MAMEM was represented in the RRI-ICT event coorganised by Sigma Orionis and DG connect that took place at Brussels on July 8-9. Various groups of interested partners attended the event in order to identify and capture what Responsible Research and Innovation translates to; SSH owners, RRI enabling projects, ICT projects, project officers and the RRI ICT hub which includes the organisers.
The main objective of the workshop was to answer the question “what is responsible research and innovation”. Based on a survey of the participants prior to the workshop the following tag cloud was created indicating the perception of ICT-related people for RRI.
We can identify two main groups of ideas; the first one refers to societal aspects such as ethics, transparent, open, respect, share, privacy, safe, user centered, while the second one is from a market point of view such as sustainable, innovation, value, useful, impact.
One of the biggest challenges identified during the workshop was how to develop products and services that are respecting the societal needs for privacy and ethics in general, while at the same time providing researchers and developpers with the necessary freedom to innovate. The transition from a research idea to a market product, while keeping in mind the etyhical needs for privacy, safety as well the innovation enabling open access to resources is tricky but imperative so that any research idea has value for the society.
After two days of interactively collaborating with one another, we reached a list of 20 main aspects of what we consider responsible research. Among them we can distinguish the most popular aspects; value for society, sustainability, measurable impact, interdisciplinary dialogue, decision making and support, user engagement and responsibility by design.