Technologies in line with societal values: from theory to practice

We help our clients and partners in the process of critical analysis to examine the effects that the introduction and use of a technology may have on human rights, society, and the environment. This is a complex process that requires a systematic view and consideration of how technology might affect people and society at large in the short and long term. The ethical impact of technology is therefore crucial when developing and deploying new technologies, in order to mitigate the negative effects and maximise the benefits, and to enable developers, organisations and policy makers to make informed decisions. In this assessment, we assist our clients and partners to consider all relevant factors; there are several methodologies and approaches used to assess the ethical impact of technologies, including:

• Privacy impact analysis: this type of analysis assesses the effects of technology on the privacy of individuals and their personal information. It considers the risks of monitoring and tracking, the consequences of possible data breaches and the security measures needed to protect users' privacy.
• Social impact assessment: this type of analysis evaluates the effects of technology on society and the economy in general, considering impacts on unemployment, social equality, access to education and health, quality of life and environmental sustainability.
• Ethical impact assessment: This type of analysis assesses the effects of technology on society's morals and values, considering impacts on social justice, accountability, transparency, human dignity and individual freedom.
• Life cycle analysis: This type of analysis assesses the environmental impacts of technology throughout its life cycle, from production to use and end of life.

Ethical impact assessment of technologies therefore requires a multidisciplinary evaluation involving technology experts, ethics experts, legal experts, environmental experts and other stakeholders.

Connected, disruptive technologies permeate all aspects of our daily lives and pose challenges to the real foundation of human rights, such as the right to privacy or the freedom of speech. One could say that human values such as trust, accountability, and dignity are mutually influenced by the social acceptance of technologies. We support our clients to conceive a novel way of aligning the thus-far divergent concepts of sustainability, ethics impact, and technological innovation. By combining these three concepts, we respond to the need of a socially responsible innovation ecosystem by developing a tailored methodology for assessing users’/citizens’ social acceptance of technologies, a fundamental driver for technology market adoption. Our social acceptance framework includes six fundamental dimensions over which social acceptability (i.e. perception, motivation, trust, awareness, capacity enabling, and accountability) is measured and assessed through a two-step approach based on an online Sentiment Analysis (SA) – to create structured and actionable knowledge from the web – and the engagement of our client’s stakeholders (e.g. relevant target groups, associations of citizens, domain operators, decision makers, etc.) for the technology co-creation and communication regarding its social acceptance.

We love discovering and staying on top of new research to continuously advance our knowledge and to transform it into responsible innovation, taking into account effects and potential impacts on ethics, privacy and data protection. We help national and international partners to handle ethical, legal and cybersecurity concerns on both the research process and the project outcomes, through the legal support for the involvement of human beings in the research activity, the analysis of the national and regional legal framework applicable to the implementing technology and the recommendations for the secure and compliant development of technology. We are a multidisciplinary team that promotes the inclusion of legal and ethical concerns in the design of the technology, researching and producing new knowledge and best practices towards making a conscious and transparent adoption of technology.