Aurelie Pols, DPO who has joined Panelfit’s EAB, and Andrea Cornavaca, Researcher for Data & AI Ethics at everis, participated in the Madrid workshop and shared their thoughts on the project.
Aurélie Pols, Data Protection Officer, Privacy Engineer, and Data Scientistis specialized in digital “web analytics”, content management systems and ad servers before co-founding a start-up in Belgium.
She has participated in different European projects, maintains her activity as a teacher and has her own Spanish based consultancy.
Q: After getting to know the Panelfit project, dedicated to analyse legal and ethical aspects in relation with the development and implementation of ICT, especially from the perspective of privacy: What is your view on what is needed at European level in order to face the challenges of digital privacy?
A: The toolboxset out in the law needs to be translated into contextual action points, depending on the use, reach and impact of fundamental rights brought about by technology.
In that sense, as ICT by itself is not readily equipped to deal in non-binary decisions, use cases need to be put forward to foster best practices. This while taking into consideration contextual circumstances that might influence how the law should be interpreted and adapted.
The legislative interpretation needs to move from a “it depends” stance towards a more concrete list of actions points which are readily embedded into contextual circumstances. Hence such best practices should be accompanied by non-limiting lists of additional considerations to allow actors to position themselves considering their accountability obligations.
Q: What did your participation consist of in the sessions of the Panelfit workshop “20 stakeholders and end users” held at everis headquarters in Madrid? What did you find most interesting about it?
A: I attended all days the workshops were held in Madrid and actively participated in the discussions, using as basis the Guidelines and the Critical Analysis. The workshops also allowed to align with privacy professionals to better understand their focus while exchanging experiences.
Q: One of the deliverables of Panelfit are the Guidelines on the ethical and legal issues of ICT research and innovation. How do you think you can benefit from them as an end user?
A: As a DPO in digital data, policies are set-up to assure data is processed along the lines defined by the GDPR. This to support compliance obligations and limit risk for the parties involved. Such practical guidelines, if applicable to the use case, will serve a basis or additional documentation to those policies.
Ideally, these Practical Guidelines should become living documents to allow for potential forking of best practices, depending on use cases or adaptations in case certain become incomplete or obsolete.
Q: Recently you have accepted to become a new member of Panelfit’s Expert Advisory Board.What will you do in this role?
A: Be involved at a supervisory capacity considering the quality of the deliverables, potentially adding suggestions in terms of sources of influence attributed to the current topics covered. It involves monitoring the structures of the developments of the chosen ICT technologies.
Andrea Cornavaca, Lead Researcher for Data & AI Ethics at everis AI Strategy & AI Ethics team. Focused on translating Artificial Intelligence strategic value to business areas through innovative proposals.
Q: What is your role in the everis Strategy & AI Ethics team?
A: Data & AI Ethics is one of the innovative practices we lead from the AI Strategy & AI Ethics team. As the team´s AI Ethics Specialist I focus on developing new methodologies and assets to support clients’ implementation of ethics principles across the data and AI lifecycle. Our aim is to embed responsible Data & AI best practices as a strategic enabler for our clients’ AI initiatives. Through this practice we help organizations address the challenges that arise from AI systems by implementing a human-centric approach that focuses on inclusion, diversity, transparency and progress.
Q: After getting to know the Panelfit project, dedicated to analyse legal and ethical aspects in relation with the development and implementation of ICT, especially from the perspective of privacy: What is your view on what is needed at European level in order to face the challenges of digital privacy?
A: While several official publications already establish a common legal framework to address digital privacy at a European and national level, there seems to be a lack of practical tools available to evaluate digital privacy and best practices to follow when encountered with “grey areas”. This often results in creating a dependency relationship from legal experts, affecting progress on ICT projects and also affecting the implementation of agile methodologies that are commonly adopted as best practices. Therefore I would say there’s a widespread need of easy-to-consume actionable guidelines that could be implemented regardless of the level of expertise in regards to legal matters that arise from digital privacy.
Q: What did your participation consist of in the sessions of the Panelfit workshop “20 stakeholders and end users” held at everis headquarters in Madrid? What did you find most interesting about it?
A: During the workshop, I contributed by supporting the end-user approach from the AI research and implementation standpoint. I particularly enjoyed collaborating with such multidisciplinary teams, sharing insights from academic researchers, legal and tech experts from all over Europe.
I was involved in two sessions focused on reviewing the drafted guidelines. There was an interesting synergy between both materials as the first one addressed very practical recommendations and the second one proposed a more conceptual approach to evaluating the impact of processing personal data. This double-sided approach is very much needed when evaluating ethics dilemmas that arise from ICT innovation projects since it’s very hard to cover all potential aspects with a standardized ethics assessment. Fostering an open discussion on the direct and indirect impact on individuals also needs to become a critical part of every ICT project.
Q: One of the deliverables of Panelfit are the Guidelines on the ethical and legal issues of ICT research and innovation. How do you think you can benefit from them as an end user?
A: For the AI Strategy & Ethics team, I believe the guidelines could become a reference tool to assess and shape internal proposals and AI initiatives that may involve personal data at any stage of the system lifecycle. Also, since the final document will be a reference at a European level, it could be an added value to share with our end-clients in terms of best practices to adopt at their innovation projects across their regional presence.
