The digital society is shaped by software, algorithms, WiFi routers, telecom backbones, smart devices, sensors, protocols, data, models and high tech systems. Digital technologies are no longer just enabling technologies, they have become constitutive technologies. They change the nature of the institutions, practices and activities to which they are applied. Health care, public administration and science for example have completely changed as a result of the introduction of digital technologies.

Beyond functional requirements

We should not just follow the dictates of technology that comes with inscribed norms of makers and designers. In the remainder of the 21st century we require the knowledge and capabilities and sensitivity that can help us to proactively shape our digital societies in accordance with our political views, shared values and social, legal and moral requirements – beyond the so-called functional requirements like storage, speed and bandwith count.

Design for Values

We will need to be able to demonstrate and prove how exactly our views about a good society are expressed in the digital building blocks of organizations, institutions and smart infrastructures. The use of terms like 'privacy' and 'democracy' without any indication of how they would be implemented in a digital society is almost gratuitous. This implies more specifically that we should help ourselves to the tools and methods for responsible and agile digital innovation and what we have come to refer to at TU Delft as instruments of 'Design for Values'. TU Delft has recently established an Institute for Design for Values that studies the problems pertaining to Design and Values on all levels, across a number of sectors and engineering disciplines.

Privacy-enhancing technologies

There is a plurality of values that concern us: safety, security and privacy, accountability, justice, equality, dignity, sustainability. This plurality of values gives rise to conflicts. Our work in Delft suggests that interesting innovations often have the character of reconciling conflicting values by design. The innovation allows one to be open and transparent, but guarantee the required appropriate level of confidentiality. Privacy and human rights for example are often in conflict with considerations of national security. Privacy-respecting technologies or privacy-enhancing technologies (PET) are good examples of how these value conflicts can be resolved by design and responsible innovation. The study, design and governance of digital society needs the input from humanities, social and behavioural sciences, computer science and engineering. The Netherlands is in a good position to orchestrate this type of research and make it work.

I am professor of information law at the Institute for Information Law. My research is dedicated to understanding how regulation can contribute to a legal framework that best serves the information society while respecting fundamental rights and freedoms. I am particularly interested in how technology changes the position and roles of users, and what rules are needed to protect, but also to empower the digital user. Technological innovations such as data analytics, the Internet of Things, cloud computing or social networking hold exciting opportunities for users and the digital society in many sectors, from culture, creativity, and the media, to health, politics and commerce. How can we realise that potential while making sure that our rules about data protection, copyright or the media balance the enormous power that data and technology give, and safeguard our rights to privacy, freedom of expression and autonomy?

In order to fully understand the interplay between users, markets and technology, most of my research is interdisciplinary in nature, and I have many fruitful collaborations technology experts, economists, philosophers, communications, data and political scientists.

A focal point in my current research is the impact of data analytics and new forms of interactivity for the way how we receive, share and distribute information. News media such as the New York Times or the Dutch public broadcasters NPO track readers to offer more 'personally relevant' content; Google and Facebook analyze big data to 'personalize' search results; politicians adjust their messages to the preferences of individual voters identified by big data; insurance companies try to create efficiency and welfare gains through 'smart' health apps.

As co-founder of the Personalised Communications project, a research priority area of the University of Amsterdam, I explore with a team of legal scholars, communication, political and data scientists the (un)intended uses and effects of such personalized communications for users and society. In the PersoNews projects, we study the use of profiling and targeting strategies in the news media, and whether new rules or guidelines are needed to protect the privacy of readers or to redefine the editorial responsibility of the media, including social media. For this project I have received an ERC Grant from the European Research Council. At the same time, I am interested more generally in how we can use data and data analytics responsibly, and to the benefit of the digital society, for example through my participation in the Responsible Data Science project.

Doing research is an important part of my work, as is sharing the results of my work and advising the institutions that make the rules, such as the European Commission, the European Parliament, the Council of Europe, the OECD, national regulators, organisations and digital rights groups. I am also a member of the EC High Level Expert Group Connect Advisory Forum, a High Level Expert Group on the Internet of Things, the EC Cloud Computing Expert Group, and the Advisory Board of the Dutch Mediaombudsman. This way I hope to not only advance the academic debate in- and outside the Netherlands, but also help to translate that research into a balanced legal and ethical framework for the digital society.

The digital society provides ample opportunities to improve the labour market – my field of study – by making this market more transparent and providing for better and faster matching of labour supply and demand. By better prognosis of the trends in supply and demand, opportunities to prevent and fight structural mismatches can be enhanced. I am, among other things, involved in the Labour Market Dashboard (arbeidsmarktdashboard see www.arbeidsmarktdashboard.nl) of Brainport Network – the collaboration of regions in the South-East of the Netherlands, where various digital sources of labour market information are combined and related to job vacancies and the competences of job seekers. I also created a digital 'Competence Card' for the integration of refugees in the labour market, based on PhD research.

In general, It is key that we enable companies to articulate their demands in terms of competences, based on international standards (such as the Occupational Information Network O*NET), rather than jobs, as the so-called task economy is rapidly developing and traditional job descriptions are to narrow. At the same time, we should facilitate people to express their competences in the same competence 'language'. Finally, we should also stimulate education institutes (both initial and post-initial training) to formulate their offering of courses and training in this language. That way, a kind of 'labour market Esperanto' emerges that will greatly benefit the resilience of the labour market, companies and individuals. If we combine these competence systems with digital and remote matching information and communication technology, such as apps, we can create a fully personalised and intelligent matching system (see my TEDx talk on the potential of an intelligent matching system).