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A framework for the ethical impact assessment of information technology

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Abstract

This paper proposes a framework for an ethical impact assessment which can be performed in regard to any policy, service, project or programme involving information technology. The framework is structured on the four principles posited by Beauchamp and Childress together with a separate section on privacy and data protection. The framework identifies key social values and ethical issues, provides some brief explanatory contextual information which is then followed by a set of questions aimed at the technology developer or policy-maker to facilitate consideration of ethical issues, in consultation with stakeholders, which may arise in their undertaking. In addition, the framework includes a set of ethical tools and procedural practices which can be employed as part of the ethical impact assessment. Although the framework has been developed within a European context, it could be applied equally well beyond European borders.

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Notes

  1. Helft (2010).

  2. Hofmann refers specifically to health technology, but his observation may well be applicable to any technology. Hofmann (2005, p. 288).

  3. Moor (1985).

  4. Nissenbaum (2004).

  5. http://cordis.europa.eu/fp7/ethics_en.html#ethics_cl

  6. Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat 2002.

  7. [UK] Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) 2009.

  8. Marx (1998). Van Gorp also proposed a list of questions “that helps researchers doing research in technological fields to identify ethical aspects of their research.” Van Gorp (2009).

  9. Dekker says ethical reflection in technology assessment requires an engagement of experts from different disciplines for two reasons: “Firstly, the technical, economical, legal and social aspects are deeply cross-correlated with the ethical reflection. And secondly, participating in such interdisciplinary discussions enables an ethical reflection which keeps in touch with the real world.” See Dekker (2004).

  10. http://eurlex.europa.eu/JOHtml.do?uri=OJ:C:2007:306:SOM:EN:HTML

  11. http://www.europarl.europa.eu/charter/pdf/text_en.pdf

  12. European Commission 2007.

  13. For a state-of-the-art review, see Renn (2008).

  14. Technology assessments as an instrument for counselling political decision-makers were given a major impetus with the establishment of the Office for Technology Assessment (OTA) by the US Congress in 1972. Similar organisations were subsequently established in Europe, both at the Member State level (e.g., the Danish Board of Technology) and at the European level (e.g., the European Parliament’s office of Science and Technology Options Assessment (STOA)). STOA is a member of the European Parliamentary Technology Assessment Network (EPTA). Other EPTA members are the national parliamentary technology assessment bodies of Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.

  15. For a good overview of developments in this area, see Kirkpatrick and Parker (2007).

  16. Skorupinski and Ott (2002, p. 97).

  17. Skorupinski and Ott, p. 98.

  18. Beekman et al. (2006), p. 13).

  19. Palm and Hansson (2006). An extensive set of criteria, some of which are ethical, for assessing emerging technologies can be found in Kuzma et al. (2008). Kuzma et al. also use a question approach for assessing emerging technologies.

  20. Sollie and Düwell (2009).

  21. Sollie and Düwell, p. 4.

  22. Verbeek (2009, p. 67, 71).

  23. Hofmann, p. 289. He observes (p. 288) that there appears to be broad agreement among scholars that technology is value-laden.

  24. Orlikowski and Iacono (2001, p. 131).

  25. Orlikowski and Iacono, p. 130.

  26. Orlikowski and Iacono, p. 131.

  27. Orlikowski and Iacono, p. 133.

  28. Beauchamp and Childress (2001).

  29. Beauchamp and Childress, p. 58.

  30. www.un.org/Overview/rights.html

  31. Boddy (2004, p. 39). LOCOMOTION was a project funded by the European Commission’s Fifth Framework Programme (FP5).

  32. Boddy, p. 40.

  33. Boddy, p. 48.

  34. For ethical considerations re implants, see the European Group on Ethics in Science and New Technologies (EGE) 2005.

  35. Goldberg et al. (2001).

  36. Beauchamp and Childress 2001, p. 113 and p. 115.

  37. European Council resolution on e-Inclusion 2001.

  38. Palm and Hansson, p. 552.

  39. Social sorting is a process of classifying people and populations according to varying criteria, to determine who should be targeted for special treatment, suspicion, eligibility, inclusion, access and so on. See Lyon (2003, p. 20).

  40. For more on profiling and social sorting, see Hildebrant and Gutwirth (2008) as well Lyon, op. cit.

  41. Beauchamp and Childress, p. 165.

  42. European Parliament and Council 2002.

  43. On 28 January 2009, the European Commission announced its aim to achieve 100 per cent high-speed Internet coverage for all citizens by 2010. See European Commission 2009. http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=MEMO/09/35

  44. Johnson (2009).

  45. European Commission 2007.

  46. See the statement by Oracle: “Oracle Welcomes New EU Policy on e-Inclusion.” http://www.oracle.com/global/eu/public-policy/fs/new-e-inclusion-policy.html

  47. European Commission 2007, p. 4.

  48. Flanagan et al. (2008).

  49. Flanagan, et al., p. 335.

  50. Palm and Hansson, p. 553. See also Anke van Gorp who also includes sustainability in his checklist of ethical issues and in this sense. van Gorp, op. cit., p. 41.

  51. Beauchamp and Childress 2001, p. 226.

  52. Maiese (2003).

  53. Marx, p. 174.

  54. Marx, p. 174.

  55. http://conventions.coe.int/treaty/en/Treaties/Html/005.htm

  56. Brey (2000). Previous to this, Moor commented that “From the point of view of ethical theory, privacy is a curious value. On the one hand, it seems to be something of very great importance and something vital to defend, and, on the other hand, privacy seems to be a matter of individual preference, culturally relative, and difficult to justify in general.” He goes onto argue that privacy has both instrumental value (that which is good because it leads to something else which is good) and intrinsic value (that which is good in itself). Moor (1997).

