Ethics in the digital workplace
Digitisation and automation technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI), can affect working conditions in a variety of ways and their use in the workplace raises a host of new ethical concerns.
The Ministry of Health of the Czech Republic has announced its plan to reform hygiene stations and cut 134 job positions. Hygiene stations are regional administrative offices that perform specialised professional activities in the field of protection and promotion of public health. According to the Ministry, public health system- the hygiene stations system in particular- needs a reform that would bring financial savings and greater efficiency. It therefore plans to abolish all the 14 regional hygiene stations and connect all health services into one large state health system, probably headquartered in Prague. This planned centralisation necessarily translates into redundancies, 134 mainly in administrative roles. The Ministry no longer plans to use the so-called 'smart quarantine' project to trace the contacts of affected poeple and prevent the spread of COVID-19 virus, in which the government invested CZK 148 million (€ 5.5 million). The entire health system reform is planned within a 5-year horizon.
Eurofound (2022), Ministry of Health of the Czech Republic, Internal restructuring in Czechia, factsheet number 107222, European Restructuring Monitor. Dublin, https://restructuringeventsprod.azurewebsites.net/restructuring-events/detail/107222.