Policy on Society, Ethics and Sustainability

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Society, Ethics and Sustainability in the NeIC context

Originally approved by the NeIC Board August 25th, 2020. Revision approved by the NeIC Board December 10th, 2021.

Background

The Nordic region has an impressive record of providing examples for the rest of the world on cooperation around crucial issues that face the region. This has recently been embodied in the Vision for 20301 that was put forth by the Nordic prime ministers with the priorities on a green, competitive and socially sustainable Nordic region (hereinafter referred to as NCM2 Vision). As Nordic priorities3 they link outwards to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDG)4 in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development5 and embody the national priorities and culture of the Nordic region towards issues that affect societies and people.

Research has an intrinsic value, but over the past years the contribution that research and research infrastructure makes to society has become increasingly important and there is also an increased focus on impact and mission-oriented research funding at both national and European level. Research infrastructures (RIs) are usually funded, at least partially, with public funding. Therefore they are expected to demonstrate their benefit and impact on society6. In the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) framework for impact of research infrastructures one of the dimensions of impact is to assume social responsibility towards society7. In that context, social responsibility is considered to include energy consumption, waste management, gender balance and diversity and corporate social responsibility. Furthermore, the latter includes ethical rules, supply chain and good working conditions.

While NeIC is not a research infrastructure as such, but a facilitator for research e-infrastructure collaboration, there are a lot of similarities in the expectations by the funding agencies and other stakeholders. For the strategic period 2020–2025 the NeIC Board decided to put emphasis on Society, Ethics and Sustainability as a mechanism to define and clarify NeIC’s role especially in the Nordic region. This document outlines the concept of Society, Ethics and Sustainability in the NeIC context and initiates a discussion on how to consider and act on this priority.

Society – beneficiary of NeIC activities

The main expected benefit of NeIC projects is that

NeIC projects contribute to better quality of research or productivity of researchers by developing and deploying e-infrastructure services.8

This is in line with the general acknowledgement that scientific excellence is the main driver for research infrastructure development.9 This is also addressed in the mantra of NeIC strategy for 2020–2025, which is Digital Infrastructure for Nordic Research Excellence.

By having scientific excellence at the core of NeIC activities, the activities have larger benefits on society in the longer term. At the time of writing, NeIC has a balanced project portfolio that facilitates collaboration on research e-infrastructure supporting fundamental research with indirect, long-term benefits to society10 and activities that are targeted to e-infrastructure for research that have more direct connections to solving societal challenges.

In the selection of new projects, the NeIC 5-year strategy and balance in the NeIC project portfolio is taken into account. These are all tied together with a 10-year Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) that NeIC has with NordForsk and the national funding agencies. Yet, the timeline of NeIC’s contribution to society extends beyond the timeline of individual projects, the NeIC strategy or the 10-year MoU. It is considered to be a long-term contribution of larger benefits to society, in an ethical and sustainable manner.The long-term collaboration within research e-infrastructure in the Nordic region enables NeIC also to act on sudden challenging global situations when it is identified that NeIC could provide valuable contributions and that the activities would be in line with the NeIC strategy11.

NeIC emphasizes well-defined processes and openness, thereby creating trust and positive relationships, paving the ground for collaborative problem-solving for a significant part of the Nordic societies. Most activity in NeIC takes the form of collaborative projects, which can be either development projects or pre-studies. Each of the NeIC development projects has a fixed duration. Typical NeIC development projects run for three years with a possibility of a successor. The projects have their own goals and at the start-up phase of the project they also define concrete benefits that are anticipated to result from the project work and that are sustained after the completion of the project.

In addition to development, NeIC has currently a long term operational activity of coordinating the Nordic Tier-1 facility, expected to be in use through 2038. This facility provides computational and data services to the world-wide community of high energy physicists who use the particle accelerators and detectors at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, to carry out fundamental physics research.

Research infrastructure development and operation is a long-term investment. The decision of which projects to initiate is based on the needs of researchers in the Nordic region. The transition from project results to sustainable services for the researchers may require further work from the national service provider organisations. In addition to support for the development of the digital solutions needed for e-infrastructure services, NeIC also facilitates collaboration on training to use the services. The NeIC development projects each have project specific plans for supporting (generally referred to as sustaining) their e-infrastructure outcomes after the end of the project. Also, all concluded NeIC projects and activities are eligible to participate in the NeIC Affiliate programme that is meant to enhance the benefits and impacts of NeIC projects after they have been completed.