  57. Clarke (2007).

  58. The Guidelines don’t specify or define what “where appropriate” means.

  59. European Parliament and Council 2006.

  60. Marx, p. 174.

  61. Marx, p. 174.

  62. Vedder and Custers (2009, p. 25).

  63. Brey, op. cit., p. 126.

  64. International Organization for Standardization 1999.

  65. Article 29 Data Protection Working Party 1997.

    http://ec.europa.eu/justice_home/fsj/privacy/workinggroup/wpdocs/1997_en.htm

  66. Article 29 Working Party 2008.

  67. Beekman (2006).

  68. Beekman et al., p. 14.

  69. Beekman and Brom (2007, pp. 3–4).

  70. Beekman et al., p. 21.

  71. Beekman et al., p. 6. Although Rowe and Frewer do not focus specifically on ethical tools, nevertheless, they do provide a long list of different mechanisms for engaging stakeholders, including the public, some of which could be used to facilitate an ethical impact assessment. See Rowe and Frewer (2005). Also of interest in this regard is Essays 9 & 10 in Chap. 8 in Renn, op. cit., pp. 273–352. Renn says, “A combination of analytic and deliberative instruments (or stakeholders and the public) is instrumental in reducing complexity, necessary for handling uncertainty and mandatory for dealing with ambiguity. Uncertainty and ambiguity cannot be resolved by expertise only” (p. 350). The two essays are useful guidance for ethical impact assessment as well as risk governance.

  72. Beekman and Brom, p. 6.

  73. Beekman et al., p. 46.

  74. Beekman et al., p. 20.

  75. ENISA is the acronym of the European Network and Information Security Agency. www.enisa.europa.eu.

  76. van Gorp, op. cit.

  77. See Beekman et al., p. 21, pp. 28–29. The ethical matrix concept was developed by Ben Mepham. See Mepham (2005).

  78. Skorupinski and Ott (2002, p. 119).

  79. Stern and Fineberg (1996).

  80. Sollie (2007, p. 302). Moor 2005, op. cit., p. 118, also supports better collaboration among ethicists, scientists, social scientists and technologists.

  81. Palm and Hansson, p. 547.

  82. US National Research Council 1989, p. 9.

  83. Stern and Fineberg, pp. 23–24.

  84. Moor (2005). In his paper, Moor proposes the following hypothesis, which he calls “Moor’s Law: As technological revolutions increase their social impact, ethical problems increase.”

  85. Palm and Hansson, pp. 550–551.

  86. Beekman et al., p. 26.

  87. Renn, op. cit.

  88. Sollie 2007, op. cit., p. 295.

  89. European Commission 2000.

  90. Verbeek, p. 72, uses this example.

  91. Vedder and Custers, p. 30.

  92. Ibid., p. 32.

  93. von Schomberg (2007).

  94. Article 2 of the mandate given to the EGE states: “The task of the EGE shall be to advise the Commission on ethical questions relating to sciences and new technologies, either at the request of the Commission or on its own initiative. The Parliament and the Council may draw the Commission’s attention to questions which they consider to be of major ethical importance. The Commission shall, when seeking the opinion of the EGE, set a time limit within which an opinion shall be given.” http://ec.europa.eu/european_group_ethics/mandate/index_en.htm

  95. http://ec.europa.eu/european_group_ethics/link/index_en.htm#4

  96. Palm and Hansson, p. 550.

  97. Skorupinski and Ott (2002, pp. 117–120).

  98. Verbeek indirectly offers at least two reasons supporting an ethical impact assessment. “Two forms of designer responsibility can be distinguished here. First, designers can anticipate the impact, side-effects and mediating roles of the technology they are designing. On the basis of such anticipations, they could adapt the original design, or refrain from the design at all. Second, designers can also take a more radical step and deliberately design technologies in terms of their mediating roles. In that case, they explicitly design behavior-influencing or ‘moralizing’ technologies: designers then inscribe desirable mediating effects in technologies.” Verbeek, p. 70.

  99. Verbeek, op. cit.

  100. Palm and Hansson, op. cit., pp. 547–548, p. 550. Moor (2005, p. 118), makes a similar point: “We can foresee only so far into the future… We cannot anticipate every ethical issue that will arise from the developing technology… our ethical understanding of developing technology will never be complete. Nevertheless, we can do much to unpack the potential consequences of new technology. We have to do as much as we can while realizing applied ethics is a dynamic enterprise that continually requires reassessment of the situation.” See also Brey, op. cit.

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Acknowledgments

The author acknowledges with thanks the thoughtful and detailed comments of the three anonymous reviewers as well as those of Guido van Steendam, professor of ethics at the University of Leuven, which have helped improve this paper. This paper is based in part on work undertaken by the author in two projects funded under the European Commission’s Seventh Framework Programme: SENIOR (Social Ethical and Privacy Needs in ICT for older People: a Dialogue Roadmap, grant agreement no. 216820) and PRESCIENT (Privacy and emerging fields of science and technology: Towards a common framework for privacy and ethical assessment, grant agreement no. 244779). The views in this paper are those of the author alone and are in no way intended to reflect those of the European Commission.

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Wright, D. A framework for the ethical impact assessment of information technology. Ethics Inf Technol 13, 199–226 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10676-010-9242-6

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