This social protection lecture (SPL) series has been conducted since March 2021 and scheduled to take place regularly every month until July next year. Conducted online, the events aim at bringing together diverse perspectives, knowledge and practices of social protection policies and systems around the world for policy makers to learn and adopt.

Ippei Tsuruga, Manager for ILO’s Social Protection Programme, said, “Indonesia is undergoing a massive social protection system reform to better protect the workers. Policy makers in Indonesia may wish to learn international standards and practices from the experts to be adopted and adjusted according to the country’s needs. These series of lectures will facilitate the learning process.”

The lecture is held every last Wednesday of the month for an hour and half and is conducted with the support of Government of Japan and Fast retailing Co., Ltd. Stakeholders, partners and other interested individuals are welcome to join this public lecture. Below summaries the first three of the lectures.

SPL #1: Countering Unemployment in the United Kingdom

This first lecture, held in March 2021, presented John West, a former staff of the UK's Ministry of Labour and Education. He shared the development of public employment service in the UK from 1970s-2000s. His presentation was summarized from his report Countering unemployment in the United Kingdom published by ILO. “During the shock, many measures had been taken to combat unemployment. Some measures worked, but some others needed improvement. So, never waste a crisis. This is the best time to attract the interest of the politicians to support your proposed policy,” he said.

SPL #2: Public employment services and unemployment benefit schemes through digital channels in Asia

The second lecture, held in July 2021, Dr Lee Sang Hyon, a research Fellow at Korea Employment Information Service (KEIS), who shared challenges the traditional public employment service (PES) delivery and how Asian countries use digital channels for an effective and integrated PES mechanism and unemployment benefit scheme. “Digitalization of job center provides effectiveness on the delivery of employment services while reducing cost of PES staff. Last year, we started to develop an AI based job matching platform. We expect this platform to work faster than manual job counsellor,” Lee shared the practice in Korea.

SPL #3: The role of stakeholders in social protection reform in South Africa

The third lecture, held in August 2021, presented Dr Virginia Petersen, a social protection expert of ILO’s International Turin Centre (ITC), discussed regarding social protection reform in South Africa, particularly on the importance of stakeholders’ involvement. She shared the role of stakeholders in setting up the priority, establishing the institutions as well as ensuring good governance and quality of the implementation. “In order for a reform to take place, it is important to look at in what framework are you going to do your reform because that will show you how to involve your stakeholders. The stakeholders should be given multiple channels to exercise their voice to shape future needs of social security institution,” she said.

The upcoming sessions will be updated regularly on the event page.