Italy this figure rises to 48%, France and Germany stand at 37% and 38%, the United States at 29%, the United Kingdom at 28% and Japan at 25%. In line with these predictions, OECD data show that the percentage of workers using a PC with Internet connection is constantly increasing: 41.1% in Italy, 53.4% in France, 52% in Germany and 55.9 % in the United Kingdom, just to mention data from some G7 countries.
In this framework, the G7 Labor Ministerial Meeting aims to be an opportunity to promote an organic and structured discussion on the impacts of technological transformation on labor market, giving possible responses to manage this phenomenon. One of the main issues that will be addressed is the risk of technological unemployment and the increase of economic inequalities. It is therefore necessary to rethink welfare, investments and social infrastructures, in order to strengthen the social protection networks, providing everyone with a strong welfare system of active and passive employment policies and social security continuity. Finally, specific attention will be paid to the use of new technologies to mitigate the impact of current demographic trends — in particular population ageing and migration — on the labor market and social security systems.
Indeed, on these major changes, Italy has already begun a discussion at national level in the Forum “How the Labor is changing” organized last April by the Ministry of Labor, in collaboration with the Ministry of Economic Development, the Ministry of Education, University and Research, and the International Labor Organization (ILO) Office. The Forum has produced a report titled “The Changing Labor. Digitization, automation and the future of work.” This document will surely offer a good starting point to the discussion of the G7 Ministers.
Given the risks but also the opportunities for the Labor market arising from the technological transformation in progress, the G7 governments have a fundamental responsibility in managing these changes by promoting economic and social policies aimed at extending the benefits to an increasing number of citizens. Through this Ministerial Meeting, the Italian Presidency of the G7 and the Ministry of Labor want to give an active contribution to the current debate, trying to give answers and reassurances to the concerns and fears of citizens.
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