1st results of the multi-stakeholder consultation on ETHNA System concept are IN
27. Sep. 2021
With the aim of refining and finetuning the first version of the ETHNA System concept, the ETHNA partnership conducted a series of semi-structured interviews and organized interactive and participatory workshop under the guidance and with the support of Centre for Social Innovation (ZSI).
The first step of the multi-stakeholder consultation was the conduction of 23 interviews with relevant academic and business research-performing (RPOs) and research-funding organisations (RFOs) across Europe (in altogether 10 countries) between May and July, 2021. The interviews focused on the following main question groups: (1) expertise and understanding of different RRI dimensions; (2) motives for and integration of RRI dimensions within each organization; (3) missing RRI practices, and barriers of institutionalization; (4) potential good-practice examples in different RRI dimensions; (5) optional remarks on ETHNA System concept ideas, such as ethics committee, code of ethics or indicators.
The exploratory interviews were followed on by a series of workshops between early July and September 2021, with each workshop organized by a different ETHNA project partner with regard to a specific RRI dimension. These dedicated workshops delved deeper into the key incentives and main barriers or challenges of institutionalizing RRI dimensions in RPOs: in July, ZSI organized a workshop for project partners on public engagement, followed by a workshop with the involvement of external experts in topics of ethics (organized by Bulgarian partner Applied Research and Communications Fund - Arc Fund) and gender equality (organized by the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology - FECYT). In September, these interactive events were followed by a workshop organized by the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) concerning open science and open access. Last, the Republic of Estonia's Education and Youth Board (Harno) organised a participatory workshop with external experts from the TAFTIE network to discuss the highly topical open issues between artificial intelligence (AI) and ethics. (ZSI acted as co-organiser in the last two cases)
The rich data set gathered through interviews and workshop will be now validated by an online survey at a global scale where relevant academic stakeholders will be asked about the relevance of key incentives, barriers of institutionalization, good practices and monitoring measures concerning specific RRI dimensions. The final results will be used to draft an advanced version of the ETHNA System concept with the aim of providing guidance to the decisions and activities of the upcoming Living Lab implementation cases.
Tags: RRI