 Mr. Hans Horst-Konkolewski is Secretary-General of the International Social Security Association also known as ESA and I'd like to welcome you to the studio today. Thank you very much. Now, we're here at the ITU studio and here obviously because we are very interested in technology and I know that you are too. I wanted to ask you what are the biggest technology challenges now facing social security institutions worldwide? Thank you very much for inviting me to this interview. You might know that in the social security sector, in social security administration, technology plays a key role and over the past decade our members, the social security administrations, these are the pension funds, the health insurances, the accident insurances, unemployment insurance and so on, they have been focusing a lot on the technological development partly in order to manage their own internal data processes and data management processes but also to a much higher degree in order to provide services to their clients, their customers, their beneficiaries. And in terms of opportunities, where do you see opportunities to overcome some of the challenges that may be faced? Well, the challenges that this implies and I think in particular if you open up so to say and to your data and both to your internal data but also to personal data when you use mobile applications, when you use all these new platforms because we want to offer the same level of 24-7 services as our customers, the citizens of the world are actually already being offered by other institutions like their banks or their insurances or by even their warehouses and others. So therefore we need also to look into what are the risks involved in that. So and as you very well know and cybersecurity has become a critical issue, we have had incidents with ransomware and national health services in the UK and we had many other incidents. So this is one of the critical issues. Also to have secured mobile interaction, as I mentioned in many regions of the world, the increase of coverage because just to come with a bit of a technical explanation about what social security challenges are, which is that still only about half of the world's population is actually covered by adequate social security. So in order to extend coverage also into remote areas to rural areas, in particular mobile technology has shown to be fantastic both as a means to collect the contributions for an insurance, for social insurance but also to do the payments. But so we have to look into how we can secure these mobile technologies and mobile security. And lastly I would like to highlight that in spite of that we all are using this technology on a daily basis, there still is a rather important part and often the most vulnerable part of the population that is excluded from this digital life, so to say. So we have to make sure and work together with other entities as a societal level, education and others to make sure that we actually ensure that everybody can be included in this fantastic digital development. Now you've been Secretary General of the International Social Security Association for about 12 years now. I wanted to ask you just a little bit, perhaps you could give us a little bit of a background of the ESA and what are your main areas of focus on? Yeah, the ESA was originally founded by the ILO in 1927, so we have reached our 90s anniversary. I know the ITU is older than us and we respect that, but our mandate has been from the very beginning is to support the extension of social protection to all. And we do that not in the classical ILO way through tripartite decision making and issuing recommendations and conventions. But what we do is actually we form a kind of business network of the Social Security Administrations. So we bring together social security administrators from more than 150 countries worldwide. We have different platforms where they meet and exchange with their peers. We have technical commissions as we call them that develop, for example, guidelines in what is the best way of organizing different business processes and social security administration. And we try to give them a voice, of course, also at the global level. So we have a double objective. The most important is to serve our members, the Social Security Administrations, in reaching excellence in administration, where technology is key, as I already mentioned. But we also want to contribute to the overall SDGs, the same development goals and their objectives for 2030 as regards social protection for all, health protection for all. And there we work closely with the ILO and support it at the implementation level. So our focus as an association, and this we have developed over the past years, is to help our members not only through platforms where we meet and exchange, but we develop guidelines. We have a Center for Excellence with also an academy. And we offer support and at the end of the process we also offer recognitions or kind of certification of our members. So our objective is to contribute to the overall goal of social protection for all by enhancing the quality of the services and the outreach of our member organizations. And what are some of the examples of technology being used in the field of social security? As already mentioned, we have seen an increase used of mobile technologies. And particularly in Africa, that is really the leading continent, and is an example to many other social security administrations around the world, is the intelligence use of mobile technology, which means, as I mentioned, that you can conduct processes of contribution payment, but also receivable of benefits through the mobile technology. So this has been a great support of extending coverage to the difficult to reach people in the rural sector or the small communities. So this is one example that we have. The other example I would like to highlight is the interoperable information systems, where you can look into, for example, in Brazil, there is a very well-known social assistance programs, which is called the Bolsa Família. It's a conditional cash transfer system, which supports single mothers, on condition of that the children attend school and the children are looked into as regards their health development. So in order to focus this program, you need to really have interoperable data systems to reach out to the right people and also to measure, so to say, the impact of your program. So this is another very interesting program that I want to share with you. A third one is smart cards. So dual smart cards that can be used by both the banking system and the social security system. And there our number one is China, which by the way has led the extension of coverage. What they have achieved over the past decade is really admirable. And much of the increase of the extension of coverage over the past 10 years is simply because China's government has really focused on this social extension issue. But they have not been able, would not have been able to do that with the speed that they actually have shown without technology, without issues like smart cards and other technologies that support, as I said, the process of extension. But also, and first and foremost, a very efficient way of organizing and reducing the transaction costs and organizing the delivery of their services. Another interesting issue is big data and big data analytics. There the Republic of Korea has been leading in terms of looking into particular health data. And they have developed a big data analytics system which has allowed them to be more predictive in terms of where they have to focus their health service. For example, if there are calamities or other events so that they have used this intelligence in order to focus the always limited resources to the right places. We see also in Europe an increased use of big data analytics, in particular to focus on an issue that is very high on the agenda amongst our members, which is to fight error, evasion and fraud. And here big data again can help us to reduce that and to improve the quality of services. So these are a few examples on how our members already successfully work with new technologies. I think you've used some bounds probably from when you first started with ESA. Absolutely. And finally, I'd just like to ask you, if you could tell us a little bit about the new ITU ESA collaboration, what are its aims and what do you hope it will achieve? As a first of all, I'm extremely pleased that we finally marry, so to say. And we are not far away here in Geneva from each other, but sometimes this can be millions of light years. But it's really fantastic for us to discover the power of the ITU, its history and its capacities, because all the issues I have been addressing are also and have been addressed by the ITU over the past decades. And you have developed a fantastic network of both private and public partners in order to develop international standards and to secure that technology really comes to the benefit of people. And so we expect that from this collaboration that we actually can do things together. We are an important sector in terms of consumption of technology. So we rank amongst the top three worldwide. And therefore I think we are an interesting partner because of the outreach that we can offer. On the other hand, we are very much interested in your intelligence and your knowledge, your experts, which already have demonstrated their abilities at our last information communication technology conference this year in Casablanca. And everybody was very impressed and everybody, everybody means ISA members, supported very much the idea of developing closer collaborations with you. So we expect that we together can develop guidelines as regards these critical areas that we need to cover. That we also try to see not only to look at the challenges but also the opportunities of the new technologies. We are reaching now into the digital age and there are lots of also possibilities of making use of technology to deliver our services in a more efficient, cost-efficient way and in particular with better governance and better service quality. So we expect that machine learning, artificial intelligence and these issues in a positive sense can also address our challenges as an ISA, as I said, which is to reach excellence. So we see you as a fantastic partner and we look very much forward to common events, common reports, common research and exchange. We expect that this partnership would actually contribute to our objective, which is to help our members to reach excellence in social security administration. Here's looking forward to a long and fruitful collaboration. Thank you very much, David, for being with us today. Thank you very much. It's been a pleasure. Thank you.