ethical issues of emerging ict applications

EIEx THE MAGAZINE OF THE EUROPEAN INNOVATIONEXCHANGE

ISSUE 6www.eiex.eu

ETICAEthical issues of emerging

ICT applications

ETICAEthical issues of emerging

ICT applications

CONTENTSIntroduction…………………….4

VTT……………………..……….6

TUD……………………………….8

KIT….………………….………10

FUNDP………………...………12

Recommendations…………15

Dissemination………..………17

The Future for ETICA.…….…19

EEMA…………………………...20

The Advisory Board ………...21

TRN……………………………..21

EUREX………………………….22

ANA……………………………..22

Contacts………………………. 23

ETICA n 3

Alook at today’s newspapers will probably reveal there has been someheadline to do with the use and misuse of information and communica-tion technology. Data may have been lost by a government, an officialmay have used a police database to spy on a potential girlfriend, a com-

pany may have sold data of underage users, or a file sharing provider may havebeen sued by an intellectual property holder. These are all ethical issues that arecaused by or at least related to ICT. As ICTs spread further into the fabric of per-sonal and social lives, as new technologies and applications get distributed in moreand more activities, we can expect this type of ethical concern to increase. It is easyto guess that new types of data collected for many different purposes will createbigger concerns with regards to privacy and data protection. IP issues will contin-ue to gain relevance in societies that are increasingly information driven.

While ethical issues of ICT will remain with us for the foreseeable future, our cur-rent ways of addressing these are problematic. In most cases we wait until a sig-nificant problem arises. Following public outcry, and political and media attempts topin the blame, western societies start to consider how another instance of the sameproblem might be avoided. This is a standard way that societies deal with problems.However, rather than wait until the problem is there and the solution has to be fit-ted to the existing technologies and social structures, would it not be better to thinkabout them early and prevent problems?

The ETICA project started with the assumption that such an approach was bothdesirable and possible. It set out to identify emerging technologies that can beexpected to be socially relevant in the next 10 to 15 years. These technologieswere then investigated and it was asked whether one can make reasonable andtransparent predictions about the ethical issues they may raise when they comeinto wide-spread use. On this basis, ETICA evaluated the different technologiesand their likely consequences from the perspectives of law, gender, institutionalethics and technology assessment.

A final question picked up by ETICA concerns current and possible governancearrangements. The idea behind this is that simple knowledge about the future is notsufficient to ensure that appropriate actions are taken. Even if we could exactly pre-dict which ethical issues a novel technology will raise, it is by no means clear whatshould be done about it. The project therefore looked at current governancearrangements that are used to identify and address ethical issues. It critically ques-tioned the assumptions behind those arrangements with a view to coming to rec-ommendations that will allow taking account of ethics early.

This magazine recounts the main activities of the ETICA project. It explains thelogic of the different activities and work packages and how they fit together toanswer our questions. It details methodologies, approaches and their justification.It also lists the main recommendations of the project and explains how they cancontribute to the overall project. The magazine is aimed at all those individuals andorganisations that have an interest in the ethics of ICT. It will hopefully contribute toa better understanding of the issues involved and thereby lead to a more thought-ful and reflexive use of such technologies. In the end, ethical sensitivity contributesto better products, more satisfied customers as well as a better society in which cit-izens’ needs are taken seriously. n

Mapping the moralfuture of ICTs

Editor: Ranjeet Johal

Production Editor: Nat Green

Published by The European InnovationExchange, Jubilee Lodge, Ridlington, Rutland

© European Innovation Exchange 2011

ISSN 2041-9910

The opinions and views expressed in this publication are not necessarily those of thepublisher

4 n ETICA ETICA n 5

THE ETICA project faced numerous challenges inachieving its aims of identifying emerging ICTs, find-ing out which ethical issues these were likely toraise, evaluating these issues and developing rec-ommendations concerning suitable governancearrangements to address these. In order to allow theconsortium to address them, the project was dividedinto three main stages: identification, evaluation,and governance.

During the identification stage, the project had to makea number of conceptual choices in order to be able toprogress towards its aims. An initial one of these waswhat was meant by the term ‘emerging ICT’. One prob-lem of this definition was the concept of emergence.Typically used in systems theory and related fields,emergence normally denotes the property of an entity toarise from complex interactions of parts of the system.Emergence is therefore something that is difficult, if notimpossible, to predict. In attempting to predict emergingICTs, the ETICA project therefore faced the problem oftrying to achieve the impossible.

This is a problem that all research related to the futurefaces. The future is not known and attempting to predictit is fraught with difficulties. However, one can at thesame time observe that prediction of the future is a rela-tively standard activity and modern societies in manyrespects depend on such predictions. States have towork on predictions of future population numbers and taxrevenues. Companies predict future turn-over and mar-kets. Individually we plan our lives in the face of uncer-tainty. The ETICA project is located in this ambiguousarea of knowledge and lack of knowledge.

PredictionsOne important observation related to future-orientedwork is that the certainty of predictions decreases withthe temporal horizon of the prediction. We can safelyassume that tomorrow most things will be very similar tothe way they are today. At the same time we have no cer-tainty about how things will be in 1000 years. In order tobe able to make useful predictions that are not entirelytrivial, ETICA therefore had to choose a suitable time

frame. It chose to concentrate on technologies that arelikely to emerge in the next 10 to 15 years. The reasonfor this choice is that it corresponds withthe technology development lifecycle. Technologiesthat are widelya v a i l a b l ea n d

affecthuman liveson a greater scale in thistime frame are those technologies thatare currently in early stages of research anddevelopment. By looking at current research activities,one can therefore gain a reasonable understanding oflikely technical futures.

This definition indicates a second major conceptualissue faced by the project, namely the definition of ‘infor-mation and communication technology’. What do wecount as technology and which types of technologyshould be investigated? Neither the term itself nor its cur-rent usage provides much help in arriving at a suitabledefinition.

It quickly became clear, however, that ETICA, in orderto be able to identify relevant ethical issues, would haveto look at the big picture. Bits, bytes, devices and itemsrarely have the power to affect human lives in a way thatis ethically relevant. Ethical relevance comes from sub-stantial changes to human capabilities, freedoms, choic-es, etc. The ETICA consortium therefore decided to usea definition of technology as high-level socio-technicalsystems that incorporate a view of humans and have thepotential to change the way humans interact with the

world. This definition meant that the activities of identify-ing technologies did not have to spend much effort onlooking at particular aspects of present types, unlessthese indicated that there were larger changes behindthem and driving them, which had the potential to fulfillour definition.

UncertaintyA final important point needs to be discussed, before theindividual activities undertaken in the project aredescribed in more detail in the following sections. This isthe question which aims and claims are associated withthe project. To put it differently: if the future remains fun-damentally unknown and all the prediction a researchproject such as ETICA can make are fundamentallyuncertain, then what is the point of the exercise? Wouldwe not be better off investing the resources used hereinto the development of technology, rather than in spec-ulation about what this development might bring about?

The answer is that such research, despite its uncertain-ty and lack of ‘scientific’ exactness fulfills an important

function in democratic societies.

Policy makers, industry and the population as a wholeneeds to grapple with issues related to future technolo-gies. As the editorial of this magazine pointed out, thereare increasing numbers of ethical issues related to ICTthat make it into the everyday headlines. Further spreadof such technologies will lead to further issues. Societiesneed to think about how current problems should beaddressed and how future issues can be taken intoaccount before they become significant. This requires ashared understanding of what the future may hold. Thisshared understanding may turn out to be misleading andthe resulting actions may not be able to comprehensive-ly address all issues. Such limited knowledge is never-theless still preferable over a passive position that simplywaits until events happen and then tries to deal with theconsequences.

The contributions of the ETICA project to current dis-courses around emerging ICTs need to be understoodand interpreted in this context. The consortium is awareof the fact that it may be wrong in any of the predictionsit makes. The technologies it describes may not becomesocially relevant, the ethical issues may not materialiseor take different forms, governance recommendationsmay not lead to the desired results and it may well bethat the most important technologies and ethical issueshave been overlooked.

