3AHITN, 3BHITN, 4AHWII, 5AHITN 2021/22
On 10 December 2021 we had the great pleasure to attend the last Euroscola online session of this year together with 2,300 other students from all across Europe, and experience what it is like to participate in a European Parliament session.
The first part of the event was a Q&A session with Ms Nicola Beer, Vice-President of the European Parliament, during which she answered questions on the topic of digital transformation in general, as well as the visions of GenZ for the digital age in particular. The students’ questions were asked via a web application called Slido or by the “raising your hand” function of the meeting software Interactio. Throughout this part of the session, the Vice-President indeed managed to answer many questions, including one from our school.
The second part of the event was an intervention by Mr Markus Warasin, Head of Unit, Secretariat of the Special Committee on Foreign Interference in the EU’s Democratic Processes, Directorate-General for External Policies of the Union, European Parliament, with three specific focuses on the topic of digital transformation: 1) cyber security threats and data protection, 2) disinformation and fake news and finally 3) digital addiction. The problems and challenges of IT- and system security were at the heart of this interesting debate. One crucial security issue is the lack of security updates on digital devices. Therefore, new security standards can only be implemented slowly, causing many ‘backdoors’ which remain open in many systems for months or even for years. Johannes Polzer (5AHITN) was streamed ‘live’, who suggested developing a law which obliges manufacturers to provide security updates in the long term. Richard Panzer (5AHITN) was given the opportunity to ask a question about the risks of a blackout regarding democracies in Europe. He stressed the fact that redundant wiring and backup energy generators are important to avoid risks of a blackout.
Participating in this Euroscola discussion about a fairer, greener, more digital and future-oriented Europe was a great honour for us. Getting answers to our questions on digitalization and IT security from EU experts is the best proof that we are well-prepared at SZU for our future jobs as global IT engineers.
The video highlights of this session are available here.
Marco Spellas (photographer, 3AHITN), Todor Lankov (3BHITN), Rako Benedikt (3BHITN), Philipp Recknagel (3BHITN), Aron Milojevic (3BHITN), Vincent Englitsch (4AHWII), Merlin Schluderbacher (4BHITN), Erik Giculovic (4BHITN), Mersed Keco (5AHWII), Johannes Polzer (5AHWII), Richard Panzer (5AHWII)
