Ethics Oversight in ROXANNE

Ethics oversight in ROXANNE exists across four levels: the European Commission Ethics Checks; the External Ethics Board; the Internal Ethics Board; ethics-focussed work within the project. Overall, the ROXANNE project is in a positive position in terms of meeting the strict ethical requirements from the Commission. So far, the project is also fulfilling the recommendations generated within the project to ensure compliance with ethical, societal, and legal standards. The strict oversight that the ROXANNE project is subject to ensures that none of these standards are violated in the work of the project. The ROXANNE consortium is committed to ensuring that the ROXANNE project is carried out in a responsible way, and that the technologies developed are used in an ethical and lawful manner.

The last ethics focussed blog about ROXANNE looked at the ethical approach that is being taken in the project. A key aspect of the ethical approach is accountability, and we wanted to explain the different levels of strict ethical oversight that the project is subject to.

Ethics oversight in ROXANNE exists across four levels: the European Commission Ethics Checks; the External Ethics Board; the Internal Ethics Board; ethics-focussed work within the project.

Before the project began, the European Commission provided a number of ethical requirements for the consortium to fulfil in order to demonstrate that it is engaging in research ethically, lawfully, and responsibly. The completion of these requirements is evaluated by independent experts chosen by the Commission at regular ‘Ethics Checks’ which take place as the project progresses. The comprehensive work of the project to fulfil the requirements has been received in a broadly positively way, and we are preparing for future checks.

All members of the consortium were required to contribute to the fulfilment of the requirements, including our law enforcement agency partners. These requirements cover five areas: treatment of human participants; protection of personal data; risks of misuse; issues related to AI; the appointment of an Ethics Board.

Regarding human participants, the ROXANNE consortium demonstrated that volunteers for research activities are recruited and treated ethically and fairly, and their data is gathered lawfully. The ethics review board of one of our university partners approved our research activities involving humans for surveys, voice recordings, and workshops.

In terms of protecting personal data, the project provided information about the processing of personal data where it is gathered by partners, or re-used from other research projects, and conditions for the processing of any sensitive data. Further, we explained how people are informed about processing of their personal data. Additionally, each partner submitted information on: national data protection laws in their countries; persons responsible for data protection in their organisation; measures taken to safeguard any personal data, and; any international data transfers. Finally, we screened each task in the project to determine whether a data protection impact assessment would be needed.

With respect to misuse, we completed a comprehensive risk assessment regarding risks that could arise during the project, in use of the proposed platform, and during any sale of the developed technologies . Each risk was matched with a mitigation strategy to prevent the ROXANNE technologies, or project data, being abused, or sold to an organisation with a poor human rights record. The ROXANNE partners want to avoid these risks materialising, and will take all appropriate steps to prevent them; this includes developing guidelines to prevent sales to inappropriate customers.

To cover issues about AI, the ROXANNE partners provided an explanation of the intended human-centred approach to building and using the platform, and detailed how access to any sensitive data will be strictly limited to respect the privacy of data-subjects.

In ROXANNE, we have both an Internal and External Ethics Board. The Internal Ethics Board discusses ethical issues that arise in the project, including fulfilment of the requirements discussed above, and takes decisions about how to deal with them. The External Ethics Board provides independent review of the approach taken by the ROXANNE partners, and makes recommendations on how to proceed; members of the External Ethics Board also write reports to provide an independent assessment of how the project is dealing with ethical issues that arise.

Finally, ethics-focussed work within the project analyses the work of project partners and the technologies being developed to ensure that they comply with applicable ethical, societal, and legal standards. This involves evaluating all tasks in the project, and the technologies under development, for any issues that could affect compliance with these applicable standards. Led by Trilateral, any potential issues were discussed with the leaders of different work packages and tasks, and strategies to ensure compliance were jointly decided upon. These strategies were then turned into recommendations for the project partners to abide by to ensure compliance with the ethical, societal, and legal standards. Many of the recommendations applicable to the early phases of the project have been fulfilled, and implementation and monitoring of recommendations for current and future phases are ongoing.

Overall, the ROXANNE project is in a positive position in terms of meeting the strict ethical requirements from the Commission. So far, the project is also fulfilling the recommendations generated within the project to ensure compliance with ethical, societal, and legal standards. The strict oversight that the ROXANNE project is subject to ensures that none of these standards are violated in the work of the project. The ROXANNE consortium is committed to ensuring that the ROXANNE project is carried out in a responsible way, and that the technologies developed are used in an ethical and lawful manner.