The Institute of Future of Living, in cooperation with 15 other organisations, has sent an open letter to the European Commission, requesting to support the process of developing and refining the Digital Responsibility Goals.
The objective is to gain understanding and trust from the Commission in order to collaboratively work towards incentivizing Sustainable Digital Development based on Trust. Digital technologies bear the potential to advance Europeans’ lives, but motives behind technological innovation have long been focused on profit rather than people. Policies and laws cannot match the speed of technology anymore. Too often, critical decisions about the future of societies are made without guidelines on how to make sustainable decisions. Just like the UN Sustainable Development Goals, the so-called Digital Responsibility Goals (DRGs) want to promote humane technology, based on rights and democratic values.
Developed in a consortium consisting of leading academics, NGO’s and industry experts, the DRGs cover 7 areas where we see scope for commitments that go beyond compliance with existing laws and regulations.
- Digital Literacy and access to technology is the basis for trust in and acceptance of digital innovation.
- Cybersecurity equips systems with powers to fend off cyber-attacks and protect users from manipulation and fraud.
- Privacy serves users and protects their unique identities. Modern privacy practices are an additional offer to users, independent from existing regulations, and can bring together privacy safeguards with data-based business models.
- Data fairness means that even non-personal dat needs to be protected and treated carefully based on their value to ensure a balanced and fair collaboration between all actors in the data ecosystem.
- Trustworthy Algorithms ensure that, after the data collection, data continues to be processed on the basis of core principles like explainability and fairness.
- Transparency must form the basis to guide the actions of all stakeholders in the digital supply chain to create trust.
- Human Agency & Identity are critical guideposts and the precondition for digital development. Digital products and services must be human-centric, sustainable, inclusive and developed under human oversight.
Our Call for Participation and Support:
The signatories ask for the European Commision’s and European Parliament’s support in promoting the Digital Responsibility Goals. We kindly asked the Commission to support the process of developing and refining the Digital Responsibility Goals through a multi-stakeholder process offering experts from the fields of industry, policy, non-profit and academia a chance to participate in shaping the DRGs.
Signed by the following partners:
