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Good practices for Service Developers

Using AI responsibly

  1. Start
  2. Introduction to data ethics
  3. Assess the capabilities of your organisation
  4. Organise ethical practices
  5. Get citizens involved
    1. Strengthen trust
    2. When is civic involvement necessary?
    3. Tackle practical challenges
    4. Inform citizens on the use of data
      1. Be careful not to overestimate users’ skill levels
      2. Prevent and correct user errors
      3. Consider whether you can reduce useless or harmful data sharing
  6. Define a data policy
  7. Pay attention to security
  8. Checklist

Inform citizens on the use of data

Be careful not to overestimate users’ skill levels

As a result of increasingly personalised services, individuals’ freedom and power to decide on the use of their data may have increased. It may also be easier for individuals to manage their affairs. But at the same time, individuals’ personal responsibility has also grown. The challenge is that individuals have varying abilities to understand the whole of their data and its nature as data points in the data economy.

This is something that raises concern among researchers and experts. Based on what we know about psychology and sociology, most people are not constantly rational actors who optimise their own benefit. However, the data market operates largely on this kind of perceived conduct and even penalises people who do not seem to be able to control the sharing and use of their data.

Consumers have been expected to monitor their rights and data and act independently in the event of problems, only to be blamed when they fail to act in their own interest. In reality, there is a significant amount of people who do not have the ability to do so.

– Antti Neimala, Director General of the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment, 2021
Updated: 9/11/2023

Prevent and correct user errors

In the data economy, a person’s way of using their data may affect access to services and thus the realisation of their fundamental rights. This is why AI systems and narrower rules-based robotics systems should adhere to the principle of previous waves of digitalisation. Systems must be implemented in a way that they prevent or correct errors made by users, and so they at least strive to prevent the user from encountering difficulties.

For example, a person filling in information in a traditional electronic form is bound by the content of the form. In other words, the decision on the limits of data use has been made by the party managing the service and the related form. A person may make factual mistakes or spelling errors, but the service can reject obviously incorrect or unrelated data.

Updated: 9/11/2023

Consider whether you can reduce useless or harmful data sharing

In the new data economy, individuals can share their data with services and systems that do not benefit them and can even sometimes cause harm. People can also provide unsolicited, even sensitive data to services. Because we cannot pre-emptively prevent a person’s decision to share their data, we have to ask what kind of restraints or “checkpoints” we should create in systems so that people do not inadvertently cause harm to themselves.

Updated: 9/11/2023

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