Investing in employee education

'Classroom' by Emory Maiden
under a CC license

Lifelong learning is not a new concept. On the contrary, it is quite established, at least as a term. Today, there are numerous courses, taught and self-taught schemes on a wide variety of topics. Some of the training schemes are even available for free - usually in the form of online courses. In many countries there are also legal or financial incentives to encourage education and training in businesses and organisations. However, despite lifelong learning schemes being abundant, there are still plenty of employers that discourage or deny the participation of their employees in such schemes.

Often, the reasons they quote include the constantly high workload, the lack of resources to cover for the employees' "lost" training time, the lack of resources to sponsor the training and the lack of clear benefit from the training. There are also cases where the potential benefits of further education simply go unnoticed by the managers responsible. In a few cases,  unfortunately, it may also be the result of tainted management beliefs, where keeping the staff's skills stuck at a certain level is thought to ensure"stability" for the management crowd.

To be fair, allowing or providing access to education for the people of an organisation needs to take into account operational constrains. But it is also something that the organisation will eventually need to do despite whatever constrains. The case for investing in employee education is too strong to be ignored.

On open data

The idea of "open data" is not new but it seems to be gaining popularity, recently, especially for data generated by using public or publicly funded means.

'Molecular energy at work'
by Let Ideas Compete
under a CC license

"Open data", as a term is subject to different definitions and, thus, is applied in different ways. The most basic, clear-cut definition available dictates that "Open data and content can be freely used, modified, and shared by anyone for any purpose", although it is also possible to allow for mandatory attribution to the source.

At the legal level, things are a bit more complicated. The key problem of how to handle copyright in a way to reasonably achieve the intended objective of open data is not very hard to address. However, adding various restrictions to that, which in some cases is needed, makes it tricky. Taking into account that intellectual property legislation varies widely from country to country things become even trickier. To that end, the people at GNU and the Free Software Foundation have compiled a list of different free and non-free licenses commonly used for software and documentation projects. Further advice can be found, amongst others, on the World Bank.

Putting legal issues aside, open data, if used correctly, can help bring added value to societies. I understand that this is part of the typical pro-open data rhetoric but, for a moment, let's think of a couple of examples, besides transparency and accountability that seem to be well established already:

(a) A lot of money is invested, world-wide, on research and technological development activities. In cases where grants are provided on a competitive basis, applicants are commonly requested to demonstrate the relevance of their proposal to the current challenges and the scientific state-of-the-art. The latter normally takes a good literature review, while the former often relies on policy documents and some handful of studies that might be available on line. Even worse, during project implementation, project partners normally don't get access to additional data. Having relevant open data readily available would greatly help the research and innovation system in producing more relevant research proposals and better, closer-to-needs solutions.

(b) Competitiveness is considered to be a key for growth. But does this automatically translate to growth relevant to the needs of a society? Proving open data could stimulate growth-through-competitiveness around major needs. Further to that, it could facilitate adoption of best practices elsewhere, making it easier to compare cases and effects, hence, to identify solutions.

Is all data suitable for becoming open data? Clearly no. That wouldn't even apply to all data obtained through publicly funded means. Some data cannot not (and should not) become open because that would compromise national security or personal security, would limit or cancel a person's right to privacy, would possibly contradict court decisions and orders, etc. That means that it would be hard to apply a single approach to all kinds of data regarding their "openness".  It is still possible, though, to apply the open data policy on step at a time, or - better - a dataset at a time, keeping an eye of the effects, of course. In the future, it may be possible to define and implement a single, concise open data policy - at least for government data or data generated via public resources.

By the way, the open data call is finding top level support - at different intensities, perhaps - by entities such as the EU (http://open-data.europa.eu/en/data/), the US (http://www.data.gov/), Japan (http://www.data.go.jp/?lang=english), etc. More importantly, the Open Government Partnership, launched in 2011, now has 65 member countries and publishes reports on those.

The video that follows has been made by the Open Government Partnership in promotion of Open Government.

What the world needs...

'October 2010 Alaskan
Viaduct Closure' by
WSDOT under a CC license.

...is plenty of things. Clarity and simplicity? Peace on earth? Food for all? Money? Ideas? All of those things? Which ones exactly, depend on your point of view but, really, I don't think there is a right or wrong answer here. The world is a game of many players, where all can do their bit to influence the result.

A friend send me a link to Architectes de l'urgence the other day. I felt surprised. Even though I am an engineer myself. Even though I am aware of the contribution of engineers in many places around the globe, where the need for (re)construction exists.

I felt surprised possibly because in our everyday life, houses, roads, manufacturing plants, schools, office buildings, etc., are taken for granted. I felt surprised simply because there is nothing hero-like in the view of an engineer. And it's not just me, I believe. Many have heard of Doctors without borders - but that is human health we are talking about. Don't worry. I won't go to claiming that we should reserve a cheer for engineers. But I feel like reminding me (us) that what the world may truly need is expertise.

Expertise. Expertise in construction, IT, medicine, agriculture, education, food processing, energy, etc. Expertise on all those things that are the structural elements of modern life as we know it. That is the thing that can make the difference. And, indeed, you can't have development without the right minds (and hands) in place (and in the right order). Even when you achieve development, you still need the right experts to ensure sustainability.

That's certainly not a personal discovery of mine. Generating or enriching in-house expertise, attracting the right people, achieving the right level of education, etc., have all been in the competitiveness/ innovation agenda of communities (countries and  regions) for quite some time now; take the Marie Curie schemes as an example. But still, I find that, as a priority, it tends to fall under the radar quite often - possibly because expertise costs, without leading to direct profits.

I believe that investing in expertise, preferably in a sustainable way, needs to stay on table, especially in times of crises. In the same way that expertise should be part of any emergency aid package, be it a response to a natural catastrophe or human destruction.