pensionpolicyinternational.com (06.05.2021) The Federal Statistical Office (FSO) reported External linkthat in 2019 between 40-50% of people started receiving their pension from their so-called second pillar before the legal retirement age – 65 for men and 64 for women

worldbank.org (05.05.2021) Progress in Latin America and the Caribbean over the last three decades has increased gender equality, notably in employment. With the onset of the COVID-19 crisis, however, necessary public health measures have put these gains in jeopardy. Throughout the pandemic thus far, women have been more likely than men to lose their jobs and less likely to regain them when conditions allow. Where families have school-age children, many more women than men have withdrawn from or lost work outside the home. By participating in information gathering on the nature and extent of these trends, Latin American and Caribbean countries have gained valuable insights and tools for accurately assessing the situation and preparing to address it as the crisis recedes.

sciencemag.org (06.11.2020) Telemedicine comes in many shapes and sizes and offers many advantages over the traditional healthcare visit, but until recently, it was largely underutilized. The COVID-19 pandemic quickly changed that—only time will tell if telemedicine’s new popularity will last.  On March 11, 2020, COVID-19 was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization, radically changing the way medicine is practiced. In the span of a few weeks, as quarantining and social distancing became the norm, in-person medical visits plummeted, suddenly thrusting telemedicine from the wings of medical care to center stage. “The pandemic created a huge public health issue, but the biggest problem wasn’t that COVID-19 patients couldn’t get care—it was that people without the disease couldn’t access their normal care,” says Michael Okun, professor and chair of neurology at the University of Florida.

Immediately before the pandemic, 300 enterprise Mayo Clinic physicians and advanced practice providers had performed a minimum of one video telemedicine consult in the preceding year. By July 15, 2020, the number of Mayo Clinic providers performing video telemedicine consults had risen to >6,500, reflecting a 2,000% increase. Through this pandemic, we have witnessed unprecedented growth in telemedicine utilization. The existing telemedicine system has proven to be scalable.

dw.com (10.05.2021) Heads of the bloc's 27 member states hope to reduce social and economic inequalities that have widened during the coronavirus pandemic.

politico.eu (06.05.2021) Leaders are facing social-welfare policy questions for a changed world. Their answers could alter the EU’s relationship with member states.

institutdelors.eu (03.05.2021) Three and a half years after the Gothenburg Summit, which resulted in the proclamation of the European Pillar of Social Rights (EPSR), heads of State and government will meet once again on 7 and 8 May 2021 for the Porto Social Summit. This summit is set to mark a significant moment in the Portuguese presidency of the Council of the European Union (EU), which has made the task of strengthening the European social model one of its priorities.  The aim of the Social Summit will be to give a political impetus at all levels (European institutions, Member States, social partners and civil society) to the implementation of the European Pillar of Social Rights and more specifically to endorse its Action Plan.

Euronews (05.05.2021) What happens when job retention schemes come to an end in Europe? Job retention schemes have kept millions of people in work during the pandemic and lockdowns. As these emergency measures are gradually phased out, how does Europe ensure there are enough jobs and that people have the right skills for the jobs of the future?

oecd.org (29.04.2021) Active labour market policies (ALMPs) that connect people to jobs will help to ensure an equitable and sustained recovery from the COVID‑19 crisis. Already in 2020, many governments reacted swiftly to the crisis by increasing funding for their public employment services (PES), training programmes and measures to increase labour demand. This has allowed the PES to hire additional staff and expand remote and digital accessibility to ensure service continuity. However, additional resources are needed in 2021 and the years to come to ensure that high-quality employment services and programmes can be effective in fostering a quick reintegration of the many jobseekers into the labour market. This policy brief highlights how OECD and a number of other countries have responded to the crisis in adapting and expanding the provision of employment services.

EURACTIV.com (12.03.2021) Spain’s government announced a deal that will recognise riders working for delivery firms such as Deliveroo and UberEats as salaried staff following complaints about their working conditions — a first in the EU. The move came six months after Spain’s leftwing government pledged to clarify the legal status of couriers working for online delivery firms, saying they should be considered employees rather than “gig” workers. It will strike at the heart of the so-called gig economy, which relies on hundreds of thousands of independent workers for app-based services such as food delivery or car rides. The government’s deal with Spanish labour unions sets up the first legislation in Europe that explicitly regulates the status of delivery workers who get around on bikes and motorcycles and whose numbers have exploded in recent years. In Spain, as in other countries, the riders have repeatedly denounced their precarious working conditions, taking legal action to demand recognition as salaried staff, which would grant them benefits such as paid holidays and sick leave. “They are now considered as salaried workers and will enjoy all the relevant protections,” Labour Minister Yolanda Diaz said in a televised address. Spain is “the first country in the European Union to legislate on the matter”, Diaz said.

reuters.com (02.05.2021) Australia's conservative government will increase childcare subsidies, officials said on Sunday, in a pre-budget announcement that pledges A$1.7 billion ($1.31 billion) to boost female participation in the workplace. The spending targets families with more than one child in daycare, boosting subsidies for those with two or more children aged up to five years-old to a maximum 95% subsidy for their second and subsequent children.

