overview 23 Figure O.18 From a technological standpoint, two-thirds of all jobs are susceptible to automation in the developing world, but the effects are moderated by lower wages and slower technology adoption Estimated share of employment that is susceptible to automation, latest year 100 80 60 40 be computerized (%)20 Share of employment that can 0 India Malta atvia Nepal Serbia China L Nigeria Bolivia anama Angola OECD Cyprus Croatia ajikistan Ukraine Ethiopia araguay P Ecuador Albania Georgia Bulgaria Malaysia Thailand Uruguay T Nicaragua Mongolia P Mauritius Costa Rica Romania Lithuania Seychelles Argentina Uzbekistan Cambodia El Salvador Guatemala Bangladesh yrgyz Republic South Africa K Macedonia, FYR est Bank and Gaza Dominican Republic W Adjusted (technological feasibility + adoption time lags) Unadjusted (technological feasibility) Source: WDR 2016 team. See figure 2.24 in the full Report for more details. Data at http://bit.do/WDR2016-FigO_18. Note: For more details see figure 2.24 in the full Report. OECD = Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. growth and frees human and financial resources technology and education, and the winners will be for deployment in sectors with higher returns. It those who encourage skill upgrading so that all can also reduces the need for humans to do physically benefit from digital opportunities. hard, repetitive, or dangerous work. Such trends will be welcome in countries that are rapidly aging or Engendering control: The gap between where the population is declining, or in professions institutions and technology where skills are in short supply. Telemedicine and The internet was expected to usher in a new era of automated diagnostics, for instance, allow medical accountability and political empowerment, with experts to serve many more people, even remotely in citizens participating in policy making and forming areas with a shortage of doctors. self-organized virtual communities to hold gov- And fears of “technological unemployment” go ernment to account. These hopes have been largely back to the industrial revolution. Even such think- unmet. While the internet has made many govern- ers as the economist John Maynard Keynes and the ment functions more efficient and convenient, it has writer Isaac Asimov submitted to this fallacy. Keynes, generally had limited impact on the most protracted in the 1930s, predicted 15-hour workweeks by the problems—how to improve service provider account- end of the 20th century, and Asimov, in a 1964 essay, ability (principal-agent problems) and how to broaden expected that one of the most pressing problems for public involvement and give greater voice to the poor humanity by 2014 would be boredom “in a society of and disadvantaged (collective action problems). enforced leisure.” Yet over the centuries, economies Whether citizens can successfully use the internet have adapted to massive changes in labor markets— to raise the accountability of service providers depends the largest by far, being the shift out of agriculture. In on the context. Most important is the strength of 1910, there were 12 million farmworkers in the United existing accountability relationships between policy States. One hundred years later, there were only makers and providers, as discussed in the 2004 World 700,000 in a population more than three times larger. Development Report, Making Services Work for Poor People. Still, nobody can predict the full impact of techno- An examination of seventeen digital engagement ini- logical change in coming decades, which may be tiatives for this Report finds that of nine cases in which faster and broader than previous ones. What is clear, citizen engagement involved a partnership between however, is that policy makers face a race between civil society organizations (CSOs) and government,