ForesightThis is a normal state of affairs for a foresight projectsuch as ETICA. The claims to truth that the project rais-es are not strong or comparable with those arising fromtraditional scientific research. Instead, the point of theproject is to give input into societal, research-orientedand policy discourses about how technologies can affectour future. The inputs to such discourses provided byETICA claim to be well-grounded and reasonable to dis-cuss. On this basis European societies can decidewhere they want to go, how they want to live togetherand how to regulate the use of technologies.

In order to have such a socially useful discourse, thefindings and recommendations of the project need to bewell-grounded. This magazine will explain in the comingsections how the consortium undertook its work andwhat the results were. In addition to these importantmethodological foundations of the project, it is alsoimportant to communicate to the right stakeholders andengage with them with regards to their needs andrequirements. This magazine will therefore outline thedifferent dissemination activities of the project and howresearchers, industry and policy makers were involved inthe project. This magazine is part of these disseminationefforts and should be seen as the description of thegrounding of ETICA’s contribution. The consortium wel-comes any feedback it receives on the basis of this mag-azine and hopes that its contribution will make a differ-ence in Europe and beyond. n

Future-proofingtechnology ethicsThe ETICA project is a bold attempt to visualise possible futures for emerging ICTto help decision-makers operate in an ethical framework when developing them

The consortiumis aware of

the fact thatit may bewrong in

any of the predictions

it makes

What do wecount astechnologyand whichtypes oftechnologyshould beinvestigated? www.etica-project.eu

The research leading to these results hasreceived funding from the EuropeanCommunity’s Seventh Framework Programme(FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreement n° 230318.

6 n ETICA ETICA n 7

THE central question that ETICA had to answer inorder to successfully complete, the identificationstage, was how to come to an understanding of thefuture that is relevant to policy makers. This questioncan be further divided into two separate sub-ques-tions: how can we know about emerging technolo-gies; and how we can identify the ethical issues thatthese technologies will raise?

Due to the multiplicity of emerging technologies andtheir uncertain nature, the ETICA consortium had todecide on an approach that was academically sound andsimultaneously feasible within the resource constraints ofthe project. The principle of the identification of emergingtechnologies and ethical issues agreed is that it will be adistillation of published views on these issues. ETICArelies on a range of available sources to identify whichtechnologies are likely to emerge, and which ethicalissues these are likely to raise.

Having settled on the principles of the bottom-upapproach, the next question was what to look for in thedata. The central question here was how we could makesense of the broad field of emerging and future ICTs whilekeeping in mind the resource constraints of the project.For the purpose of high level policy advice the mostimportant item needed is a general understanding ofwhich technologies are emerging. The focus of analysistherefore needs to be at a relatively high and generalis-able level. Individual artefacts or applications are only ofinterest in so far as they can improve the understandingof general and high level technologies.

Core characteristicsAs it is impossible to envisage all possible applications ofsuch a high level overview of technologies, it was decid-ed to identify what could be called the ‘core characteris-tics’ of the technologies in question. Identifying theessence or characteristics of the technology, the dataanalysis needs to give an answer to the question about inwhat way the technology changes the manner thathumans interact with the world.

In order to address the problems of what counts as a‘high level’ technology, three different types of technolo-

gies were defined: technologies, application examples,and artefacts. This distinction, along with the possibility ofdefining relationships between different entities allowedmore flexibility in the identification process. The aim of thedata analysis was to identify the most important emergingICTs on the basis of relevant sources and to provide adescription of the way in which these technologies areexpected to make a difference.

While such an abstract description is required to cometo an understanding of emerging technologies, it may betoo brief to provide useful pointers to ethics, which isalways contextualised. It was therefore decided to enablericher descriptions of technologies or ‘vignettes’ thatwould allow ethical analysis of the emerging ICTs.

Naturally we also looked at relationships between differ-ent technologies in order to understand more profoundlythe semantics and nature of those technologies. Afterthorough clustering and categorisation of our data wehave selected the following titles to present the most pre-sumable future emerging ICTs:

n Affective computingn Ambient intelligencen Artificial intelligencen Bioelectronicsn Cloud computingn Future internetn Human/machine symbiosisn Neuroelectronicsn Quantum computingn Roboticsn Virtual/Augmented Reality

We are aware that these technologies may overlap witheach other and the level of these technologies may varyin many ways. For example, one issue is if most of thesetechnologies could be subordinated to Ambient Intelli-gence, or if Bioelectronics and Neuroelectronics are pret-ty much under the same developmental and applicationarea. Our decision for this selection of emerging ICTs isbased on studied discourses by governments andresearch institutions. Therefore we also use several othermethods to ensure that the list of technologies will be rea-sonable. These consist of a set of focus groups with tech-nology users, a survey of technology development projectleaders, and a technology assessment made by experts.

VisionThe main characteristics of future emerging informationand communication technologies that came up from tech-nology descriptions may also vary in their format whilesome technologies (e.g. Ambient Intelligence) have aclear vision of how it will change the way humans interactwith the world but on the other hand other technologies(e.g. Quantum Computing) visions are not so much on anapplication level, but more on higher technology level.However it is already at this point possible to highlightsome of those main characteristics that bring out theessence and developmental targets of these technolo-gies.

It seems that there is an ongoing strong trend towardsconvergence and transdisciplinarity in ICT development.ICT is already distributed throughout our everyday livesand it seems that this kind of trend is going to be evenstronger in the future. Malleability, one of the characteris-tics of future ICT, will make it possible to think of all con-ceivable ways to utilise ICT in different application areasand possibly even applications we can’t even think of yet.Development of nanotechnology will make hardware

smaller and smaller and it is presumable that in the futureso called invisible computers are reality. Of course if andwhen our technologically augmented environment comeslittle bit more invisible and more complex there will beissues of user control and comprehension of this kind ofnew intelligent environment.

AugmentationMany technologies also envisage human augmentationin one way or another. Augmented reality applications arealready available for various platforms, but how and withwhat speed development will take further steps is stillhard to predict. Intelligence (including e.g. context-aware-ness, pervasiveness and adaptivity) is one of the maincharacteristics that underline developmental work offuture emerging ICTs. Through intelligence there are lotsof possibilities to support different kind of technologies,applications and services, but there will be also manyalready identified threats and obstacles in utilising theseapplications.

Generally there is also strong emphasis at the momenttowards virtualisation of services and communication.How for example civil society will accept service virtuali-sation and digitalisation is under discussion. Tradeoffsbetween clear benefits and harsh disadvantages, espe-cially for some special groups, have to be made and jus-tified. All in all new services and applications that areenabled by future emerging ICTs will require more com-puting power with less energy consumption. One of thepossible solutions to this dilemma will be provided by thedevelopment of quantum computing. How prevalent thequantum computing paradigm will be after the next ten to20 years is of course still an open question. n

VTT – identifyingthe next big thingPart of the Finnish innovation system controlled by the Ministry ofEmployment and the Economy, VTT produces research, development,testing and information services for both the public and private sector

Nanotechnologywill makehardwaresmaller andsmaller

It wasdecided to

identifywhat could

be calledthe ‘core

characteris-tics’

Technology is not neutral – itcan either help or hinder us

Contact: www.vtt.fi

The description of each technology consists of:n Technology Namen History and Definitions (from discourse analysis and other sources)n Defining Features (‘essence’ of technology, how it changes our interaction

with the world)n Application Areas/Examplesn Relation to other Technologiesn Critical Issues (ethical, social, legal and related issues)n References

8 n ETICA ETICA n 9

THE research team from Delft University of Tech-nology (TU Delft) has been responsible for identify-ing ethical issues arising from information and com-munication technologies in the coming 10 to 15years.

To this end ‘Ethics of emerging technologies’ wasdefined as ‘aiming at the identification and articulation ofethical issues of technologies that do not exist yet, butare likely to emerge.’ In practice this amounted todescribing what scholars in computer and informationethics say about the identified emerging ICTs from a plu-ralist as well as a descriptive stance that allows a num-ber of different voices to be heard.

The analysis started off by creating a topical mappingof the discourse using specialised software called theVOSviewer. An overview of academic literature contain-ing 1038 references, abstracts and keywords from lead-ing ethical sources was constructed as input for the bib-liometrical analysis. Although VOSviewer still is in anexperimental phase, for the majority of technologiesanalysed in the ETICA project it distilled an adequateoverview of ethical values and concepts.