At a high level, NeIC acts to the benefit of society at large in several ways. First, by supporting and enabling research and knowledge creation in general NeIC contributes to laying the foundation for innovation and informed decision-making. Secondly, pooling and sharing competences in the development, operation and maintenance of e-infrastructure services increase the knowledge base and competitiveness of the Nordic region, and also saves manpower. In addition, collaboration on cost-effective e-infrastructure solutions also saves energy for powering systems. Besides supporting research in general, several NeIC activities contribute to the UN SDGs and thus to increasing global sustainability.

Ethics – framework for the conduct of the work

Ethical conduct is considered to be of high value in the Nordics and also in the academic environment. NordForsk and the national research funding agencies have ethical codes of conduct, which are relevant to NeIC supported activities12 and to the governance of NeIC13. This offers a workable arrangement for carrying out NeIC work in a manner that is considered to be ethically acceptable on a personal level by the people involved, by those affected and also at an organizational level.

As part of NordForsk, on General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) related issues NeIC relates and adheres to NordForsk's Data Protection Policy14. For the matters where NeIC can not rely on NordForsk’s policy, NeIC creates the necessary privacy policies complementing NordForsk’s policy. These could relate to e.g. services resulting from NeIC project activities or services and tools that NeIC uses for internal work tasks.

The NeIC core values15 provide the basic guidance for the personnel and conduct of the projects. The specific ethical topics related to a project are to be addressed by the project itself. Openness and transparency in NeIC organisational values extend also to people’s relations within NeIC and NeIC people act respectfully towards their colleagues. NeIC​ ​promotes​ ​equality,​ ​equal​ ​terms​ ​and​ ​diversity​ and believes in​ ​equal​ ​opportunity​ ​in​ ​employment​ ​practices​ ​without​ ​​discrimination​ ​on​ ​the​ ​grounds​ ​of​ ​race, religious​ ​beliefs,​ ​colour,​ ​gender,​ ​sexual​ ​orientation,​ ​disability,​ ​place​ ​of​ ​origin,​ ​age,​ ​marital status,​ ​or​ ​family​ ​status.

Sustainability – long-lasting benefits and impacts

There are multiple aspects to sustainability. At the broadest level, the UN Brundtland Commission16 defined sustainability in 1987 as “meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” This has most recently been reflected in the UN SDGs which relates a set of seventeen high level global goals on poverty, inequality, climate change, environmental degradation, peace and justice with a date for meeting the goals of 2030. In Reykjavík, 20. August, 2019, the Nordic prime ministers agreed on the vision that the Nordic region will become the most sustainable and integrated region in the world by 2030. The prime ministers pointed to threats by climate change, pollution and biodiversity loss. The Nordic region's strengths should be used in the interests of the climate and society, and the prime ministers agreed to make this their highest priority. Through generating and sharing knowledge, new Nordic solutions can be found. To achieve the vision, the three priorities for the Nordic region were set to be green, competitive and socially sustainable. Green growth will be promoted based on knowledge, innovation, mobility and digital integration.

The vision of the prime ministers can be supported by reinforcing the collaboration on digital infrastructure for Nordic research excellence. Investments in digital infrastructure/solutions are not one-offs but require a long-term perspective through continuous investment cycles. The sustainability of the Nordic region depends on being able to identify and respond appropriately to the natural and societal environments. Collaborating across the region is critical to marshalling the knowledge and people to develop better throughout and more open ways to increase the competitiveness and resilience of the region.

Although all NeIC projects and activities have the potential to promote the UN Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs) and the Nordic Council of Ministers’ (NCM) vision, certain projects and activities address these more directly. Identified NeIC projects’ connections both to the NCM Vision and UN SDGs are presented in Figures 1 and 2, respectively.

Figure 1. NeIC projects’ connections to the three priority areas in the Nordic Council of Ministers’ vision.
Figure 2. NeIC projects’ connections to UN SDGs.

Our need to understand nature, environment, climate, human health and infectious diseases has never been greater. Enabling the interoperability of the biodiversity e-infrastructures in the Nordic region allows researchers to work more efficiently to address the challenges described in the NCM vision and the UN SDGs, in particular Goal 14: Life below water and Goal 15: Life on land. Previous NeIC activities within earth system modeling have helped researchers to share climate data for use by other researchers and policy makers, e.g. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, thus contributing to better understanding of climate change and more accurate simulations with scenarios of projected socioeconomic global changes that can be used in decision making. This addresses the challenges described in the NCM vision and the UN SDGs, particularly Goal 13: Climate Action. By contributing to combating climate change several other UN SDGs may be targeted as well. Nordic e-infrastructure collaboration in both of these areas, biodiversity and earth system modeling has the potential to contribute to the green Nordic region priority area in NCM vision. By ensuring that the researchers always have access to federated services for handling human sensitive data, we can accelerate research in the field of personalised medicine and respond to emerging health crises threatening the well-being of society as a whole. This relates to the UN SDGs, especially Goal 3: Good health and well-being, but also to higher-level agendas by the NCM, in particular to the socially sustainable Nordic region priority area. All above mentioned activities also serve as use cases for EOSC-Nordic. The collaboration project that aims at improved weather predictions that NeIC is also facilitating could potentially also contribute to this goal.

