Jean See on building an inclusive and safe digital society

Companies and businesses should be socially responsible in society and the digital economy. Regulators should take a proactive approach to educate companies on the need to respect user rights. For example, a socially responsible company would ensure that its default settings favour user privacy and autonomy, and give users unrestricted access to their own data privacy settings. There must be avenues for users trapped in unsavoury data privacy settings to get help to set themselves free from predatory companies. Such help could be in the form of help that is managed by public and private players working together. NMP Jean See, who made this call in Parliament on Wednesday (Jan 10), also urged regulators to consider imposing punitive action on recalcitrant companies and establishing guardrails to keep in check companies with predatory behaviour. To address the career needs of workers in the face of technological innovation and disruption, companies should adopt a forward-looking approach. They could work closely with the unions and sector agencies while workers should unite under representative bodies such as the unions and associations, and work closely with the Government and like-minded businesses and organisations. She stressed the need for workers to have continuous and on-the-job training to improve workforce mobility across technologies. This will build up workers' digital capital and is key to workers’ “career longevity” in the digital age, she said.