Call for papers | ELA TECH conference 3rd edition

ELA TECH Conference 3rd edition | Call for papers

English (124.48 KB - PDF)

Robotic process automation in labour mobility

The objective of the European Labour Authority (“ELA” or “the Authority”) is to contribute to ensuring fair and effective labour mobility across the European Union. With its mandate, ELA inter alia promotes sharing and disseminating good practices between the Member States, and strives to improve the availability, quality, accessibility, and user-friendliness of information regarding rights and obligations offered to individuals, employers and social partner organisations.

As per ELA's mandate, the Authority shall also encourage the use of innovative approaches to effective and efficient cross-border cooperation and shall promote the potential use of digital tools to facilitate the access to data and detection of fraud, thus promoting cooperation and exchange of information between Member States.

Automation technologies are software technologies that mimic human actions at digital level enabling to automate tasks that are for example repetitive, and rule based. By using automation technologies in business processes, human resources are saved, and the tasks are completed faster and more consistently. Capacity can be easily increased by allocating additional IT and computing resources to handle peaks in workloads for which it wouldn't be possible to find readily available human resources. The employees can then concentrate on more strategic, creative, or complex tasks. Automated algorithms and automated business tasks execution also help to reduce errors and improve the quality of task execution, which leads to higher customer satisfaction.

Intelligent automation (IA) integrates Robot Process Automation (RPA) and other AI technologies enabling the handling of more complicated tasks and enhance the scope and speed of business process automation. 

In the context of labour mobility, public administrations process data and exchange data related to various aspect of employment and social security as a set of repetitive tasks and processes. The use of automation technologies allows to do more (tasks) with less (human resources), execute tasks repetitively and in a tireless way therefore mitigating human error, facing peaks in work or business process thru automation, among many other benefits. Automation technologies hold significant potential for enhancing labour mobility by streamlining administrative processes and ensuring a smoother transition for workers moving between EU member states. Automation technologies can play an especially crucial role in the integration of, or with, EU applications and national systems by automating the data exchange processes, business rules and their execution.

Many national authorities from the area of labour and social security in the EU Member States have shown interest in learning, implementing, developing and adopting automation technology -powered solutions in their work. Automation technologies are researched by the academic community and the private sector companies develop and implement solutions which could address challenges faced by the public authorities.

ELA will host its third ELA TECH conference in the first half of 2025, which aims to facilitate dialogue and collaboration among national authorities, industry and academia on existing and emerging technological solutions supporting labour mobility. The conference will enable participants to share knowledge, expertise and experience, as well as to discover new trends, developments and best practices. The topic of automation technology -powered solutions will be one of the main topics of the conference.

What is the ELA interested in

ELA welcomes proposals on innovative digital solutions that use automation technologies like Robot Process Automation (RPA), Artificial Intelligence (AI), Low-code Platform (LCP), etc, from national authorities, private companies, academic institutions, or individuals working on related topics. These proposals could be presented and discussed at the upcoming ELA TECH conference. 

There are several areas of labour mobility where ELA is looking for innovative digital solutions powered by automation technologies. An indicative but non-exhaustive list of potential areas and processes is as follows:

Processing of applications, forms and cases

Automatic issuance / validation of cross-border social security coordination documents (eg: PD A1 documents, S1 documents) or other relevant documents for labour mobility, and their integration with other digital tools at national level and/or EU digital systems (eg: IMI, EESSI, etc);
Automated processing of the EESSI / IMI cases;

Robotic process automation in various business areas (eg: posting of workers, pensions, special education, assignment of social security number or other business cases);

System integration and notification/input data management (e.g. family benefit system, road transport, posting of workers, etc);

Automated assessment of online applications on (e.g.: posting / multistate provision determination) for employees and civil servants;

RPA supported solutions which enable citizens to benefit from automation in public services;

Compliance and detection of fraud

Automated assessment or determination of applicable labour mobility legislation;
Automated monitoring of compliance to labour law and regulations across the EU;
Automated detection of fraudulent social security claims;
Automation of complaints / infringements / claims processing in various areas of labour mobility;

Cross-border labour mobility data

Unattended automated processing / filing of cross-border labour mobility data and/or business cases;

Automated secure cross-border data exchange and information flow related to labour mobility between 2 or more Member States / labour related entities;

Analysis and risk assessment

RPA supported Labour Market data analysis and risk assessment;

Job vacancies screening

Screening of public / private sector job vacancies to match job vacancies with potential candidates using automation;

Other

Other automation technology related ideas, projects or implementations, not presented in the supra mentioned items, that could have potential application in the field of Labour Mobility for cross-border cooperation, including “new” forms of labour mobility, notably platform work, cross-border telework / remote work, etc

From whom ELA expects proposals and how they will be used

ELA welcomes proposals from national authorities, other public organisations, private companies, academia, or individuals who are interested in presenting and discussing innovative digital ideas at the ELA TECH Conference. The conference will be held in the first half of 2025.

All proposals related to or with the potential use in the labour mobility field, including labour market or social security are welcome, whether it's from well-established companies in the technological sector, start-up enterprises, governmental and non-governmental organisations (NGOs), academic institutions or individual initiatives, etc.

ELA will invite the authors of the selected papers to present at the TECH conference open for attendance to the National Authorities of EU Member States responsible for activities under the scope of ELA mandate (such as labour inspectorates, social security institutions, public employment services, etc.) and other interested stakeholders, considering their:

relevance and practical use of the proposal in the area of labour mobility; added value of the
proposed solution for national authorities, regarding workers and employers exercising rights pertaining to free movement;
relevance of the solution for a given sector;
innovativeness regarding the idea or solution used;
cost-benefit of the practical implementation of the proposed solution;
ability to deploy the idea or solution across several Member States;
simplification of processes and overcoming administrative burdens;
contribution to the detection and combatting of fraudulent practices and risk assessment .

What format is accepted

The Authority will accept submissions in form of a document explaining and presenting the solutions. In addition to the main document, additional materials can be provided such as videos, audios, presentations or demos of solutions.

Terms and Conditions

As the aim of the proposals is their potential presentation and discussion during the conference, no sensitive or confidential information should be included in any of the material submitted to ELA.¹

If selected, the (written) presentations given during the conference may be published in ELA’s website and social media channels. By submitting your proposal to ELA within the context of this call, you agree to the publication of your presentation given at the conference on ELA’s website and its social media channels.

Furthermore, ELA may publish the audio-visual recordings of the conference on its website and social media channels. If selected to present your proposal at the conference, you agree to the publication of the audio-visual recording of your intervention.

It is the exclusive responsibility and sole liability of the submitter(s) of the proposals to guarantee full intellectual property ownership and copy rights for the submitted material, or to have the relevant authorisations or licence(s) for its use.2 Attention should also be paid in this respect when using images, logos, photos or trademarks, etc in any written presentation to support your intervention at the conference, if selected.

There is no obligation or intention by the Authority to purchase any of the selected proposals nor is their participation at the ELA TECH conference an endorsement of any kind by the Authority or by any of the participants. All the submission process will be conducted in English and the submitted proposals are expected to be written or spoken in English.

¹ Please note that ELA is subject to the EU’s transparency regime. To avoid potential issues when receiving requests for public access to documents, please ensure that your material does not contain any information that could negatively impact your commercial interests or intellectual property upon disclosure.

Schedule and submission process

Solutions within the scope of this CALL for PAPERS should be submitted via this link.

Please send us your proposals before 23:00 (Bratislava time), 30 November 2024.

Do you have any question?

Please send us your questions via the contact form available in the submission webform at EUSurvey - Contact Form (europa.eu).