Toward the aims stated above, YEP-D 2017 gathers the participants, invited speakers, moderators as well as press and offers short lectures, information sessions and a contest-like setup to facilitate a creative discussion environment.
Despite the quality and depth of formal education in universities, skills related to intellectual/professional discussion, decision making under tight constraints and effective reporting are not widespread. Furthermore, a goal-oriented attitude often seems to be a missing asset which is mostly gained in a rather late stage of a professional’s career. In a rapidly changing economic and business environment, however, relatively earlier acquisition of such skills would be of high value-added.
Expected outcome-at-large of the project on the side of participants is to gain a holistic view as well as an elevated capacity of re-generating the individual skills mentioned above. In addition to those, a follow-up network in which the participants might share views and experiences during their subsequent career paths is maintained.
Workings of YEP-D 2017
The 60 participants of YEP-D 2017 will form 5 equally sized teams.
Five tasks will be offered in the Workshop, each of which will be studied by all teams.
Members of each team will stay intact during the Workshop, where roles within teams will alternate between team members. Members of each team are assigned roles from state offices. These offices cover a wide range of Ministries, related agencies and other institutions. Visit
https://www.kaysis.gov.tr/ for a comprehensive list of those agencies and their functional relationships.
For each task, there will be 2 experts from each state office within each group. The participants are expected to come prepared with background info, data, points to raise, global trends; to discuss the issues below and make policy recommendations for changes regarding below issues that impact the global economy; and to participate in such a way that as if they will prepare a road map for the Prime Minister.
The outcome (product) of each task will be a brief-yet-powerful presentation. Each team will prepare one presentation per task that will be evaluated by an evaluating committee, here the Workshop organizers. As the evaluators will mimic the Prime Minister and his/her aides, it is important to keep in mind that "prime ministers typically do not have time and they cannot be suffocated with unnecessary data, so the experts should carefully decide on what data to present and they should present it as a well-communicating road map". A good road map is sensible, applicable and viable. So, suggestion of moving to Mars is cool, but should be discussed with Elon Musk, NASA, etc.
The themes and tentative subtopics are as below:
1. INNOVATIVE SOCIETY
- E-commerce
- Internet of Things
- R&D and productivity
2. AGING SOCIETY
- Health needs and elder care
- Big data and internet for healthcare industry: records, diagnosis, international exchange vs privacy of personal data
- Savings and pensions, sustainable living
- Consumption patterns
- Jobs, migration, changing patterns of labor
3. INFRASTRUCTURE INVESTMENTS FOR LONG-TERM GROWTH
- PPP structures, pros and cons; do we need them and why?
- Public involvement: budget, deficit, efficiency in decision making
- Financing: state guarantees, IFIs, etc.
- Private sector incentives: how to align them with public welfare?
- Policy dialogue: what is needed, what can be improved?
- Tariffs on regulated industries: municipal services, airlines, tolls, etc.
4. EQUALITY OF OPPORTUNITIES OR OUTCOME
- Education
- Inclusion: gender, regional, youth
- PISA: why do we lag?
- Health
5. ENERGY
- Potential of Turkey
- Green energy and financing: bonds?
- Renewables and incentives, environmental aspect
- Pollution and other hazards, how to lower through incentives
- Sustainability: what, how, when?
Subtopics are some of the issues that participants need to include in their big-picture discussions, but the list can be expanded. As team and role assignments will be made on-site in Dokuz Eylül University, İzmir, all participants are supposed to cover a rich set of readings prior to YEP-D 2017. We believe this is the beauty of learning so as to make informed and data-driven decisions. In addition, developing skills to manage difficult conversations, as in most policy-making setups, and to negotiate with experts of different institutions, facing unaligned incentives and outcome expectations are essential elements of the Workshop. A commonly agreed notion of optimization is then necessary.
