Buying Technology Through a Safety Lens

Publication overview

Publication record

Publication type: Practical Brief
Length: 6 pages
Geographic focus: Canada
Main subjects: Procurement, Workplace safety, Responsible pilots
Format: PDF

Summary

What this publication examines

Technology procurement helps shape the future job. This brief shows how safety, operations, IT, privacy, accessibility, procurement and affected workers can translate workplace needs into requirements, evidence requests, contracts and pilot decisions.

Begin with a documented workplace need and bounded use case—not a product demonstration

Key considerations

Three key considerations

Begin with a documented workplace need and bounded use case—not a product demonstration
Translate safety, work-design, privacy, security and accessibility needs into requirements, evidence requests, contracts and pilot decisions.
Translate safety, privacy, security, accessibility and work-design needs into explicit requirements
Procurement is cross-functional: safety, operations, IT, privacy, accessibility, procurement and affected workers each contribute requirements the product must meet.
Test the real work system with representative users, a baseline, training and a safe fallback
A purchase decision should follow a bounded pilot of the real work system—not only a demonstration that the tool functions as intended.

Evidence and sources

Sources and evidence notes

Complete sources and evidence notes are provided in the publication.

Official statistical and regulatory sources are used for core factual claims where available. Survey, think-tank, consulting and international evidence is used as complementary context and is identified by source type. Descriptive associations are not presented as causal effects, and measures with different populations, definitions or reference periods are not treated as directly comparable.

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