Developing and offering e-infrastructure services for a wide range of research problems has the potential to contribute to a sustainable globe through the research they benefit. The NeIC project on sharing computational resources across borders supported several research projects from different fields that could contribute to the NCM Vision or the UN SDGs. For example, many of the projects related to material sciences could contribute especially to the UN SDG goal 9 Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure. Puhuri project works on certain aspects of resource sharing for the LUMI large scale HPC system that is available not only for research but also for industrial use. Also the NeIC projects E3DS and E3DDS that have focused on designing and simulating the data flow and computing workflow from the antenna arrays of the upcoming EISCAT_3D17 radar sites to the central storage and computing site could potentially contribute to this goal. There are several NeIC activities that contribute to skills development of students, researchers and people working on e-infrastructure, thus having potential to contribute to UN SDG goal 4: Quality education. Enabling innovations and competence development in the Nordic region contributes to the competitive Nordic region priority area of the NCM Vision.

Throughout the NeIC organisation and its activities, UN SDG goal 5: Gender equality is contributed to. NeIC is about partnership, sharing knowledge, expertise and technological resources. To a large extent, many of the NeIC activities relate to support the achievement of the sustainable development goals. Thus, NeIC is perfectly positioned to contribute to UN SDG goal 17: Partnerships for the goals.


Actions on society, ethics, sustainability

Society

  • Using impacts analysis as a mechanism to describe and review how NeIC benefits society through the work of NeIC projects, training activities and benefit realisation management
  • Communicating NeIC benefits on society, e.g. in the NeIC Annual Report and in NeIC news articles

Sustainability

  • Using impacts analysis as a mechanism to describe and review NeIC contribution to a sustainable globe by mapping projects to the UN SDGs and the NCM vision
  • Communicating NeIC’s contribution to the UN SDGs and the NCM vision, e.g. in the NeIC Annual Report and in NeIC news articles

Ethics

  • Any concerns on ethical matters within a NeIC project are to be raised to the Project Owner and discussed together with all Project Managers or the NeIC Executive Team (XT). General questions regarding ethical matters are to be raised to XT.
  • Relevant NeIC policies and the Core Values are to be reviewed on a regular basis.

General

  • Communicating NeIC’s position and actions on society, ethics and sustainability, e.g. through a report, news article or blog post.
  • The document and actions on Society, Ethics and Sustainability are to be revised regularly.
  • We have included criteria regarding society, ethics and sustainability in the NeIC policy for project selection18, applied in the NeIC open call from 2020 onwards.

References

1 Meeting of the Nordic prime ministers, Reykjavik, 20. August, 2019, https://www.norden.org/en/declaration/our-vision-2030

2 Nordic Council of Ministers’

3 https://www.norden.org/en/generation-2030

4 https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sustainable-development-goals/

5 https://www.un.org/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=A/RES/70/1&Lang=E

6 Long-Term Sustainability of Research Infrastructures. European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures Long-Term Sustainability Working Group. ESFRI Scripta Volume II (2017).

7 Reference framework for assessing the scientific and socio-economic impact of research infrastructures. OECD Science, Technology and Industry Policy Papers. March 2019, No. 65. OECD (2019).

8 NeIC Policy for project selection.

9 Sustainable European Research Infrastructures – A call for action, Directorate-General for Research and Innovation (European Commission), Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union, 2017. doi:10.2777/76269

10 Even if fundamental research does not have immediate benefit to society, fundamental research has long-term impact on society. See, e.g. The State of Scientific Research in Finland 2016 – Special theme: Broader Impact of Research in Society. Huutoniemi K., Törnroos J. and Mälkki, A., Academy of Finland reports (2016).

11 One example of this is the Open Call NeIC launched in the spring 2020 for proposals for projects that offer e-infrastructure in support of Nordic research related to COVID-19.

12 Ethical codes of conduct for

13 https://wiki.neic.no/wiki/Board_member_code_of_conduct

14 https://www.nordforsk.org/en/about-nordforsk/data-protection-policy

15 https://wiki.neic.no/wiki/NeIC_Community_Wiki#Core_values

16 https://academicimpact.un.org/content/sustainability

17 https://eiscat.se/eiscat3d/

18 The policy states that If two proposals would be equal based on other measures, the one that would potentially contribute to ethics/society/sustainability is prioritised.

Links

Society, Ethics and Sustainability in the NeIC context, pdf-file

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