dialogues

A dialogue with Nicolas Diaz Ferreyra, postdoctoral fellow at the University of Duisburg-Essen working on areas of privacy and cybersecurity

In this Digital Age, are users able to make their own decisions about using digital services, and sharing their personal data? Why do they seemingly give away so much? Are they aware of the risks, impact and other consequences of doing so? What can and should developers add to the accountability table? How can one check and validate trust, what can we learn from existing non-digital use cases, and what accountability tools can help users to make better decisions? These and other essential queries are explored in this Dialogue.

A dialogue with Boris Koprivnikar, CEO Sincular Consulting. Former deputy Prime Minister Republic of Slovenia. This dialogue covers how to build services and systems – such as multi-cloud federated egov systems – that are not only build for short-termism, but for something that will last? Why are coordination, co-creation, transparency, trustworthiness, technological-neutrality and having an accountability life cycle approach essential catalysts and success factors? How to operationalise European values summarised in the triangle of intertwined horizontals of (1) more green, (2) more digital and (3) more resilient? While everything is interconnected, meanwhile, our societies including national governments are organised vertical. It that one of the reasons why we are not able to address the many urgent societal challenges in an accountable way? What kind of data strategy and leadership do we need?

A dialogue with Prof. Christiane Woopen, the executive director of Center for Ethics, Rights, Economics, and Social Sciences of Health, at University of Cologne (Ceres) at the University of Cologne, Germany.

In the medical/health sector, ethics is and has been a core and key component of daily decisions, research and other activities. Where digital technology has outstripped societal and legal frameworks, what can we learn from the ways ethics and accountability are continuously deployed in this sector? For instance regarding personal, bodily, emotional and data integrity. How to cater for multi-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary collaboration? And why is common ground such as a clear taxonomy so important? This Dialogue dives into these and related important matters.

Has the Digital Age been slowed or accelerated by the global Covid-pandemic? Which law is actually applicable when in a cross-border conference call? Are stakeholders taking a too simplistic approach on global, overlapping privacy and personal data protection? Do countries still play any role in the Digital Age? Do people and society still have a say, and a choice, or are we already too dependant on digital? Does focusing on either sovereignty, human-centricity, data-centricity or universal societal challenges solve this? And most of all, what have accountability, engaging with stakeholders and building trust to offer for all of these existential or otherwise essential questions? A Dialogue with Prof. Dan Jerker Svantesson. Professor at Faculty of Law, Bond University, Australia (Gold coast)

A dialogue with Peter Batt, Former Dir-Gen for Digital Society, Digitisation of the Administration and IT, Federal Ministry of the Interior, Building and Community, Germany.