Debate: Society needs concrete digital solutions

Digitalization is changing our society in a way that is at least as profound as steam power once was when industrial society took shape. There is an urgent need to start adapting the labor market, the education system, social insurance and social planning to new conditions. The challenges are far from new, but studies, debates and proposals have generally been at a general, often utopian level, and have failed to concretize the problems or link them to tangible and possible solutions.

The Digitization Commission has just submitted its report to IT Minister Mehmet Kaplan. The Commission has worked diligently on a number of sub-reports, but it can be noted that this report also deals with a general level and fails to seriously problematize our social systems. The Commission touches on six focus areas, all of which are urgent and mention a number of different regulations that should be changed, but without going into what in these regulations should actually be changed. It is the lack of concrete problematization that risks leading to Sweden not being able to take full advantage of the opportunities of digitization.

IT&Telekomföretagen recently launched the Digital Challenge think tank with the task of mapping and discussing the effects of digitization, both the positive and the more problematic. In the short time that the think tank has been working, we have identified a number of obstacles to a more efficient digital Sweden, obstacles that are political and that simply must be solved.

The nature of business is changing as large companies break up into a multitude of subcontractors. Many assembly line workers are now employed by temporary employment agencies, development work is done by consultancies, and large staffs have been replaced by law and strategy firms. Another problem is what we might call 'forced entrepreneurship', that is, people becoming entrepreneurs because, in a rapidly changing economy, there are no longer as many permanent jobs.

Laws and regulations are adapted to large companies, but what do we do when a large part of the economy is made up of small or one-man businesses working in networks without formal employment with the intermediary company? Perhaps we need to find ways to simplify entrepreneurship with new forms of companies, a less complicated tax system and insurance and social security systems that are better adapted to a workforce that is far more flexible than the one that existed when the systems were once built? These are questions that need to be discussed in depth.

Digitalization is rapidly transforming the economy, making knowledge, skills and competences commodities. Yet, we are stuck with an education system that is extremely backward. We are in school from infancy until we are 25-30 years old. Then nothing much happens. This huge and concentrated educational effort is probably no longer rational. Firstly, we are likely to forget most of what we have learned, not least because we are young and unfocused during education. Second, much of what we remember is probably dated shortly after we learned it. Thirdly, the demand for excellence is increasing, so 'highly educated' is not necessarily the same as 'highly skilled'.

The model of a long basic education at a young age dates back to the 19th century and is in urgent need of an overhaul with the aim of diversifying education to the lifelong and increasingly specialized learning we need in the future. However, this is not what is happening. On the contrary, even longer primary education is being discussed, with an engineering degree now taking five years instead of the previous four. This is another system that needs to be discussed and reformed.

Digitalization could lead to far more efficient and qualitative health and social care by providing health care providers with a comprehensive knowledge of the patient's entire health history and medication. Today, this is virtually impossible. Although medical records and other documents are digital, they are treated as paper. Rigid privacy regulation leads to documentation being compartmentalized into well-hidden silos, which may protect patients' privacy but not their health. Malpractice and unintended side effects lead to an estimated 1,400 deaths per year, a large-scale systemic failure that would be completely unacceptable in other areas. Privacy protections have been built up over the years and are there for various good reasons, but they are currently crucial obstacles to efficiency and quality improvement, and must therefore be discussed without prejudice.

The three systems listed above were created a long time ago and have since been gradually expanded. Today they are extremely complex to reform. Each expansion has been made on well-motivated grounds, but the overall effect has become an obstacle that in the long term may entail decisive disadvantages for Swedish welfare and competitiveness.

Let us therefore discuss concrete changes and not shy away from changing systems that no longer deliver goods for today's and tomorrow's needs. The radical transformation of Sweden in the 19th century - with public schools, abolition of the guild system, freedom of trade and abolition of the Riksdag - was a prerequisite for modern industrial Sweden. Now, in the digital society, we need to do it again.

Lars Ilshammar, contemporary historian, head of KB's physical collections and chairman of Digital Utmaning

Ellinor Bjennbacke, Head of Industrial Policy at IT&Telecomföretagen and Board Member of Digital Utmaning