Lessons from the COVID 19 pandemic

Reinhard Grünwald | January 28, 2022

The COVID-19 pandemic as a worldwide shock has fundamental effects on personal, social, political as well as cultural developments. Policymakers faced and still face the challenge of making serious decisions in the midst of a dynamically evolving crisis under great uncertainty. At the same time, Covid-19 is acting as a catalyst for transforming entire spheres of life, such as by accelerating the digitization of education, work, and social life.

Countries around the world have dealt with the pandemic in different ways. What were the political and societal discussions about the role of technology, science, and innovation? What can we learn from these discussions? The European Network of Parliamentary Technology Assessment Institutions has sought answers to these questions in a report entitled "The COVID-19 pandemic: Drawing lessons to strengthen societies" - a joint production of EPTA members, to which TAB also contributed a country report. The synthesis chapter was written by the Dutch Rathenau Instituut, which held the EPTA presidency in 2021, and the Norwegian Board of Technology. The international comparison of the handling of the COVID-19 pandemic makes this study unique in its kind.

For example, it is very interesting to see how differently different countries have navigated the tension that exists between the protection of personal data and the importance of comprehensive data availability for targeted and evidence-based containment of the pandemic. The poles on this spectrum are marked on one side by South Korea, which is using all available data to track contacts of infected individuals - from cell phone tracking to credit card payment transactions to surveillance cameras in public spaces. On the other hand, Germany places much more emphasis on data protection, which resulted, among other things, in the Corona warning app foregoing central data storage. It is also exciting to see how the crisis triggered by the pandemic has unleashed creativity: One internationally highly regarded example, for example, is the German hackathon "WirVsVirus" [https://wirvsvirus.org/], in which thousands of citizens participated in March 2020 to find IT-based solutions to a wide range of problems arising from the Corona crisis.

The report was officially handed over on November 9, 2021, during the annual EPTA conference, which this time took place in a hybrid format (online and offline in The Hague). The Rathenau Instituut, as the organizer, had invited Marc Roscam Abbing, the program director for COVID-19 of the Dutch government, to attend. During the conference, the authors discussed their research findings with members of parliament and other policymakers .

This year the German Bundestag and TAB have the honor to take over the EPTA presidency. Thus, as scheduled, we will hold a director's meeting in May, as well as an international conference in fall, this time focussing the topic of "Societal Disruptions" and the role of technology and technology assessment.