Building on the results of the bibliometrical analysis atraditional ethical analysis (EA) was done for each of theeleven emerging technologies discerned in the ETICAproject. Each Analysis was delimitated by basing it onthe defining features of the technology identified previ-ously and independently in the Technology Descriptions.Next, relevant references were drawn from the overviewof ethical academic literature constructed in phase 1. Incase the references drawn from the overview of academ-ic literature proved rather small for a specific technology,further literature was consulted from other relevant aca-demic sources.

LiteratureAs was expected, not all of the analysed emerging tech-nologies were equally well represented in literature. Onthe one hand for some technologies, most notablyQuantum Computing and Bioelectronics, almost no rele-vant articles in the extant literature were found. As aresult for those technologies almost no articulation ofethical issues was discovered, both in the ethical andother literature. On the other hand research showed thatcertain technologies received significantly more attentionin literature than average: Artificial Intelligence, Robotics

and Human-Machine Symbioses in particular are dis-cussed in depth in both ethical and subject related aca-demic articles.

A remarkable finding of the research was that theamount of speculation underlying ethical issues men-tioned in the analysis ranged widely. On one end of thespectrum there are issues that seem purely hypothetical.The technology implicated in some issues on Roboticsand Affective Computing for instance at the moment arebeyond the immediate reach of R&D and practical imple-mentation.

On the other end of the spectrum a great deal of issueswere discussed in the ethical analysis that already canbe found relatively frequently in daily life and in publicdebates. For instance, many of the issues identified inthe analysis of the Future Internet are exacerbatedinstances of issues encountered on the internet as weknow it today.

As was anticipated in the Technology Descriptions,many of the technologies discussed are found to beclosely related to each other. This can partly count as anexplanation for the overlap found in issues stemmingfrom different technologies. Especially the more genericissues such as ‘privacy’ and ‘autonomy’ came to the fore-

front as relevant in most of the Ethical Analyses. Thisdoes not necessarily imply that the ethical implications ofthe issue are similar for all of these technologies.

Take Autonomy, for instance. Two different accounts ofautonomy can be found in two analyses. In the discus-sion of Neuroelectronics a possible infringement ofautonomy is mentioned as systems take over certainhuman functions. In the discussion of Artificial Intelli-gence autonomy is discussed as a requirement for amachine to become a genuine moral agent. These aredifferent, although related, notions of autonomy.

Besides overlapping issues the research also broughtforward ethical issues that were unique to a technology.Especially more specific traits of technologies are boundto give rise to more specific issues. The issue of ‘Robotsgoing out of control’ for instance is only addressed in theEthical Analysis of Robotics.

Furthermore research showed that to a large extent theold moral categories and concepts (say pre-internet) stillapply to new technologies and are predominantly used.It should be noted however that in order to be made rel-evant and applicable to new technologies some of thecategories and concepts need to be reconstructed andnew conceptions of old concepts need to be articulated.Steps toward this re-conceptualisation were found inmultiple sources that were analysed.

EnablingThe type of relationships that was found to occur mostoften between the different technologies is an ‘enabling’relation. Artificial Intelligence for instance can be viewedas an enabler for Robotics as AI is a necessary require-ment in the construction of more advanced robots. Bydiscovering which technologies are enabling which tech-nologies a sort of hierarchy can be established. At thebottom of this hierarchy more basic or ‘fundamental’technologies are found such as Quantum Computingand Neuroelectronics that enable technologies such asArtificial Intelligence and Human-Machine Symbiosis. Atthe top end Ambient Intelligence can be placed. Giventhat Ambient Intelligence seems to encompass almost all

of the other emerging technologies as they enable cer-tain capabilities needed to realise it, this position is war-ranted.

Generally it is safe to say that technologies at the bot-tom of the hierarchy have fewer practical applicationsthan the ones positioned higher up. As a result ethicalissues stemming from these technologies tend to be dis-cussed in terms of technologies positioned higher up inthe hierarchy. Issues that occur in lower positioned,enabling technologies may thus have a huge impact asthey affect all technologies that are enabled by them.

To assess to what extent the findings of the ethicalanalyses correspond with views and practices of outsidestakeholders, the findings of the literature study are com-pared with the outcomes of two empirical studies. Firstthe opinions of lay people were examined via focusgroups, second a survey was sent out to FP7 ICT-proj-ects to examine the opinion of technology researchers.

AnalysesThe issues that were brought forward in both empiricalstudies to a very large extent conform to the issues asdiscussed in the Ethical Analyses of the emerging ICTs.On the other hand many issues that were found in theEthical Analyses were not mentioned at all either in thefocus groups or the survey. It may be concluded that(academic) ethicists succeed in addressing the concernsthat felt among the public, but that the public itself iseither (still) not aware of all (potential) issues or does notagree on the assessment done by the ethicists.

In case these issues indeed are relevant to the public itsubsequently may lead to the conclusion that ethicists donot manage to create awareness amongst the public ofsome of the ethical concerns and issues that indeed arerelevant to them. To ascertain which conclusion is war-ranted it is recommend further research should beundertaken into the relationship between academic ethi-cal discourse and the concerns and issues felt in by thepublic n

Delft University of Technology is using cutting-edge programs to visualise howthe key concepts studied by ETICA interact

Visualising theethical boundaries

The oldmoral

categoriesand

conceptsstill apply

Speculationunderlyingethicalissues mentioned inthe analysisrangedwidely www.ethicsandtechnology.eu

Above and right: two ofthe visual maps created

by VOSviewer

10 n ETICA ETICA n 11

ETICA’s work on ‘Evaluation’ combined work frompartners with specialised expertise to examine thekey technologies identified at previous stages of theproject from the perspectives of technology assess-ment, ethical panels, gender and legal studies. Thegoal was to produce a ranking of emerging technolo-gies according to the severity of the issues theyraise. The separate assessments were discussed atan expert workshop and combined into a singlereport with the help of an assessment grid producedat the beginning of the project. Simply stated, eachpartner had the task of judging the importance of thekey technologies for future activities in their field ofexpertise.

Michael Rader of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology,Institute for Technology Assessment and SystemsAnalysis led the work package and, with Alex Antener,contributed an analysis from the viewpoint of technologyassessment.

Technology AssessmentFor each of the 11 key technologies identified by ETICA,a small case study drawing on technology assessmentstudies and related work, served to illustrate the likeli-hood and urgency of expected controversies concerningethical aspects and social impacts linked with these tech-nologies. An important consideration is the time frame fortheir expected diffusion and practical applications. All 11technologies raised sufficient concerns to justify ethicalanalysis or consideration of potential societal impact atthe stage of evaluating research proposals. In the caseof quantum computing and cloud computing, the outlinesof practical applications are as yet indistinct and thus itseems advisable to monitor technological developmentsclosely before deciding on the topics of ethical or socialanalyses.

The aim of technology assessment is to disentanglefact from fiction, in particular to separate hype from like-ly reality. Enthusiasm for a technology, for whatever rea-son, might suggest that its impact is imminent, while it

might still have a long way to go before it finds routineuse. Too much hype can distract from a promising coreof a technology as could be said to be the case for artifi-cial intelligence which has experienced two “winters” dueto its failure to meet exaggerated expectations.

Technology assessment makes most sense when weare considering practical applications or approach thetechnology from the viewpoint of societal problems, forwhich applications of technology might provide a possi-ble solution. In such cases, non-technical solutions to theproblem should be considered as an alternative to thoseinvolving technology.

Coming back to the key technologies, it seems advis-able to treat some together, e.g. all related to closehuman-machine interaction or those in some way involv-ing attempts to equip machines with human-like intelli-gence. If the realisation of a technology is far on the hori-zon, it is not really a candidate for ethical debate, butcould be the subject of a more technology oriented tech-nology assessment which attempts to identify trajecto-ries for its realisation, possible applications and timehorizons.

