Conference “E-Society.mk” – Democracy in the digital age: challenges and opportunities

For the seventeenth time in a row, the Foundation for Internet and Society, Metamorphosis is organizing the international conference “E-Society.mk”. The conference was held from November 30 to December 3, 2021. in the hotel “Panoramika” in Skopje but also online on the Zoom platform, where NEXT-EM dooel also had its presence.

The conference was attended and spoke by representatives of institutions from Europe, America, as well as our country, civil society and legal experts. At the event, in several separate sessions debated and discussed representatives of institutions, NGOs and civil society. Several workshops were held within the conference. At the session “Algorithms, privacy and security. “Let’s talk about human rights,” said the level of awareness of citizens, NGOs, the media, academia, but also the countries themselves, for automatic decision-making systems and artificial intelligence is low and this should be changed because these systems will continue to affect the well-being of citizens and therefore should cooperate with each other and with government authorities to discuss the benefits and risks of these systems. As part of the conference E-Society.mk was held the training on Cyber ​​Security – common myths and misinformation. The training tried to answer the most frequently asked questions and dilemmas that young people have regarding cyber security and online security – what exactly does online security mean, are there ways to protect ourselves while communicating, collaborating, or shopping online. Training has also been given on the GDPR, a term often used for some time, but many ignore or do not understand its value. “How to build a strong and sustainable system for protection of privacy”, through which the participants had the opportunity to get acquainted with the current Law on Personal Data Protection and mechanisms. In addition to the many trainings and workshops, an Open Data Hackathon was held.