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There is a legal requirement in the UK to eradicate greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change by 2050. While central government provides the national policy framework, local authorities undertake many activities and service provisions. However, the level of ambition and degree of effectiveness in net zero emissions delivery is variable across the UK.
A new policy brief – Tools for Local Government Net-Zero Decision Making – investigates how local authorities currently access energy information, and the kinds of model or decision-support that would be useful as they embark on increasingly challenging forms of localised energy planning.
The role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in our everyday lives is extensive. It is used in everything and everywhere: from taking an Uber to emailing or managing University coursework. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that AI has infiltrated the world of work, and its hiring processes, as well.
There is a growing demand among employers for video interviewing services offered by digital hiring platforms especially in recruiting young jobseekers. These video interviewing systems often rely on AI-based technologies to schedule, track, conduct and sometimes even assess interviews with job applicants.
A new policy brief from Drs Zahira Jaser, Dimitra Petrakaki, Rachel Starr and Ernesto Oyarbide-Magaña explores these technologies from the perspectives of the ultimate users: young jobseekers. The emergent picture is one of opacity, complexity, and uncertainty.
The report identifies a spectrum of degrees of automation in interview processes, from traditional face-to-face to Asynchronous Video Interviews (AVIs) – where candidates video-record their answers to be assessed at a later time. This spectrum represents a gradual ‘depersonalisation’ of the interview process, which may be increasingly disorientating for jobseekers and have a possible negative impact on their interview performance.
To meet the perceived demands of the AI technology respondents reported adopting progressively unnatural behaviours. The more the interview was automated, the more the candidate described feelings of de-humanisation and simultaneous feelings of empowerment of the AI-based technologies.
Based on these findings, the authors have put forward a series of recommendations for employers, hiring platforms and policymakers. These include:
The authors conclude that AVIs should not be a candidate’s only interaction with a company. Instead, platforms and employers need to properly balance any use of AI tools with a human approach.
Read the Policy Brief: Automated job interviews and the implications for young jobseekers
Digital health platforms have the potential to establish and develop medical professionalism in developing countries, especially where continuous professional development opportunities are scarce or under-developed.
A new policy brief by Drs Dimitra Petrakaki and Petros Chamakiotis examines how this can be achieved by drawing on a qualitative study of a non-profit platform, MedicineAfrica, that is dedicated to delivering free online health education in post-conflict countries.
Source: MedicineAfrica Archives
Science, technology and innovation (STI) systems in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) play a crucial role in addressing a range of development challenges. However, building and strengthening STI systems in SSA is as much a political and economic challenge as it is technical.
A team of researchers from the Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU) at the University of Sussex and the African Centre for Technology Studies (ACTS) in Kenya have conducted a political economy analysis of the STI systems in five SSA countries – Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Senegal and Tanzania – and provide recommendations relevant to each national case, especially for each national Science Granting Council.
A new research study helps to explain the inadequate performance of NHS Test and Trace described by Dido Harding at a House of Commons Science & Technology committee evidence session in September, through direct comparison with how similar services are organised in other countries.
Comparing the UK’s Covid testing response to five other nations suggests that a key flaw in the NHS Test and Trace service is the failure to provide medical oversight over access to testing, and not frivolous overuse by members of the public.
The UK is the only country of those studied to both provide tests without first going through healthcare experts and to heavily rely on self-sample collection rather than have experts take swabs for patients, explains a study led by Prof Michael Hopkins in the Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU) at the University of Sussex Business School. Read more ›
There is a renewed interest in agricultural intensification and the transformation of the livelihoods of subsistence farmers in sub-Saharan Africa. The government of Rwanda, for example, is promoting intensification as a central strategy to increase incomes and improve food security for smallholder farmers.
Connected Care aims to address three main challenges that care homes face with regards to people living with dementia
By Maria Savona
Professor of Innovation and Evolutionary Economics
At exceptional times of public health emergency such as the present Covid-19 pandemic, Taiwan seems to have contained the spread of contagion better than other countries. The country has managed to digitally track individuals with symptoms and their contacts to contain the spread, with a mix of community based app, releasing data on symptoms and positions, and a fast reaction by the digital minister who has coordinated the government’s response. This seems to be an interesting synergy of decentralised and centralised governance of data for a relevant public purpose.
Lecturer in Accounting (University of Sussex Business School).
On 15 October 2017, an American actress, Alyssa Milano, tweeted: “If you’ve been sexually harassed or assaulted write ‘me too’ as a reply to this tweet”.
Everyone knows what happened next. The Twitter message went viral and triggered one of the largest contemporary movements against abuse of power, assault and harassment. This social movement is continuous and ongoing, digital and global, uniting and encouraging thousands of women and men to speak out and act against sexual harassment and assault.
The problem of sexual harassment and misconduct in the workplace is complex and needs to be tackled from many different directions.
Dr Goncharenko commenced a research project in November 2018 that aimed to understand how the #MeToo movement transformed the public perception of accountability for abuse of power in the workplace and caused the development of new social and regulatory mechanisms to hold organisations and individuals to account.
As an output of the project and as part of an ESRC Festival of Social Sciences event on 8 November, Galina has produced a guide, the objective of which is to:
Read the guide #MeToo: A journey towards a harassment-free workplace
Lecturer in Energy Policy (SPRU – Science Policy Research Unit) University of Sussex.
With the development of renewable energy sources, decentralised energy production is becoming more prevalent and its rapid expansion is disrupting politics in the energy sector.
Generated off-grid and produced close to where it will be used – rather than at a large plant elsewhere and sent through the national grid – decentralised energy can include micro-renewables, heating and cooling as well as geothermal, biomass or solar energy. Schemes can serve a single building, a whole community or be built out across an entire city.
As renewable energy communities capture market share, they are disrupting ownership of a sector that has traditionally been controlled by a relatively small number of profit-maximizing firms with increasing political conflict between new entrants and incumbent regime actors.
Dr Marie Claire Brisbois, as part of The Powershifts Project is examining the impact of renewable energy communities – a specific form of decentralised energy – on politics and markets. The first stage of the research used three case studies to understand whether and how political power is shifting and the implications of this change.
The key findings are:
The expansion of renewable energy communities has implications for the overall fairness, stability and security of power systems.
Dr Brisbois is currently soliciting survey responses for Phase 2 of the Powershifts Project from policymakers and regulators who work on issues related to decentralised energy.
Read the policy brief: The political implications of energy decentralisation
