Tech and Inequalities in the Public Sector

Hosted by Ulster University's Centre for Public Administration, and the Edinburgh Futures Institute, and featuring Professors Virginia Eubanks (CUNY) and Safiya Noble (UCLA), this interactive seminar will facilitate discussion across sectors on the key tech and inequality issues facing decision-makers in this fast-moving policy environment.

The use of technology to solve social problems has come sharply into focus in the era of COVID-19, as states and citizens are thrust into a world lived much more online, and public health solutions to a global pandemic increasingly rely on emerging technologies.  This workshop will  invite participants to consider the key issues facing policy-makers related to the use of technological innovation to prevent and reduce inequalities in areas of health and social services. It will ask participants to consider what areas of work should researchers prioritise in order to support key stakeholders (policy-makers, designers and engineers, the public) in the ethical and responsible inclusion of technological innovation in health and social services?

Virginia Eubanks of CUNY and Safiya Noble of UCLA are two of the leading scholars exploring technology and inequalities. These scholars will join a panel of speakers in the public and private sectors. The interactive panel discussion will be followed by an online workshop in which  civil society organisations and advocacy groups, policy-makers and researchers across the arts and humanities, health, social and computer sciences will work together to identify priorities in the following areas:

• Big Data and Algorithmic Decision Making in the Public Sector
• The ethics of precarious labour and technological innovation
• Vulnerable populations and the digital economy: Creating opportunities and reducing marginalisation
• Big data, surveillance and public health.

The workshop will seek to complement and support the ongoing work in the public, private and voluntary sectors and to facilitate collaboration between academia, government and industry.

Spaces are limited. For more information, please contact Bethany Waterhouse-Bradley at b.waterhouse-bradley@ulster.ac.uk.