As part of the in situ phase of the SEEDIG Youth School, students had to prepare a debate on Ethics in the digital age. They were divided into two teams – team PRO and team CON – and were asked to debate the pros and cons of the following proposal:

• The solution to getting tech companies to be more ethical is to have them hire Chief Ethics Officers (CEOs).

The main points raised by the two teams, as well as the compromise solution they developed together, are presented below.

A. Team PRO

• The Ethics Principles developed by the Multistakeholder group (international group of professionals from academia, CSOs, the private sector, governments, and everyone interested in ethics and technological issues) will create a baseline for ethical conduct.
• The position(s) of the chief ethics officer(s) (CEOs) is/are recommended and not mandatory.
• CEO(s) has/ have to follow the principles developed by the multistakeholder group. CEO(s) should identify, report and oversee the breaches of these principles, but also educate employees about ethical standards.
• Having the CEO(s) should boost the company’s efficiency and reputation. Also, minimise their risks. Collaboration with company members should be improved.
• Benefits for society: increase transparency, accountability and ethics by design.

B. Team CON

• Different sectors have different  needs and ethics. Each domain (e.g health, criminal records, financial history data, etc.) has sector-specific aspects that need special attention and are subject to debate. A CEO is not capable of handling the diversity of ethical differences in these domains.
• Ethics will not work with enforcement of a CEO. It can be sustained through codes of conducts, regulations and principles, while it should not be implemented from the top, but come from the root.
• It is impossible to combine all the needed skills in one person. Also,  a CEO’s knowledge and background should be in question. A CEO, apart from ethics, should also have a very deep understanding of the technical aspects of the programmes they are responsible for.
• Granting freedom to ethical officers to make decisions on what constitutes ethical standards without appropriate regulation set in place and institutional oversight is dangerous.
• Notions of ethics are different in different cultures. Ethics is dynamic. If there is no standards of ethics, our approach should not be ambiguous, only by saying that an ethical officer wouldn’t be able to sustain ethics, as it varies from country to country.

C. Overall conclusion of the debate (developed by both teams)

• Instead of a Chief Ethics Officer, have a Board of Ethical Directors/Ethics Board (this can include individuals from different stakeholders having different skills). A very careful study should be conducted on who will employ the Ethics Board: should it be an internal or external entity? Ideally, it would be an external body.
• A more broadly accepted code of ethics could be created by an organisation such as the UN or an organisation whose structure would be based on a multistakeholder model, through a transparent process that is accessible to the other actors and takes into account their rights and opinions. Yet, if such standards and principles are agreed, they should be of a soft law nature that stakeholders can decide to implement on a voluntary basis.
• In the absence of ethical guidelines or frameworks that would require from parties to comply with certain ethical standards, it should be recommended to interested parties to come up with their own ethical principles and codes of conducts. Adherence to ethical principles and values would provide legitimacy to the decisions reached by those entities and render them accountable to the people.
• In case such values and principles are to be codified, deliberations should also revolve around whether they should be developed on a national/regional/international level and whether they should be of a universal nature or sector specific.