PANELFIT (Participatory Approaches to a New Ethical and Legal Framework for ICTs) is an H2020-funded project that facilitates adaptation to the new EU regulations on data protection, data commercialization, security and cybersecurity issues. Its outcomes will include an open-access guidelines document, a critical analysis of the information and communication technology (ICT) data protection regulatory framework, and a report on the governance of ICT data protection ethical and legal issues.
ECSA activities and milestones
During 2021, ECSA focused on delivering the citizens’ information pack, which is one of the project’s major publicly available deliverables. Along with project partners ICM-CSIC and OBCT, we drafted much of the contents for this pack, including a series of factsheets on legal and ethical issues around ICTs. We also created the document ‘ICTs, data and vulnerable people: a guide for citizens’ which drew on much of the research we conducted during the project. The overarching aim of this output is to provide a reliable source of information to different experts as well as the general public regarding key aspects of the GDPR and where to find out more. To further enable this the CIP is currently being translated into French, Spanish, German and Italian all of which will be available on the project’s website.
Next steps
The project will be extended until April 2022, and during the final months of the project, ECSA’s main focus will be to promote the citizens’ information pack to its members and the wider citizen science community as a useful resource for citizen science practitioners to rely on and design their data protection policies. ECSA is also leading the organisation of the webinar: ‘Data protection, citizen science and vulnerable groups: protecting everyone’s rights’ to be held in February 2022. This webinar will see data protection experts. Citizen science practitioners, NGO’s representing different vulnerable groups and a diverse set of participants share their concerns and ideas regarding data privacy regulations and how to encourage participation in citizen science projects.
