{"id":5555,"date":"2024-07-22T15:48:35","date_gmt":"2024-07-22T13:48:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bdva.eu\/docs\/bdva-strategic-agenda-2024\/vi-integrating-innovation-ethics-and-compliance\/vi-a-context-policy-and-trends\/"},"modified":"2024-08-02T16:47:47","modified_gmt":"2024-08-02T14:47:47","slug":"vi-a-context-policy-and-trends","status":"publish","type":"docs","link":"https:\/\/bdva.eu\/docs\/bdva-strategic-agenda-2024\/vi-integrating-innovation-ethics-and-compliance\/vi-a-context-policy-and-trends\/","title":{"rendered":"VI.a Context, policy and trends"},"content":{"rendered":"

To balance innovation (data economy, data-driven solutions, the rise of AI, DTs, cyber-physical systems, and IoT) with the protection of European norms and values, in recent years there has been a surge in new regulatory frameworks designed to ensure that such digital transition respects fundamental rights and freedoms. These new frameworks supplement existing legislation. Adding to that complexity, member states complement EU rules, where possible, with their national regimes.<\/p>\n

As legal requirements grow, so does the compliance burden for businesses involved in these sectors.<\/p>\n

The EU has provided and will further develop a regulatory framework to ensure trust, preserve the rights of citizens, prevent crimes and fraud, leverage data at the EU level, and increase citizens\u2019 welfare and industry competitiveness. However, legislation and (ethical) guidelines also bring many associated burdens and costs, especially for SMEs and small actors, including the need for more awareness, information, support and resources to implement them and reach compliance.<\/p>\n

To alleviate this problem, the EC has funded several projects under the Horizon Programme, e.g. \u201cTechnologies and solutions for compliance, privacy preservation, green and responsible data operations\u201d[1]<\/sup><\/a> that can provide tools for the implementation of compliance and is in the process of selecting a set of new projects focused on \u201cAI-driven data operations and compliance technologies\u201d[2]<\/sup><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Additionally, BDVA has published two position papers that also bring some guidelines and support on how to overcome some of these barriers: \u201cCurrent topics on Data Protection\u201d[3]<\/sup><\/a> reviews challenges and promising technologies to keep and improve data protection, and \u201cLeveraging the benefits of combining Data Spaces and Privacy Enhancing Technologies\u201d reflects on how data spaces and PETs can benefit from each other. Finally, Gaia-X published in 2022 a position paper on \u201cAutomated Compliance\u201d[4]<\/sup><\/a>, meaning compliance, the conformance of a system to a set of rules and regulations or with agreements among parties, and discussing how to automate it in the context of Gaia-X.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, ethics have always been important in ICT, addressing questions like privacy, confidentiality, trust, equity, fairness, transparency, accountability and liability. With the advent of data and AI and the impact of these technologies on society, industry and the daily life of citizens, their right application and use have become crucial for their adoption. Aspects like bias, discrimination, fairness, privacy, informed consent, control, and potential harm have already been addressed in some of the mentioned regulations and are part of a discussion at different levels. The EU High-level expert group on AI published in 2019 the Ethics Guidelines for Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence[5]<\/sup><\/a> and the Assessment List for Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence (ALTAI)[6]<\/sup><\/a> that translates the Ethics Guidelines into an accessible and dynamic self-assessment checklist.<\/p>\n

The project EUHubs4Data[7]<\/sup><\/a>, aimed to create a federation of European Data-Driven Innovation Hubs relaying in the group of i-Spaces of BDVA, has been a pioneer project in considering a holistic ethics approach by: (i) creating a project ethics framework and appointing a project ethics committee, (ii) hiring an external ethics advisor to assess all activities of the project (data catalogue, open calls, experiments, privacy policies, \u2026) and produce regular reports, and (iii) producing as a result of the project an ethics toolkit that incorporates all the documentation, services and guidelines[8]<\/sup><\/a>. Some projects running under the Horizon Europe call on \u201cEfficient trustworthy AI – making the best of data\u201d[9]<\/a> are also addressing aspects about efficient and trustworthy AI.<\/p>\n

In BDVA, the etami (ethical and trustworthy artificial and machine intelligence) task force[10]<\/sup><\/a> [11]<\/sup><\/a> aims at translating European and global principles for ethical AI into actionable and measurable guidelines, tools and methods[12]<\/sup><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Summarising all the above, these efforts respond to a set of trends that are pushing discussions in these directions, and from which the most relevant ones to be considered are:<\/p>\n