moroccoworldnews.com (28.04.2021) On April 14, Morocco’s King Mohammed VI presided over the signing of three framework agreements to generalize obligatory health insurance for a wide range of social categories, including professionals, self-employed workers, and non-salaried individuals exercising a private activity. The historic reform will cost MAD 51 billion ($5.71 billion) annually, of which MAD 23 billion ($2.57 billion) will come from the state budget. The reform includes several objectives.

ipcig.org  (09.04.2021) The fourth and last section of the Policy in Focus1 magazine analyses the social protection responses to the COVID-19 crisis in Asian countries

Bloomberg (28.04.2021) President Joe Biden will unveil on Wednesday a sweeping $1.8 trillion plan to expand educational opportunities and child care for families, funded in part by the largest tax increases on wealthy Americans in decades -- the centerpiece of his first address to a joint session of Congress. Called the American Families Plan, Biden’s third major legislative proposal combines $1 trillion in spending with $800 billion in tax cuts and credits for middle- and lower-income families. The plan would make pre-kindergarten and community college free across the country, extend the child tax credit through 2025 and make permanent an expansion of the earned income tax credit to childless adults with low incomes, provide direct support to families for child care, finance teacher training and create a national paid family leave program.

blogs.worldbank.org (26.04.2021) In the months after the first cases of COVID-19 appeared in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), countries across the region acted quickly to limit the spread of the virus. Lockdowns, curfews, and social distancing undoubtedly saved lives, but these necessary actions also constrained businesses and economies. Communities suffered from the loss of jobs and livelihoods, the closure of schools and markets, and the damage to businesses, many of which may never recover.

A bill seeking to distribute financial and production support amounting to P15,000 to at least one million small fisherfolks in the country has been filed in Congress. This, as the income of small fishermen already went down to as low as P150 per fishing trip more than a year into the pandemic. In a statement, Pambansang Lakas ng Kilusang Mamamalakaya ng Pilipinas (PAMALAKAYA) backed the said bill, which aims to “pump-prime the wheels of production” amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Estonian Medical Certificate Every person needs to have a valid medical certificate for the duration of their driving license. When a medical certificate expires, a new medical certificate must be submitted to the Road Administration. Once issued, the certificate is automatically transmitted to the motor registry.

How has Estonia applied Blockchain technology to the e-Government system? Lina Network | September 7, 2020 Blockchain is considered as the key technology in e-Government development thanks to its undeniable advantages and potential. From a technical point of view, Blockchain technology increases efficiency, provides data protection and transparency. However, many countries still face certain obstacles when applying Blockchain to e-Government. In this article, Lina Network will discuss the Blockchain application of Estonia, one of the countries with the highest level of e-Government development. Some of the technical concepts mentioned in the article will be explained in section 6.

Estonia may perhaps be the earliest adopter of distributed ledger technology at a governmental level. As early as 2007, even before the publication of the Bitcoin white paper, the Estonian government was already testing blockchain applications as part of a resolution to be resilient to outsider cyberattacks. e-Estonia, a government policy to facilitate citizen interactions with the state through the use of electronic solutions, has been testing and implementing blockchain in relation to public services for many years. So much so that blockchain is has been tested across a wide range of government services and data registries, such as the national health, judicial, legislative, security and commercial code systems, with plans to extend its use to other spheres such as personal medicine, cyber-security and data embassies. The Estonian government has harnessed the power of blockchain, which, by the very way it functions, is helping to save millions of lives and resources, while mitigating the potential manipulation of sensitive data (such as health data, intelligence information, legislation-related records, etc.) or smart devices (such as military machinery, hospital equipment, intelligent cars etc.).

Digital transformation in the health sector is not a simple matter of technical change, but requires adaptive change in human attitudes and skills as well as of legal frameworks and  the organisation of work. 

The author of this report is Karolina Socha­ Dietrich, OECD Directorate of Employment, Labour and Social  Affairs (ELS), Health Division.   This report was prepared for the 2020 German Presidency of the Council of the European Union and with  the support from the German Federal Ministry of Health (2020).  

Description

This report follows the meeting, Rehabilitation 2030: A Call for Action, organized by the World Health Organization (WHO). WHO would like to express its sincere thanks to those who participated in the meeting: representatives from Member States, UN agencies, governmental and nongovernmental organizations, editors of journals, academia, institutions and WHO collaborating centres.

socialeurope.eu (20.04.2021) The labour status of people working in the online platform economy is key to their socio-economic protection. But it has proven a difficult issue for courts and regulators. The European Union is considering introducing a ‘rebuttable presumption of employment’ to help address this problem. What could this entail exactly? 

Le Maroc a annoncé avoir lancé auprès de 9 millions de bénéficiaires son plan de généralisation de la couverture sociale destiné à terme à couvrir 22 millions de personnes actuellement dépourvues d'assurance maladie. Les agriculteurs, les artisans, les commerçants, les professionnels indépendants et leurs familles seront les premiers inclus dans le régime de l'assurance maladie obligatoire (AMO) en 2021 et 2022. L'AMO s'étendra ensuite aux travailleurs des autres secteurs « dans la perspective de la généralisation effective de la protection sociale à tous les citoyens ».