D7.3: DMP, Ethics and Privacy reporty

Executive Summary

As defined and described in the TransMIXR project proposal (pp. 17-18), the Data Management Plan (DMP), Ethics and Privacy report addresses all issues regarding 1/ data use within the consortium including public release, posting, curation, and preservation of data during and after the project’s lifetime and 2/ ethical aspects of the research and 3/ privacy issues and application of the GDPR regulations.

The DMP follows the FAIR principles (findable, accessible, interoperable, reusable). For clarification, the DMP is inspired by FAIR as a general concept, rather than a strict technical implementation of the FAIR principles. The DMP will be updated to ensure appropriate data management, a high level of data quality, and accessibility. We adhere to the principle “as open as possible, as closed as necessary” (European Commission, s.d.). In practice, this means we do not open up all the research data. We put sound data management first, as that is key to research best practice. Project partners provide input on the collected and stored data types, protective measures taken, and adhere to the stipulated principles and guidelines of the DMP. The TransMIXR DMP is based on the Horizon 2020 DMP template1 provided by the European Commission.

We give specific attention to systematic user data collection, profiling and monitoring techniques (i.e., in T3.5, T4.3, and WP5), to ensure these comply with strict legal and ethical guidelines outlined in the DMP, and users are transparently informed and fully consent to these methods.We will also look into potential health risks related to the technologies used in the project, to ensure a safe environment for user testing and experimentation within the TransMIXR project. In terms of data storage, we distinguish three categories: data shared within the consortium of TRANSMIXR, data shared with external partners and data shared in a public repository.

This report consists of three chapters: 1/ Data Management Plan (DMP); 2/ Ethics and Privacy; 3/ Other. We briefly describe the main contributions and insights of each chapter below.

Chapter 1: DMP

The DMP is presented as section 1 of the DMP, Ethics and Privacy deliverable (D7.3).
The DMP is a living document. We emphasise it is not required to provide detailed answers to all the questions (how we apply and guarantee FAIR data management) in the first version of the DMP. We try to provide insight into the information that we already know in the first three months / can estimate to a large extent for the upcoming months of the project (the DMP will be updated in month six at the latest based on the progress with ongoing user research activities such as workshops). This version reflects the status based on information currently available in the project (with a level of detail appropriate to the project). Updated versions in which we provide information on a finer level of granularity will be created as the project progresses (i.e., updated in the context of the periodic project evaluation or in time for the final review at the latest) and when significant changes occur (such as but not limited to new data, changes in consortium policies, consortium composition, and external factors).

Project partners follow the ethical guidelines as defined in WP7 (set out in the European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity and the Ethics Guidelines for trustworthy AI of the HLEG), to ensure privacy and security of activities involving the participation of end-users or professionals, and guarantee ethical development of the AI systems within the project. Furthermore, the guidelines provide a transparent, fair, proportionate and unbiased way for users to interact with the systems. We develop procedures and templates (i.e., informed consents, information sheets) for personal data processing (collection, storage, use, transfer, deletion). The data will be acquired through focus groups, surveys, user evaluations, and interviews.

UC4 involves minors (12+) as this use case focuses on youngsters. Parental consent (or consent from legal guardians) is required for the research activities, as well as assent of the minor. There is no risk or burden for the involved minors. They will benefit from new value-driven experiences tailored to them (i.e., interactive museum experiences). Regarding activities that require ethical approval, we will apply to the ethical committee at the beginning of the project, and before each user research activity, to ensure ethical approval is in place before data collection. We will apply for ethical approval to the ethical committee for social sciences (ECHW) at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB). The DPO of VUB can provide advice on specific ethical and privacy related questions.

Chapter 2: Ethics and Privacy

The guidelines of Ethics and Privacy will ensure privacy and security in all activities that involve participation of end users or professional users, as well as ensure an ethical development of the AI systems within the project and a transparent, fair, proportionate and unbiased way for the users to interact with these systems. We will develop procedures and templates (e.g. informed consents, decision tree) for the collection, use and storage of personal data that will be acquired through focus groups, surveys, user evaluations and interviews.

Chapter 3: Other

Efforts are underway to implement data management principles throughout all partners.