This time, I am responding to the wish to explain what the duties of TEK’s chair and the board are. The duties of the chair can be divided into TEK activities and other advocacy efforts. Everything centres around the goal of building better work life and a more sustainable world. Our board activities are governed by values, the council agreement and the annual budget and plan. Through them, we make decisions as a board on key activities and services as well as membership benefits, such as magazines. One example of our development efforts is the DataX project, where the aim is to produce forward-looking membership services.
We reorganised our committees based on discussions last autumn. We appointed labour market and themed committees, including the new Work Life Committee. Before summer, we are looking for members for fixed-term International and Doctoral Committees.
I serve as the chair of the presiding officers of the board and as chair of the economic division. I believe in the importance of engaging in open, constructive and confidential dialogue on all issues. In order to cherish such dialogue, we have prepared a Code of Conduct for the board.
The other advocacy efforts include lobbying to achieve our RDI goals and to influence labour market policy, the promotion of STEM subjects, the wellbeing of tech professionals and science and university policy. I meet individuals and speak at various events. I am continuing my parliamentary RDI work as the chair of the new RDI monitoring group. We have invited MPs with a background in tech to various events and even the Teekkari Cap Day that we came up with can be seen every year in Parliament’s Hall of State.
The article was published as a column in TEK Magazine 3/2024.