Ethics of European InstitutionsThe ethical evaluation was carried out by Rafael Capurroand Michael Nagenborg (SHB). In a first step the “Ethicsof European Institutions” were reconstructed in order toestimate the likelihood of ethical issues. One of the mainindicators was a potential conflict with the values andprinciples of the EU Charter, the Opinions of theEuropean Group on Ethics in Science and NewTechnologies (EGE) as well as of other National (Bio-)Ethics Committees (NEC) and other official EU docu-ments. The core values of European institutions high-lighted in this analysis included human dignity, freedom,freedom of research, privacy, and justice. We also tookinto consideration the principle of proportionality, theprecautionary principle and the principle of transparen-cy as key principles. According to this framework weconcluded that the following technologies have a very

high likelihood of becoming an ethical issue as far asthey concern or might concern human dignity, namely:Ambient Intelligence, Human-machine symbiosis, neuro-electronics, and robotics. Other technologies such asAffective Computing, Artificial Intelligence, Bioelectronicsand Virtual/Augmented Reality can be seen, accordingto the analysis, as having a high degree of likelihood.Since the ethical analyses carried out in WP2 was basedon an overview on Computer and Information Ethics itcould also be demonstrated that current academicresearch – unlike the Ethics of European Institutions - isvery much human-centred. There is little to no researchon animals or environmental issues. Here, we would liketo encourage our colleagues to take some inspirationfrom the Ethics of the European Institutions and to over-come the bias towards humans.

Gender StudiesWork on gender issues in ETICA wasperformed by a team from the Women’sStudies Center of the University of Lodzin Poland: Prof. Elzbieta H. Oleksy(WSC’s director, later replaced by dr.Edyta Just), and the Department ofTransatlantic and Media Studies of thesame university: ( Dr. W. Oleksy- thecoordinator of ETICA at Lodz University,and K. Zapedowska, M.A).

The team’s task in ETICA (WP3,Deliverable 3.2.4) was to assess ethicalaspects of selected ICTs from the per-spective of whether and to what extentgender issues are represented in the lit-erature on the selected ICTs. A criticalreview of available literature (over 100publications) was performed (method-ologically based in Critical DiscourseAnalysis and evaluative instrumentsworked out for WP 3) to arrive at recom-mendations that would be of relevance tovarious stakeholders involved in ICTdesign, production and distribution as wellas to the general public.

The main findings of the group are thefollowing:n Some ICTs have received little(Neuroelectronics, Quantum Computing)or minimal attention (Human-MachineSymbiosis, Robotics) in the literature gen-der wise so the ethical impact of their appli-cations in the future is hard to estimate;n Such ICTs as Affective Computing,Ambient Intelligence, Augmented Reality,Artificial Intelligence, Bioelectronics, CloudComputing have been found to have thepotential of positively affecting genderpower relations and thus improve genderequality in the labour market across EUcountries and worldwide;n More research on the relationshipbetween gender and ICT design, applica-tion and representation is needed so as toenhance a better understanding of ethicalissues resulting from unequal participation

of women and men in all aspects of ICT production andimplementation.

The group also contributed definitions of gender-relat-ed concepts to ETICA’s theoretical apparatus calledGlossary and participated in ETICA’s events and dissem-ination activities.

Legal evaluationThe purpose of the evaluation was to explore the legalimplications which might be relevant to the ethicalaspects of emerging technologies. The evaluation wasperformed by researchers of the Eötvös Károly PolicyInstitute, Budapest (EKINT): Iván Székely, Beatrix Vissyand Máté D. Szabó.

The starting points of the analysis were the fundamen-tal values as well as principles distilled from the valuesforming the cornerstones of Western constitutionaldemocracies, such as human dignity, equality and therule of law. For the purposes of the evaluation of theselected emerging technologies, both an empirical and aspeculative approach were employed.

In the course of the empirical study – using the methodof analysis of documents and databases – legal databas-es were used covering the whole corpus of EU law. As amain finding, it can be established that the legal implica-tions of emerging technologies are not reflected in theEU legal documents and attracted only a minimal legisla-tive attention in the competent bodies of the EU.

The speculative findings have been divided into twogroups: the first group contains findings from the aspectsof those applying and using emerging technologies,while the other presents the findings from the aspects oflawmakers. Among the recommendations formulated, itwas emphasised that new basic principles and criteriashould be worked out in detail for the use of emergingtechnologies with special regard to individual choice,consent and transparency, and that legal science shouldwork out adequate regulatory strategies for different sce-narios regarding such technologies.

The evaluation took into consideration the fact that inthe so-called new European democracies the moralvalue order of society is less stable than in traditionaldemocracies, therefore in these countries the legal guar-antees of moral postulates are even more important thanin other countries of the EU, when introducing emergingtechnologies.

All components of the evaluation exercise confirmedthe importance of the eleven key technologies which hadbeen identified at earlier stages of ETICA. The currentexception, quantum computing, will probably not achievematurity during ETICA’s time horizon of approximatelyten years. There are also doubts about the true impor-tance of “cloud computing”, which is the subject of muchattention in the media and by policy makers. The conceptrepackages many ideas, such as shifting software fromthe desktop into a central “cloud”, that have been in exis-tence for some several years already. The question iswhether it will break through as a pervasive approach tocomputing or remain restricted to certain applications ortypes of user. This is obviously an issue for furtherresearch. n

Karlsruhe Institute of Technology’s ITAS focused on the envi-ronmental, economic, social, political and institutional issues

Karlsruhe putspersonal valuesinto the mix

Contact: www.kit.edu

Lack of trust: who isholding your data?


FUNDP seeks to address the issue of ethical issuedetermination and resolution in ethical governanceapproaches and ICT development. The way this isapproached is to rethink the relation of norms andcontexts in current approaches.

‘Norms’ deal with what we ought to do, in distinctionwith what we can do. In current approaches to ethicalgovernance, norms are treated as separable from con-texts. This results from presupposing that a norm issuccessfully articulated when it is issued with goodintentions or that good things flow as if by logic from itsarticulation.

Given a norm is prescriptive, the context in which it isarticulated is of central importance. Arguments aboutissues are not sufficient for ethics. Action is required,and action doesn’t necessarily result from even thebest arguments.

Norms embody values, interests. The problem is thatethical issues are broadly determined by experts inestablished approaches. The ways in which issues aredetermined and norms established are those that comemost naturally to experts from given fields. The wayexperts see problems are constrained by their fram-ings. Expertise is often quite remote from day-to-dayexperience, however. The issues detected (or not) byexperts can fail to map onto those felt by people in gen-eral. Experts tend to conflate standards of justificationwith those of application of norms.

FUNDP, in Work Package 4, examines the verynature of norms. This approach is adopted in order toget to the very root of the problem of ethical reflection.In getting to the root of that problem, ethical issuedetermination is made possible. The alternative to anormative approach would be a descriptive approach.‘Norm’ in such an approach would merely be a statisti-cal entity – rather than referring to what people ought todo it would refer to what people actually do. This isinsufficient for ethics as ethics deals with ‘oughts’.

Self-reflection must be sought in approaching ethicalgovernance. Even using sophisticated tools such as

technology assessment risks ‘framing’ issues in a nar-row way. Reducing contexts to factors presupposed ina framing leads to inadequate norm-construction. Theproblem is how to include the perspectives of the pro-posed addressees of a norm as it is their context thatwill be affected by ICT research and development.

Seeing things from another’s point of view is a centralpart of governance insofar as accountability in a demo-cratic context relies upon the notions that:

1. no particular point of view is ruled out in principle;2. the possibility of maximising convergence by some

fair means exists. However, through years of careful training, research

and experience certain modes of governance havetaken on the status of reflexes.

ExpertiseBetween the 1980s and 2000s (between the SingleEuropean Act and the Lisbon Summit), various commit-tees were set up to maintain supranational accountabil-ity across Europe. Committees of experts are thoughtto have special insight into any given topic at hand. Inethics concerning emerging ICT development, theseexperts might be technologists, sociologists, philoso-phers, political scientists or anyone else with an expert-ise. What they have in common is a role in temperingthe process of research in order to factor in concernsthat the public at large might have about the trajectoryin general of technology, or the specific implications ofa particular piece of technology in development.

ETICA has found via its research that, contrary to theaim of putting civil society views centre-stage, theseapproaches in fact result in an inadequate account ofpublic concern. Rather, the use of experts very oftenhas the effect of posing technological development interms relevant to narrow, sectoral interests. Expertsalso tend to reduce all problems to problems of justifi-cation, rarely thinking about application of solutions.Good arguments, however, don’t automatically encour-age action.

