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Disentangle IoT's legal and ethical considerations

If you’ve ever watched a toddler eat spaghetti, you know just how messy it can get. The pasta tangle resists every effort, and sauce gets everywhere. Hands get involved. But as the child grows, they learn how to use tools more effectively. Within a few years, they can use a fork to tame the tangle and make quick, neat work of a meal.

I think this is good analogy for companies new to IoT solutions: they can find a tangle of compliance considerations they may not have expected. These might include legal and regulatory requirements, as well as ethical considerations around the use of IoT that may not be legally required, but good practice nonetheless. Companies with a global footprint have even more spaghetti on their plates, as they contend with each host country’s unique ruleset. Why is this?

The compelling strength of IoT lies in its ability to apply the power of the digital world to almost any problem in the physical world. This crossover means IoT touches rules made for each. An IoT-enabled insulin pump, for example, doesn’t just need to meet safety standards for a medical device; it also has to meet the privacy and cybersecurity standards of a digital tool, as well as respect and obey intellectual property laws. Then there are ethical considerations. Can you ensure that end users have truly informed consent as to how the device operates?

So how can organizations deploy IoT to achieve its benefits, while modeling responsible corporate citizenship at the same time? Just like fork for spaghetti, the answer is the same: use the right tool. In this case, the tool is design thinking. Consider framing current and upcoming laws and regulations as design constraints, then craft IoT solutions accordingly. With growing public awareness of ethical and privacy issues in the digital realm, organizations can’t afford for IoT design to be an afterthought. The first step? Get a clear understanding on what’s on the compliance plate.

The different strands of regulation

Generally speaking and not surprisingly, the wider the scope of an IoT solution, the greater the number of compliance considerations it’s likely to encounter. These commonly include:

  • Privacy and security. Since IoT’s sweet spot is collecting and analyzing massive volumes of data, perhaps the largest area of regulation is how to protect that data. There are multiple data privacy and security laws in multiple nations, each with a different impact on IoT solution design. Adding to the complexity: these laws can vary by industry – such as healthcare or energy — and requirements can vary widely even within a given region. For instance, while many know that the European Union’s (EU) General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) regulates how many forms of data are collected and stored across the EU, some may not realize that GDPR isn’t necessarily uniform across the EU. Some aspects of those rules are left up to individual member states to define and implement.
  • Technical regulations. Technical IoT regulation can start at a level as granular as component technologies. While companies may not need to design the sensors or communication protocols they use, they should be aware of the regulations that govern them. For example, communication protocols using unlicensed spectrum may be difficult to use in certain areas, such as airports.
  • Intellectual property, export and trade compliance rules. IoT solutions that span national borders can raise difficult questions ranging from who owns intellectual property to how to comply with tariffs. In fact, moving certain types of data and information across borders can trigger laws on the export of controlled technology.
  • Workplace and labor. Legal and ethical concerns don’t just apply to customer-facing technologies. There are just as many regulatory issues for purely internal IoT applications. Solutions to improve workplace efficiency can touch regulations for gathering employee data, and how that data can — or can’t — be used in employment decisions or performance reviews.

Finding the right tool to untangle

When laid out in such a list, IoT’s potential legal and ethical considerations can seem daunting. The key to not being overwhelmed is to not ignore them. Start your assessment of legal and ethical considerations early in the design of an IoT solution. That way you can tailor the solution to the desired outcomes and you will not find yourself forced into costly changes during implementation.

Tools and expert advice at this early stage can also help understand what regulations impact your potential IoT use case. For example, Deloitte Netherlands has created a tool that can sift through the list of EUand national regulations and pull out those that are applicable to a given IoT solution. Such a list of applicable regulations can help to make clear the specific requirements that an IoT solution must meet, helping to tailor the hardware, software and governance decisions to suit.

Ethical IoT as a differentiator

Legal and regulatory compliance can often seem like a costly and tiresome burden, but breaches or the misuse of data can have real and staggering cost — both in dollars, and damage to reputation.

This fact is prompting some companies to take a different approach to IoT. Rather than viewing legal and ethical compliance as a burden, they’re looking to make ethics a competitive differentiator. Much like organic products have become a differentiator for some food brands, so too can a transparent and ethical approach to IoT be a differentiator, allowing customers to have confidence in a brand as a steward of their information collected via IoT.

Ethics can often seem like a scary prospect to companies. Get it wrong and you end up on in the news. But ethics really is about what people value, and that can be an incredibly powerful tool for companies. After all, if you understand what people value, you can deliver that value to them more easily. Understanding legal and ethical considerations of IoT is not just a compliance check, it is core requirement to doing IoT right.

All IoT Agenda network contributors are responsible for the content and accuracy of their posts. Opinions are of the writers and do not necessarily convey the thoughts of IoT Agenda.

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