This article analyzis two Dutch experiments in which the government guarantees a job to tackle long-term unemployment. The experiment with the Melkert jobs was carried out in the 1990s. Recently the municipality of Groningen implemented a project in which long-term unemployed people are offered a so-called basic job. The research results of this project demonstrate that the target group can do productive work on a regular basis and that basic jobs have a net positive social added value based on a Social Cost Benefit Analysis (SCBA).In this article we also pay attention to the recent academic debate betweenan unconditional basic income (BIG) and a job guarantee (JG).
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Long-term absenteeism is a persistent problem in the police organisation in the Netherlands. Around 4% of staff has been absent for over three months. For the National Police's Enhancing Professional Resilience programme, we conducted research into opportunities for increasing people's resilience when returning to work after such a long period of absenteeism. This research provides suggestions for dealing with the problem of long-term absenteeism effectively. The following issues turned out to be important: the scope of employees of their reintegration process, reciprocity in the relationship between line manager and police employee, greater knowledge of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and its causes and finally, dealing with diversity in the organisation in an active manner.
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For delayed and long-term students, the education process is often a lonely journey. The main conclusion of this research is that learning should not be an individual process of the student connected to one lecturer, but rather a community where learning is a collective journey. The social interaction between lecturers, groups of delayed students and other actors is an important engine for arriving at the new knowledge, insights and expertise that are important to reach their final level. This calls for the design of social structures and the collaboration mechanism that enable the bonding of all members in the community. By making use of this added value, new opportunities for the individual are created that can lead to study success. Another important conclusion is that in the design and development of learning communities, sufficient attention must be paid to cultural characteristics. Students who delay are faced with a loss of self-efficacy and feelings of shame and guilt. A learning community for delayed students requires a culture in which students can turn this experience into an experience of self-confidence, hope and optimism. This requires that the education system pays attention to language use, symbols and rituals to realise this turn. The model ‘Building blocks of a learning environment for long-term students’ contains elements that contribute to the study success of delayed and long-term students. It is the challenge for every education programme to use it in an appropriate way within its own educational context. Each department will have to explore for themselves how these elements can be translated into the actions, language, symbols and rituals that are suitable for their own target group.
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Despite the vast potential drone technologies have, their integration to our society has been slow due to restricting regulations. Recently, a new EU-wide drone regulation has been published. This regulation is intended to harmonize the non-uniform national regulations across EU. It also relaxes the existing restrictions and allows previously prohibited operations that have significant socio-economic and technological impacts, such as autonomous BVLOS flights even over populated areas. However, there are challenges with regard to specifics and accessibilities of the required technological & procedural prerequisite this regulation entails. There is, therefore, a demand from SMEs for practical knowledge on technological and procedural aspects of a safe, robust and BVLOS operable security drone with short and long-term autonomy that fully complies to the new drone regulation. The required drone technologies include robust obstacle avoidance, intelligence failsafe for robust, reliable and safe autonomous flights with long-term autonomy capabilities. The operational procedures include SORA, pre/in/post-flight analysis and ROC/LUC permissions. In this project, these two aspects will be addressed in an integral manner. The consortium recognizes that developing such advanced security drone in two years is ambitious. Yet, they firmly believe that it is realizable due to the complementary expertise of the consortium and their commitment for the success of the project. With this project, the knowledge institutes will enrich their practical knowledge in the area of autonomous and BVLOS capable drones, operational procedures, risk analysis and mitigations. The partner companies will be equipped with the necessary technologies, operation permission and knowledge on optimal operation procedures to be at the forefront and benefit from the exploding market opportunities when the new regulation is fully implemented in July 2022. Moreover, this project will also make a demonstrable contribution to the renewal of higher professional education.
