AI Ethics for Public Services in Wales

The first quarter of 2022 saw Prof. Andrew McStay and Dr. Gilad Rosner (IoT Privacy Forum) team up again to consider digital ethics in context of government and public services in Wales. Funded by the 2022 Welsh Data Nation Accelerator (WDNA) programme and through engagement with Welsh Government they developed:

  • A primer on ethics and digital ethics

  • Understanding of digital well-being’ as a useful framing for Wales

  • Analysis of the norms and values of the Well-being for Future Generations Act in context of the UN sustainability development goals and the Precautionary Principle

  • Distillation of those norms and values into technology governance imperatives

  • Practical activities to maximise national well-being goals

  • A review of a survey of nationally segmented British attitudes toward government use of technology and personal data

  • A set of resources to further explore digital ethics and well-being

Although they started by distilling and analysing key ethical frameworks from the around the world they quickly worked out that key normative drivers for Welsh AI ethics were far closer to home, in the form of the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015. Those outside of Wales are unlikely to be familiar with it, but it is unique in being a highly moral piece of legislation that builds for the future. Oddly there is no mention of data or technology, which provided the team opportunity to build what the saw as the missing piece of the Act.

The project was also fascinating because public service data ethics problems are tricky. While headline maxims of fairness, accountability, transparency and non-maleficence are worthy values, they are not always helpful in handling problems where there are multiple pressures and competing “good” values. This meant that in addition to Welsh normative values, they engaged closely with applied ethics and the practicalities of decision-making

A short sprint project, the citizen fieldwork element was by limited by time. They conducted a UK-wide survey (with a focus on Wales) on attitudes to public services and use of citizen data by these groups. This created a few surprising results, especially on willingness to share data among public services (with implications regarding the UK Digital Economy Act 2017) and use of urban sensors. There was however also a strong appetite for a precautionary approach to use of citizen data. Need to avoid unexpected uses of data was also key, meaning that there is need for meaningful engagement with citizenry. There was also a strong indication that UK and Wales citizens both believe that government has a strong role to play in protecting future generations regarding the development of technology and technology markets.

Report available soon

Andrew McStay