Opening of the Office for Time

Established because it was necessary: the Office for Time is opening its doors and invites you to the grand opening. Anyone who does not have time to attend has already demonstrated just how serious the situation is.

Programme

• Introduction to the Office
• Official opening address
• Hourglass ceremony

Refreshments will be provided. But there’s no need to rush.

About the Office for Time

The Office for Time has a mandate to monitor the distribution of the resource ‘time’ within society, to highlight existing inequalities and to lay the foundations for a fair distribution of time.

Public administration has institutions and instruments for resources such as money, health and the environment. To date, there is no comparable institution for time, even though time is central to quality of life, health, care and social participation, and is distributed unequally.

Public discourse tends to view time primarily as a factor of production: the assumption is that longer working hours will lead to greater productivity and prosperity. With the advent of AI and automation, the question therefore becomes all the more pressing: who benefits from the time resources thus freed up, and how are they distributed within society?

The Office for Time is an initiative by Dezentrum and the Centre for Development and Environment (CDE) as part of the project ‘Experiments on reducing working hours’ (EvA), funded by the Mercator Switzerland Foundation.