New EU Report Addressing Design for Values in the Digital Age

The Ethics Advisory Group of the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) has today published its 2018 report. DDFV scientific director Jeroen van den Hoven is one of the six members of this EU advisory group and co-author of the report. Design for values in the digital age is one of the topics addressed.

The EDPS is the EU’s independent data protection authority. As part of the EDPS 2015-2019 strategy, the Ethics Advisory Group (EAG) is set up with the mandate to explore the relationships between human rights, technology, markets and business models in the 21st century. On design for values the report says among others the following:

“Digital ethics will need to accompany rapidly moving technological evolution and become part of the research and development processes swell as cycles of innovation and obsolescence or risk becoming irrelevant. […] Digital ethics that comes after the fact has wasted an opportunity to inform and shape the world. A design perspective in digital ethics would help to overcome this problem, because it would insert moral considerations at the point in which they can make a significant difference with lower costs and risks: at the initial stages of the design and development.”

Download the Ethics Advisory Group Report 2018