FuturICT Goals, Ethics and Principles Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) FuturICT is performing fundamental research and creating powerful new Information and Communication Technology (ICT) methods, tools and systems that will allow one to explore and better manage future developments in society and the economy. It is aimed at increasing human well-being, social capital as well as social, economic and political participation. The FuturICT approach is quality, user and customer-oriented, transparent, and pluralistic (supporting coexistence and socio-economic diversity). It tries to build up a flourishing, sustainable and resilient socio-economic system, which may be best understood as a “symbiotic ecosystem”. To prevent misuse, participation in FuturICT activities and use of results of the FuturICT project requires a joint understanding, and the acceptance of the “project spirit” outlined in the following. FuturICT Goals FuturICT pursues the following goals and values: promote human well-being, increase the self-awareness of society, reduce vulnerability and risk, increase resilience (the ability to absorb societal, economic, or environmental shocks), avoid loss of control (sudden, large and unexpected systemic shifts), develop contingency plans, explore options for future opportunities and challenges, increase sustainability, facilitate flexible adaptation, promote fairness, increase social capital and the happiness of people, support social, economic and political participation, balance between central and decentralised (global and local) control, protect privacy and other human rights, pluralism and socio-bio-diversity, support collaborative forms of competition and vice versa (”co-opetition”). Ethics •
FuturICT-related activities are intended to benefit society as a whole. To achieve this goal, FuturICT will dedicate research resources to investigating ethical issues from the outset, considering a range of issues from the privacy of individuals to the transparency of policymaking and availability of data and simulations to citizens as well as decision makers. Furthermore, likely impacts of current and future ICT systems on societies and economies will be studied.
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Manipulating social or economic systems may potentially raise ethical issues. People handling FuturICT-related data or ICT tools must be required to take into account that projects addressing topics such as data mining, if not properly executed, may be in conflict with individual privacy, intimacy or proprietary rights. Therefore, private or confidential information must be anonymised to satisfy the EU Directive 95/46/EC. Moreover, state-of-the art guidelines and standards regarding information processing must be applied, particularly as specified by the FuturICT scientific and management committees. People handling FuturICT-related data or ICT tools must be warned that large-scale computer simulations aimed at applications may have harmful impacts as well. Therefore, project or collaboration partners or users must be instructed accordingly, properly trained, and where applications are particularly sensitive, examined for ethical competency and integrity.
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FuturICT and its partners reserve the right to supervise related activities and to inform the public about them in a sufficiently transparent way. In particular, FuturICT has the right to get answers to questions regarding details of use, and to do on-site inspections jointly with government officials, as needed. Security measures to avoid unethical use will be taken by the respective supervisors as required by the size and sensitivity of the applications. An ethical committee needs to be involved in all relevant decisions to identify and document ethical issues early on and provide proper advice regarding the required decisions and measures to be taken.
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FuturICT will not accept unethical (in particular harmful or aggressive) use of its ICT tools and reserves the right to intervene and take appropriate sanctions, if the principles, goals or ethics of FuturICT are seriously violated. Serious violations of the spirit of this MOU will not be tolerated, and infringements will result in an immediate termination and withdrawal of the license to use FuturICT software, data, results or other project outcomes from any violators.
Principles •
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Tasks such as data mining, reporting, manipulation of data and any other use of data of sensitive content needs to be undertaken in a way that respects all privacy and data protection requirements. Actions to prevent data leaks will be taken, such as anonymisation, fractionalisation, or aggregation of data such that individuals and their preferences and behaviours cannot be identified. The application of FuturICT modules and tools must meet scientific and technical standards and be handled and controlled by qualified staff. All partners in any FuturICT project need to sign all appropriate confidentiality and security agreements regarding cooperation and exchange with commercial partners, shared or centralised data. They will also need to comply with the minimum level of data protection and the security requirements as determined by the project. Notwithstanding, partners will need to comply with higher levels of data protection and security within their own country or institution, or their countries of operation, if those levels exist. Generally accepted ethical standards and globally accepted academic and scientific standards must be met. The basic principle partners should bear in mind is that everything which serves the project and is not illegal or unethical is allowed and expected from our partners and supporters whilst anything which is harmful should be avoided. One should think twice before doing something that might have possible negative outcomes. One should discuss controversial issues with the responsible persons/committees before embarking on a course of action. Possible sanctions for serious violations would be decided by the responsible committee (e.g. the Management Committee).