For instance, a technologist may have perfect faith inthe inherent goodness of scientific progress. Such afaith can fail to pick out what might be genuinely feltconcerns among the public about a possible effect of adevelopment in, say, computing. Affective computingmight represent an exciting breakthrough from the per-spective of a technology expert, and one too good to berestrained. A member of the public might fear the pos-sibilities for surveillance or integrity. The problem isbetween sensors and sensibilities.

The stakes for the split communities of expert and laypublic are often different. Experts in technology enjoyscientific progress in itself, and see the exciting bene-fits that can be offered by its pursuit. For the public,ways of life and interpersonal relations are what’s key.These can easily be threatened in a context of unfet-tered scientific and technological advance. An expertsimply telling the public that they have good argumentsfor the development does nothing to allay fears.

What this might suggest is that the current reflexesregarding governance are based on uncertain ground.Naturally, the whole edifice cannot be ripped down.Revisions of the elements of the reflex are possible.After all, the elements of governance have emerged via20+ years of experiment and research. The status quorepresents a contingent arrangement of the variouselements. So it can be seen that a rearrangement isboth possible and in the spirit of the broader conceptionof governance.

Using Expertise – Ethics as a Creative ComponentThrough attention paid to the construction of context,people can come to an informed view of an aspect of

R&D. Through a dialogue approach in which the publichave a say, framed in terms of ethics by experts, fram-ings are opened both on the public and expert side. Thematter of discussion is also kept to the ethical.

Public participation needn’t be thought of as a resolu-tion tool. In using the notion of context as part of theproblem at hand, this recognises a distinction betweendetermining an ethical issue and determining theapprehension of the problem. Determining that appre-hension is where the distinction between significanceand meaning takes hold, and where the difference intechnical understanding and self-understandings takehold.

A change in mindset is required. This is simple in thatall it takes is a realisation, but difficult as that realisationis a subtle one. The ethical perspective required is areflexive one, one wherein views are constructed interms of the view-holder – the necessity of constructingnorms in terms of the context of application. Thisrequires getting out of the intellectual reflex of utilisingargumentative reason – stopping the resort to ‘the forceof the better argument’ as the only means of address-ing integration of different views. Narration, interpreta-tion and reconstruction are also key elements of humanreason and understanding.

The place of narration can be seen as illustrated bythe following problem: when contradictory argumentsare aired, it is required that the parties involved will sub-mit themselves to nothing but the force of the betterargument. But the acceptance of arguments will itselfbe conditional on values. Thus, narration doesn’t fitwithin argumentation, but rather argumentation decen-tres narrative authenticity.

Expertstend toreduce allproblems toproblems ofjustification

The stakesfor the splitcommunitiesof expertand lay public are often different

FUNDP’s role in the ETICA project was to reflect upon current ethical governance approaches and to advise on an ethical governance strategy

Measuring theimpact ofemerging ICT

Figure 1: Relationshipsbetween WP4 and otherWork Packages

Contact: www.fundp.ac.be


Instead, the reflexive view needs to ask, for example,why a belief is held? What it means for the believer?What incentive would be required to alter that belief?This is rather than the status quo wherein one wouldseek abstract arguments for a counter point that mightbe logically valid, but fail to develop a meaning for thebeliever. This would amount to a domination of logicover self-understanding. Each is a legitimate aspect ofhuman reason, but the domination is not justified. Forethics to be effective it must be overcome.

RecommendationsIncorporating ethics into ICT research and develop-ment requires that industry, researchers, civil societyorganisations realise explicitly that ethical sensitivity isin the interest of ICT users and providers; that they dis-tinguish between law and ethics and see that followinglegal requirements is not always sufficient to addressethical issues; that they engage in discussion of whatconstitutes ethical issues and are open to incorporationof gender, environmental and other issues.

These realisations will facilitate ethical reflexivity inICT projects and practice as they allow stakeholders torealise that ethical issues are context-dependent andneed specific attention of individuals with local knowl-edge and understanding and to simultaneously consid-er the identification of ethical issues and their resolu-tions. This is a creative force as it allows stakeholdersto be open about the description of the project and itsethical issues and to encourage broader stakeholderengagement in the identification and resolution of ethi-cal questions.

From a policy-making perspective, this approachneeds to be facilitated by an emphasis not just uponoutcomes, but on incentivising the ethics procedure.This can be done by providing a regulatory frameworkwhich will support Ethical Impact Assessment for ICTs.

Emphasis currently is on ethical issue determinationas an end in itself. But this is centred upon ideas ofcompliance, consent or authorisation. This must be re-oriented in order to incentivise the entire process ofethics from determination of issues) to resolution.

There needs also to be the use of policy instrumentsconcurrent with a project’s development over time, notsimply at the start, again to combat the notion thatethics is a compliance measure to ‘get through’. Thepolicy instruments used ought to include negativeincentives (i.e. sanctions) for lack of compliance andabsence of the will to comply.

In order to facilitate learning in a meaningful way, andone that allows the expansion of reason beyond themerely argumentative, we recommend that policy mak-ers create an ‘observatory’ for ethics that would serveas a resource open to all, thereby extending theresources of ethics and ethical governance practicesbeyond the realm of established expertise. In a similarvein, in order to facilitate the ongoing exchange ofideas and best practices, and in a mode not unlike thatof the NEC forum, we recommend that policy makersinstitute a ‘stakeholder forum’.

This forum would facilitate interchange between exist-ing bodies in a manner that would be institutionalised.In this, it would facilitate the ongoing discussion of rel-evant issues (indeed, would contribute to discovering

what issues are ‘relevant’). Given the horizontal, egali-tarian makeup of such a forum and the diverse mem-bership, this is a means of incorporating more than justargumentative reason (i.e. narrative, interpretive andreconstructive reason) in policy deliberation. Thismeans there is a means to include value as well asnorm in policy deliberation, overcoming one of themajor obstacles to ethical norm construction in contextand thereby making a central contribution to ethicalgovernance in ICT development.

Through these changes in mindset, incentivised bypolicy:n The gap between expert and lay-people is closed.n The construction of norms in context is permitted.n Allowing the question of which norms upon which

ethical issues ought to be determined to be opened. n Dialogue is predicated on a basis broader than argu-

mentation.n Content shapes the approach rather than form

annexing content.Through this, ethics in emerging ICT development is

made a real possibility. n

Professor Philippe Goujon is a professor of philoso-phy embedded within FUNDP’s Computer Sciencedepartment, who has a particular interest in the rela-tionships between science, technology, and society.His background is in epistemology and ethical reflec-tion on emerging technologies such as GeneticallyModified Organisms, as well as ethical governance oftechnologies, which makes him ideally placed to leadthe Governance work package of the ETICA project.

Dr. Catherine Flick has a background in computer sci-ence and computer ethics, with a recently conferredPhD on informed consent in ICTs. She joins Prof.Goujon to work on ethical governance in emergingICTs.

These realisationswill facilitateethicalreflexivity inICT projects

ONE of ETICA’s research outcomes is to give rec-ommendations particularly to policy makers onhow to look at and deal with ethical issues ofemerging technologies with the view that these willbe thought through and incorporated early on as atechnology emerges.

Through its various work packages and disseminationactivities which attracted input and feedback from vari-ous quarters of society, recommendations have begunto emerge as research and analysis has progressed.This section gives a synthesis of these recommenda-tions. To provide a scientifically based approach therecommendations have mainly emerged from the differ-ent stages of the work undertaken by each work pack-age (WP) beginning with:n WP1 which identified emerging technologiesn WP2 which identified and analysed ethical issues of

these emerging technologiesn WP3 which evaluated and ranked the ethical issues

from different perspectives according to their severi-ty and likelihood

n WP4 which continues to look at governance struc-tures of ethical issues.

As each of the above WPs fed into each other’s WPsto produce an overall picture of the research findingsand eventual recommendations, the recommendationscome from different components of the ETICA project.The different components add value to the type of rec-ommendations that will be outlined because theyensure that different facets of ethics of emerging tech-nologies are dealt with.

By exploring technologies, ethical issues and currentways to address these, the ETICA project has devel-oped the following recommendations. These recom-mendations are relevant to policy makers involved inscience and technology policy, industry and civil socie-ty with the aim to facilitate the integration of ethicalreflexivity into technical research and development.This will allow addressing ethical issues efficiently.

