The goal of the EU project ETICA (Ethical Issues of Emerging ICT Applications) is to identify and tackle ethical pitfalls of new instances and applications of information and communication technologies before these can become genuine pitfalls.
The project consists of five interlinked work packages the first two of which consist of mapping emerging technologies and of identifying ethical issues related to these. ITAS is leading the third work package, entitled "evaluation", which is to rank emerging technologies and their related ethical issues from the separate viewpoints of technology assessment, ethics, gender issues and the law with additional special focus on the New Member States. The two final work packages are on governance and coordination of the project as well as on policy aspects and recommendations.
The project is being coordinated by Bernd Carsten Stahl, Reader in Critical Research in Technology in the Centre for Computing and Social Responsibility at De Montfort University, Leicester (UK), the lead partner in the project. ITAS' partners in the Evaluation work package are the Steinbeis University, Berlin (Professor Rafael Capurro), Eötvös Károly Public Policy Institute, Budapest (Professor Iván Székely) and the University of Lódz (Professor Elzbieta Oleksy). The project advisory board consists of representatives of regional authorities, small and medium-size enterprises and research.