Digital Twins and Ethics - How do we ensure ethics sits at the core of the NDTp?

[Nick Wild]

Research

Sopra Steria has undertaken extensive academic and industry research into the ethics surrounding digital twins. This research provided the foundations for three stakeholder workshops, held in collaboration with the National Digital Twin programme (NDTp), exploring the ethical considerations behind digital twins and the National Digital Twin. Stakeholders were invited due to their expertise and experience with ethics, data and digital twins. There was an array of perspectives from organisations spanning government, academia, and industry and this collaboration sparked invaluable insight.

These workshops were focused specifically on understanding the Gemini Principles from an ethical perspective. Sopra Steria’s seven categories of digital ethics, drawn from academic and industry standards, were adopted as a framework with which to approach the Gemini Principles. The workshops then explored the relationships between the framework values and the Gemini Principles. Combining the initial research with the analysis from the workshops has provided insight and clarity on the ethical aspects of the National Digital Twin for the NDTp and users of the Gemini Principles. This is essential for the operationalisation of the Gemini Principles, turning them from aspiration to reality.

To read more about the findings from our study, the report can found at this link or attached here. 

So what next?

In order to ensure that ethics sits at the core of all Digital Twins and the National Digital Twin, engagement from the whole community is essential. Therefore we would love to use this thread to start a conversation around ethics and Digital Twins. Please post any questions, opinions, contemplations, thought leadership or even late night thoughts; discussion and collaboration from a range of perspectives is how we will achieve a truly ethical National Digital Twin. 

We will get it started.....

From the research conducted, what was the conclusion about governance supporting data ethics? Is it sufficient and if not what is the role of digital twin developers to bridge the gap?

Digital Twins Ethics and the Gemini Principles.pdf

[Nick Wild]

From the research conducted, what was the conclusion about governance supporting data ethics? Is it sufficient and if not what is the role of digital twin developers to bridge the gap?

Governance is essential in data ethics. There are an array of varied data ethics considerations to Digital Twins, and governance and legislation will help navigate these considerations. To name a few, we need to think about the ethical considerations behind the data, the risk of bias, de-annoymisiation and upholding data minimisation and quality principles. However, taking a step back, there needs to be an element of education on data ethics to all stakeholders. We cannot rely entirely on governance and legislation for data ethics, as sometimes it is not adequate, demonstrated by the lack of protection by GDPR to protect against inferences drawn from data (compared to the California Consumer Privacy Act). Therefore, work needs to be done to improve foundational levels of literacy and understanding of data ethics for all stakeholders in digital twins, especially for digital twin developers. Once this has been established, as a collective we can then use a blend of governance, legislation, expertise and technologies such as Privacy Enhancing Technologies to uphold data ethics fundamentals. 

[Claire Dowdall]

Thank you so much for posting Nick! 

If anybody would like to watch the presentation from Tuesday's Gemini call, it can be found on the Digital Ethics project page here:

Digital Ethics - DT Hub Community (digitaltwinhub.co.uk) 

And please feel free to ask Nick and Kevin any further questions here.