The recommendations are aimed at two different setsof stakeholder: policy makers and users or developersof new ICTs.

Recommendations for policy makersPolicy makers have an important role to create the reg-ulatory framework and the infrastructure to allow ethicsto be considered in ICT. ETICA recommends the follow-ing three main areas of policy activity:

Provide regulatory framework which will supportEthical Impact Assessment for ICTsn To raise awareness of the importance of ethics in

new ICTsn To encourage ethical reflexivity within ICT research

and development n To provide appropriate tools and methods to identify

and address ethical issues

The main aim of the ETICA project was to give guidance to policy makers onhow ethical concerns need to be intertwined with technological progress

Outcome: tellingtruth to power?

n To establish a forum for ongoing consultations withthe public and stakeholders to provide positionpapers for policy input

n To address the wide range of current and new ethi-cal issues arising from ICT, modelled along the linesof environmental, privacy or equality impact assess-ments

n To allow ICT professionals to use their expertise inemerging ICTs to contribute to ethical solutions

n To raise awareness of ethical reflection regardinganimals and environmental issues

Establish an ICT EthicsObservatoryn To collect and communicate the

conceptual, methodological, pro-cedural and substantive aspects ofICT ethics

n To provide a community-ownedpublicly accessible repository anddissemination tool of research onICT ethics

n To give examples of approachesand governance structures thatallow addressing ethical issues

n To disseminate past and currentresearch ethics and ICT includingrelevant work packages anddeliverables and relevantNational Ethics Committee opin-ions

n To facilitate the Ethical ImpactAssessment

n To provide an early warningmechanism for issuesthat may require leg-islation

Establish a forum for stakeholderinvolvementn To allow and encourage civil society and its repre-

sentations, industry, NGOs and other stakeholders toexchange ideas and express their views

n To exchange experience between to develop ethicalreflexivity in the discussion

n To reach consensus concerning good practice in thearea of ethics and ICT

n To build a bridge between civil society and policymakers.

Recommendations for Industry and Researchersand CSOsIndustry, researchers and other individuals or organisa-tions should adhere to the following recommendationsin order to be proactive and allow innovation to besocially responsible.

Incorporate ethics into ICT research and develop-mentn To make explicit that ethical sensitivity is in the inter-

est of ICT users and providersn To distinguish between law and ethics and see that

following legal requirements is not always sufficientto address ethical issues

n To engage in discussion of what constitutes ethicalissues and be open to incorporation of gender, envi-ronmental and other issues

Facilitate ethical reflexivity in ICT projects andpracticen To realise that ethical issues are context-dependent

and need specific attention of individuals with localknowledge and understanding

n To simultaneously consider the identification of ethi-cal issues and their resolutions

n To be open about the description of the project andits ethical issues

n To encourage broader stakeholder engagement inthe identification and resolution of ethical questions.

The ETICA project provides details, suggestions anda starting point for all of these recommendations. n

DURING the project’s lifespan, ETICA has employeda number of dissemination activities targeting vari-ous stakeholders who have included the academiccommunity encompassing researchers and studentssharing and interested in the ideas of ETICA, poten-tial policy influencers and lay-people from the gener-al public.

In addition, the project has disseminated its findingsthrough other platforms such as conference paper pre-sentations and journal publications. This is in addition tothe project website, brochures, deliverables and reportsthat have been part of the process of dissemination.

ETICA Conference Notable dissemination avenues have included the firstETICA Conference. The conference was held inTarragona, Spain on 13 April 2010. In line with the proj-ects objective, the theme of the conference was “TheFuture as we see it: Emerging ICTs and resulting ethicalissues”. As the theme suggests, the aim was to discuss,share and debate matters concerning future technologiesand their potential related ethical issues.

The event attracted 44 participants from different geo-graphical regions which included Europe, India and theUS. To ensure maximum shared knowledge and ideas,the conference was deliberately held a day before theETHICOMP conference, which is a series of conferencesattended by delegates from all over the world that takesplace every two years and is one of the leading interna-tional events on computer ethics and social responsibility.The combination of the two meant that there were diverseattendees from diverse geographical locations whoshared and exchanged different and interesting views onaspects of emerging technologies and ethics. This is alsoreflected in the different presentations given whose focusranged from a discussion on morality and mobile phoneswhich touched on surveillance, to ethical problems indeveloping including a focus on ethics of digital film andguidelines to ubiquitous healthcare in China to mention afew.

The open discussion brought out several issues one ofwhich was how to decide issues of ethics and ethicalthinking and how future ethical issues can be considered.This is one of the issues the ETICA project has been look-ing at and part of the solution has been to be proactive atan early stage of technology development in order to

identity potential problems of the future. The other hasbeen to engage and bring round different stakeholders toengender ethical thinking as they get involved with tech-nologies and its use. An added solution is to look at gov-ernance structures of emerging technologies and howthese might deal with the concern raised.

The project will hold one more conference scheduled forMarch 2011 at the European Parliament and will involvePolicy makers responsible for ICT and ICT research poli-cy, ICT industry and researchers as well as Researchersand administrators working on ICT and ethics. The idea isnot only to disseminate findings and recommendations tothis important group of stakeholders, but to explore anddiscuss with them ways of how such findings and recom-mendations might be relevant to their day-to-day work.This takes us back to the point raised in the editorialwhich was of moving from reaction to proactive engage-ment when dealing with concerns that come up whensomething goes wrong with technology. By engaging withthese relevant stakeholders, there is a window of oppor-tunity for them to start thinking of ways of being proactivein thinking about ethics of emerging technologies at a farearlier stage.

Policy Briefing Session 1Another dissemination avenue was the Policy BriefingSession (PBS) that took the form of an ETICA panel atthe EuroScience Open Forum (ESOF) (www.esof2010.org) in Torino, Italy on 6 July 2010. ESOF is a biennialmeeting that has been running since 2004 and is dedicat-ed to scientific research and innovation.

It allows the opportunity to discuss new discoveries and

The opendiscussionbrought outseveralissues

The ETICA project has used a number of different methods to explain to thewider public the importance of its research into the ethics of technology

Getting the message out


Policy makershave animportantrole

A previous issue of the ETICA magazine


THE ETICA project ends in May 2011. The develop-ment and use of ICT will not end, and neither will theethical issues that are caused by such technologies.ETICA has made a valuable contribution to ourunderstanding of emerging ICTs and their ethicalconsequences. The findings of ETICA allow re-searchers, industry and policy makers to develop adeeper understanding of possible and likely conse-quences of technology. ETICA provides a set of toolsthat allow those stakeholders to be proactive aboutsuch issues.

However, as stressed throughout the project, this per-spective is fallible. On the one hand, there is no guaran-tee that the ETICA analysis has indeed identified the mostimportant technologies. The ethical issues raised aboutthese technologies may or may not come to pass. On theother hand, it is more than likely that novel technologicaldevelopments will appear that were impossible to detectusing the methodological approach of the project.

In any event, it is important to understand that ETICAprovides a snapshot of what currently seem to be issuesone can reasonably expect to be become relevant. Sucha snapshot, by its very nature, loses currency quickly. It istherefore important to think about how the ETICA findingscan be used as a basis for a sustainable way of dealingwith ethics of new ICTs.

PerceptionsTo answer this question, it is useful to distinguish betweenthe substantive and the procedural aspects of the ethicsof ICT. Substantive issues are those that directly pertainto moral views and perceptions. Those are the things thatare good or bad, that are subject to debate and that arecontested between stakeholders. In the ETICA project,work package 2 was dedicated to identifying those sub-stantive issues and they were subsequently evaluated bywork package 3.

Procedural issues are those that have to do with thequestion of which processes or procedures will allowidentifying and addressing substantive issues. Those arerelated to more abstract questions of ethical evaluation ofmoral issues, but also to procedures that may allowaddressing ethical issues. In the ETICA project, suchquestions were to a large degree covered by the questionof ethical governance as investigated by work package 4.

