 Welcome to WTI S16 from Habaron in Botswana. I'm very pleased to be joined in the studio with Martin Blix, who is digitalisation expert and former secretary to the Swedish Prime Minister in the Commission on the Future Challenges of Sweden. Martin, thank you very much for being with us today. Thank you. Now, I'd like to start off by asking you a little bit about the structural changes that have been caused by ICTs from an economic and individual point of view. Perhaps you could tell us a little bit about them. In my research I've looked at this from a variety of perspectives. It's one of the areas where I think there's actually a kind of a consensus in the academic literature that digitalisation has led to a polarisation, which means that the middle classes have been thinning out and the low pay, high pay jobs have been increasing. And this has been going on for several decades, for three or four decades. So it's a very strong development and we've seen it in many countries, many U.C.D. countries. So it's a fairly common trend and it's driven by technology and it's been driven by institutional changes. And so it's affecting our work in important ways. Can you give us a few examples? Well, I mean, we know, for example, how wage developments in some countries in the U.S., median wages have been stagnant for a long time and that's causing anger and resentment that comes also out in political ways. So there are very real issues behind this. I mean, we've not seen the fear of unemployment that's been discussed in technology, but it's taking this different form of polarising the wages. Another trend is that we've seen an increase in the number of jobs that are less secure. So this has also been a strong trend in many U.C.D. countries. So non-standard work, anything that's not fixed term where you have all this safety that's involved in permanent work. And should people be apprehensive about the impact of ICTs on their lives? Well, yeah, I mean, I think we're right in the middle of a change. It's a very big change and sometimes it's hard to see how much is changing because from year to year it's not so major. But let's look at the 10-year perspective. So if somebody stood here like 10 years ago and stayed at that knowledge when the iPhone came and then the iPad, that would be somebody who would not follow developments would be fairly outside a lot of the skills that are needed in the modern labour market. Yeah, so I think we should be worried and those that fall behind. I don't think necessarily coming back to this early point that they're not necessarily going to be unemployed but it's going to be harder to enter the labour market and the wage developments will be slower for those that don't get the skills. So I think we need to focus a lot more on lifelong learning. This is a very popular topic, lifelong learning, but I think we really need to put emphasis on learning throughout lives. So going back to education throughout our lives, perhaps to change career, to encourage that. Because it's not only the technology, it's also that we're living longer. Demography is having a big impact. So we need to be able to work longer and perhaps update the skills more frequently than we have in the past. And what should governments, businesses and individuals do to adjust to the new ecosystem created by ICT? I think they should start by removing some of the obstacles that we are having for work in the new economy the digital super firms, the big ones like Google and Facebook they're already established. But many of these don't provide a huge number of jobs and so the challenge is that we need more small firms with small ideas to enter the labour market and create a dynamic labour market. And some of the regulation that's now in place is difficult for small businesses. There's a lot of regulation on data. The big firms, they have lots of lawyers they can handle this complexity and the new regulation that's coming but the new firms, they are going to be apprehensive about starting new businesses when they are very liable for things that go wrong. So I think that the regulators have an urgent task in rethinking about how are we going to make it easier to have new work in the new economy. And what's the environment like in Sweden in particular to this? So we have very strong protection for personal data regarding health but similar to many other countries there's not much protection for buying things when we use search engines and the data we give away to get free services a lot of the time, right? And the regulator needs to think about what is the balance of these different environments thinking about health in particular. There's a lot of tools coming out that allows us to measure how well we are living to our pulse and to measure our bodies in ways and can give us warnings maybe if we are not feeling well or if there's a heart attack and such. So how is the regulation going to make it possible to have this kind of data and to use it for consumer and health benefits? I don't think we're asking this question but I think we are not yet beginning to get in the right direction on enabling this. And finally, how can data statistics help to understand and address the changes brought about by OCTs? There's a big shift in the whole economy going from production of goods to production of services. So the service economy is becoming more and more important. It's a trend for a long time. And now digitalization making it even tougher because a lot of goods or a lot of services are free or they are paid in different ways. And unless we can find better ways to measure the service economy and digital services, the policy makers are not going to be able to get a good grip on what is the level of economic activity, what's the capacity utilization, monetary policy and lots of fiscal policy is geared towards knowing what is the state of the economy and it's becoming more difficult to measure that. So they need to get grips on how to measure the new service activities and digital activities. Thank you very much indeed. Thank you. And please tune in to the ITU YouTube channel for more insightful and informative videos. Thank you.