In order for ETICA to continue to have relevance, both,the substantive and the procedural aspect need to bebuilt upon. Substantive questions are often linked to spe-cific technologies and are therefore subject to frequentchange. Procedural issues are more abstract, but mayfind different relevance in different contexts. Both aspectswill need to be continually updated. Technical experts,just like end users, and industry may find new problemsand new solutions. The ETICA findings provide a startingpoint for a continued debate, but this debate will need tobe continued, using broad stakeholder input.

Some of the earlier recommendations aim to developthe institutional basis of such an ongoing discourse. Theidea of the ICT Ethics Observatory is to develop a com-munity-based and publicly accessible resource wheresubstantive issues can be collected and evaluated. At thesame time, the Observatory could provide pointerstowards possible procedural means of dealing withissues. There may be numerous governance structuresthat allow for heightened levels of reflexivity and theObservatory would allow the exchange of ideas about it.

While such an observatory would be an invaluable toolin a debate about ethics of emerging ICTs, it requiresinstitutional support and the perception of the relevanceof the topic. ETICA therefore needs to raise awarenessand support the development of an institutional frame-work. By presenting ETICA findings and gathering stake-holder feedback in the European Parliament, by providingtraining to EU Project Officers and Ethics Experts as wellas collaborating with the European Parliament's Scienceand Technology Options Assessment panel, ETICA haslaid the groundwork for this continued engagement whichwill contribute to better technologies and a higher qualityof life in Europe and beyond. n

debate the direction that research is taking in the sci-ences, humanities and social sciences fields. ESOF isunique in that it is both international and multidisciplinaryand presents breakthroughs in varied disciplines, througha range of different formats including lectures, work-shops, lunches etc. ESOF therefore presents and dis-cusses the frontiers of scientific and technologicalresearch in Europe, contributes to the development of aEuropean Scientific identity together with bridging the gapbetween science and society and stimulates policies tosupport scientific research.

It is due to the opportunities described above that ESOFoffered that prompted ETICA to disseminate at the venue.The idea was to give a policy brief on ETICA’s researchactivities to a cross-section of participants who consistedof attendees from the Education sector, ICT industry andScience sector. The aim was to get feedback as well asunderstanding their stance on ethics and emerging tech-nologies.

By engaging with a cross-section of ESOF attendees,ETICA not only disseminated but also collected informa-tion that would be valuable for its research outcomes,particularly when considering its recommendations. Tothis end, the policy brief outlined ETICA’s research ration-ale via the presentations given by the different WorkPackages of the research project. Some of the issuesraised by the audience were on how ethics can bethought on in relation to globalisation and reflexivity. Alsoraised was the issue of policy makers’ proactiveness, orlack of it, when it came to emerging ICT’s. What theseissues reflect is the importance of the ETICA project,which has already began to address them in some of thesolutions that the project seeks, such as the involvementof policy makers as stakeholders in addressing ethics ofemerging ICTs.

Focus GroupsThe project has always felt that the contribution of differ-

ent stakeholders in the process of its research is para-mount. This meant that views and perceptions of lay-per-sons as targeted end-users of emerging technologieswere an important element to the dissemination activitiesof ETICA. To this end, ETICA held three focus groups inthe UK and three in Finland with ordinary member of thegeneral public on the following themes: 1. User Perceptions of Future and Emerging Techno-logies.2. Ethical Issues of Future and Emerging Technologies. 3. Evaluation and Ranking of Ethical Issues.

Findings from the focus group discussions suggest thatparticipants have interest in technologies that wouldmake a difference and improve lives in areas of health aswell as climate change. On ethical issues of future andemerging technologies, the discussions revealed a widerange of ethical issues which included isolation, loss ofjobs, privacy, inequality, digital and more. The evaluationand ranking of the ethical issues showed that participantsranked the issues according to the context and applica-tion of the technology.

For example, Affective Computing was seen as one ofthe technologies that would present major ethical issuesdue to the fact that it would perceive human emotion,something participants were not too keen on. From incep-tion, the ETICA project has been of the view that wider

stakeholder participation in the project’s research processwould always be enriching. This has meant that the proj-ect would not confine itself to researchers or ICT industrypersonnel only, but rather that the project would incorpo-rate wider end-user and public participation. This hasmade the project open and inclusive to a cross section ofstakeholders who have been able to include varyingviews of what and how they consider emerging technolo-gies and ethics might impact them.

Summer SchoolAs a way of engaging with leaders of tomorrow, theETICA project thought it prudent to hold a summer schoolas another way of disseminating and getting further feed-back on its research activities. This time the target audi-ence was mainly research students and researchersinterested in various areas of emerging technologies andethics. The summer school was linked withPrimeLife/IFIP summer school and attracted around 75participants. Of particular importance was the mutualexposure of ETICA with high level representatives ofindustry (e.g. IBM, Google) and policy makers (e.g. theUS White House and the German Ministry of Interior).While the impact of such exposure is impossible to quan-tify, it fulfils part of the core mission of ETICA, namely toengage with policy makers.

Major PublicationsThe project has also been able to produce a good num-ber of journals, book contributions as well as conferencepapers during its lifetime. These can be accessed fromthe ETICA website at www.etica-project.eu under thepublications link. Publications are still being planned evenafter the ETICA project comes to an end in May 2011. Inaddition, as part of the ETICA legacy, a project WIKI isbeing developed which will allow interested parties in thearea of ethics and emerging technologies to have accessto the projects research findings and outcomes.

The main running theme of the dissemination activitiesof the ETICA project is engaging with a cross-section onstakeholders. This has clearly been a success and will bevital to the research outcomes of the project becauserather than just presenting the projects outcomes fromETICA as a single entity, what will be presented, particu-larly in the recommendations to policy formulators andthose that influence policy formulation are views and per-ceptions of diverse groups of people and organisationswho have given their time to engage in and with ETICA.n

ETICA haslaid thegroundworkfor this continuedengagement

ETICA must build upon its successes by continuing its engagement with policymakers and raising awareness and support for an institutional framework

ETICA: where we go from here

Dr. Kutoma JacquelineWakunuma at a teammeeting

As part ofthe ETICAlegacy, aproject WIKIis beingdeveloped

Professor Bernd CarstenStahl with a presentation


TELEREGIONS Network (TRN) is an InternationalNon-Profit Organisation of European Regions. Foun-ded in 1997 by key regions from Austria, Belgium,France, Germany, the Netherlands, Finland, Spain,Sweden and the UK. TRN has been actively partici-pating in the field of Regional Development andInformation and Communication Technologies (ICT).

The TeleRegions Network is involved in improvingcooperation to enhance regional opportunities in theinformation society – to foster regional development inand through ICT. TRN offers practical solutions for thechallenges of regional development and ICT by combin-ing successful solutions, promising solutions and avail-able solutions.

To achieve its objectives, TRN promotes cooperation –cooperation between regions, as well as cooperation

between regions and other stakeholders. TRN followsthe successful Nordic best practice example of a TripleHelix approach. A close cooperation between the publicauthorities, enterprises and academia appears to be thebest way to successfully foster regional development.An increasingly important part of this cooperation forTRN and its stakeholders are the ethical issues. As theemerging technologies are playing an increasingly dom-inant role in the development the consequences of thisdevelopment must be addressed.

TRN along with the other members of the AdvisoryBoard has provided feedback into the various ETICAdeliverables as well as disseminating the project throughvarious industry events. n TRN offers

practicalsolutions

AN important aspect of the structure of the ETICAproject was the high level input from the AdvisoryBoard. The Advisory Board represented a range ofstakeholders, offered feedback mechanisms, andensured that dissemination is successful. AdvisoryBoard members are full members of the project.

Their contribution included the expertise from formerprojects as well as the representation of importantstakeholder groups such as industry, in particularSMEs, and different European regions. The advisoryboard also provided input from the point of view of priorEuropean research in the area. The breadth of experi-ence of the Advisory Board allowed its members toeffectively evaluate research results and put them inthe wider European perspective.

One important role of the Advisory Board whenviewed from the overall project perspective was that ofrisk management. The project contended with a num-ber of uncertainties and risks and the Advisory Boardprovided valuable input in addressing these. Salientexamples of such risks included:

Representation of relevant stakeholders: The risk withregards to stakeholder representation is that too largea collection will render the project unmanageable, buttoo narrow a set will leave the project’s viability open toquestion. The solution to this was in the membership ofthe consortium and in particular the Advisory Board asit represented a number of important stakeholders.

Viability of recommendations: A further and relatedrisk to the relevance of the project would be the cre-ation of policy recommendations which turn out not to

be viable. This was addressed through the stakeholderand consultative approach taken by the project, whichensures a maximum of input from a range of stakehold-ers. This, in turn, guaranteed the maximisation of theknowledge base and allowed an early recognition ofproblematic recommendations.

The Advisory Board, in particular, watched over theviability of findings and recommendations. The bottom-up approach of the project, which will deduce policyrecommendations from individual governance struc-tures of particular issues and problems which further-more decreased the risk of recommendations that arenot grounded in political and organisational reality.

OverregulationIt was recognised that there is a risk that the project willbe perceived as an attempt to create more bureaucra-cy and that the disadvantages of the creation of gover-nance structures and policies will outweigh the bene-fits. Such a view from main users (eg. the ICT industry)could lead to user resistance and might jeopardise thesuccess of the project.

In order to mitigate the risk, ETICA consulted widelywith a range of stakeholders, in particular with industryand SMEs to ensure their views were considered andrepresented in the policy recommendation process.This is one aspect where the ETICA Advisory Boardensured the viability of the project outcomes. n

Contact: www.westsweden.se

Integrating the regions

The Advisory Board played a key role in allowing ETICA to achieve its aims

High level input

Non-profit association eema has been educating and informing its memberson e-identity and security issues for the past 23 years

FOR 23 years, EEMA has been Europe’s leadingindependent, non-profit e-Identity & Security asso-ciation, working with its European members, gov-ernmental bodies, standards organisations andinteroperability initiatives throughout Europe tofurther e-Business and legislation.

EEMA’s remit is to educate and inform over 1,500Member contacts on the latest developments and tech-nologies, at the same time enabling Members of theassociation to compare views and ideas. The work pro-duced by the association with its Members (projects,papers, seminars, tutorials and reports etc) is fundedby both membership subscriptions and revenue gener-ated through fee-paying events. All of the informationgenerated by EEMA and its members is available toother members free of charge.

Examples of recent and upcoming EEMA eventsinclude: The European e-Identity InteroperabilityConference, Brussels, Belgium; Kuppinger Cole e-IDConference & Cloud 09, Munich, Germany; TheEuropean e-Identity Management Conference, London,UK; e-Identity as a Business, The Netherlands;Information Security Solutions Europe (ISSE), Berlin,Germany; Smartphone Security, London, UK andCreating Business Value with Access Governance,Gent, Belgium.

EEMA and its members are also involved in manyEuropean funded projects including STORK, ICEcom,SSEDIC and ETICA.

OrganisationsAny organisation involved in e-Identity or Security (usu-ally of a global or European nature) can become aMember of EEMA, and any employee of that organisa-tion is then able to participate in EEMA activities.Examples of organisations taking advantage of EEMAmembership are Volvo, KPMG, Deloitte, ING, BankIDNorge, Rabobank, Bankenes Standard, Sonofi Aventis,Verisign, Verizon, Thales eSecurity, Novartis, TheMetropolitan Police, PGP, McAfee, Adobe, MagyarTelecom Rt, National Communications Authority,Hungary, Ministerion de Trabajo, Nokia, EuropeanCommission, Microsoft, NETS, Orange, ConsultHyperion and Siemens, to name but a few.

EEMA decided to become involved with the ETICAproject as we felt it was looking to contribute an essen-tial piece of the jigsaw, and as a member of the

Advisory Board (AB) we felt that we could bring a busi-ness and practical focus to the outputs of the project,which has actually been achieved over the duration ofthe project. For example the AB may see that there maybe a far more beneficial methodology available as wemay be able to ‘see the wood for the trees’ that the restof the partners may not. n

eemabrings abusinessand practicalfocus to the project

In order tomitigate therisk, ETICAconsultedwidely

Europe’s leadinge-security group

Contact: www.eema.org+44 (0)1386 [email protected]

Contact: www.etica-project.eu


ANALYTICA Social and Economic Research Ltd is asmall UK-based company that has been providingresearch and consultancy to a range of clients,including many international and national policy-making bodies, for over two decades.

Ursula Huws, the founder and director of Analytica,has been carrying out research on the social and eco-nomic impacts of technological change since the1970s. She directed the RESPECT project (2002-2005)funded by the European Commission’s DG Infsoc,under the 5th Framework Programme, to develop pro-fessional and ethical codes of practice for the conductof socio-economic research in the information society

and also provides consultancy on research ethics to anumber of bodies including acting as an independentexpert for DG Research in the evaluation of researchproposals. She is also an expert on research method-ology, having published on the topic and designed andtaught courses on it at undergraduate and postgradu-ate levels.

Analytica has utilised its background and experienceto feed into the ETICA Project deliverables and con-tribute to the dissemination plan. n

Two decades of research

Contact: www.analyticaresearch.co.uk

Promoting SMEresearch benefitsEUREXCEL Membership Projects Ltd is committedto helping SMEs reach the global market and benefitfrom innovation and the capital available through theresults of European research projects.

To best achieve this EurExcel works very closely withother professional associations, researchers, RTOs andSMEs themselves, our aim being to put real technologi-cal advance into the hands of our SME members.

Through its network activities EurExcel helps its mem-bers to adopt innovation as an essential and integratedaspect of both their business strategy and cultural rela-tionship with their customers. This is done by improvingtheir access to, and exploitation of, new and emergingtechnologies and knowledge. EurExcel also serves tobetter equip small firms with the skills and contacts tohelp them secure existing domestic European businessand attract new business from other global markets.

IndependentEurExcel is an independent association made up ofSMEs from all parts of the European area. The missionof the organisation is to assist SMEs in gaining benefitfrom the European Commission research funding,whether to complete their required research or to assistin the valorisation of the results. It is made up of mem-bers from many industrial sectors, however there is adefinite focus on hi-tech business areas such as ICT.

Alongside the other members of the Advisory BoardEurExcel has provided feedback on the research as it iscompleted, based on the industry facing ‘real world’ viewof the association, helping to ensure that the project’s

outcomes are valid, relevant and effective. EurExcel pro-vides many areas of expert advice within the businessarea of EC funded research projects from preparation ofproposals through to dissemination and exploitation ofproject results – this latter having been a part of our con-tribution to ETICA. One of the deliverables for whichEurExcel has been responsible is the magazine you arereading now – EurExcel has assisted in the publicationof a number of ‘project specific’ magazines in support ofthe dissemination needs for various projects. In addition,EurExcel’s membership database serves as an effectivedissemination route for the project results which shouldstimulate a high level of further activity post project.

We are also delighted to have able to help facilitate theETICA final event at the European Parliament. n

There is a definitefocus on hi-techContact: www.eurexcel.eu

EurExcel helps its members adopt innovation as part of their business strategy

ContactsETICA Consortium

Organisation Region WebsiteDe Montfort University UK www.dmu.ac.uk

VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland Finland www.vtt.fi

Technical University of Delft Netherlands www.ethicsandtechnology.eu

Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe Germany www.kit.edu

University of Namur Belgium www.fundp.ac.be

Steinbeis Hochschule Germany www.steinbeis-hochschule.de

Eotvos Karoly Policy Institute Hungary www.ekint.org

University of Lodz Poland www.uni.lodz.pl

Advisory Board

The European Association for E-Identity and Security UK www.eema.org– eema

Analytica UK www.analyticaresearch.co.uk

EurExcel – UK www.eurexcel.euEurExcel Membership Projects Ltd

Teleregions Network Sweden www.westsweden.se

Other useful contacts

CORDIS (Community Research and Development Information Service) http://cordis.europa.eu/home_en.htmlhttp://cordis.europa.eu/fp7/dc/index.cfm

CORDIS Partners Service http://cordis.europa.eu/partners-service/

Open FP7 Energy Calls http://cordis.europa.eu/fp7/energy/open-topics_en.html

SME Participation in FP7 Report Autumn 2009 http://ec.europa.eu/research/sme-techweb/pdf/fp7_report_autumn_2009.pdf

IGLO – Informal Group of RTD Liaison Offices http://www.iglortd.org/

European Innovation Exchange http://www.eiex.eu/

ETICA http://www.etica-project.eu

www.etica-project.eu

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