The INTERLINK solution will consider gender diversity in its workflow by taking into account different citizens’ profiles. If specific categories such as single mothers or elderly people deserve particular attention or are part of specific workflows in the administrative system, it will be taken into account by INTERLINK, which will provide support tailored to their specific needs. The solution will also support a gender-aware use of the language in public documents, by providing, if necessary, an improved version of the original documents with an appropriate lexical choice (e.g. not using only male-oriented terms).
Human Factors and User Experience approach
As for cultural and ethical considerations, the multidisciplinary nature of the consortium will allow adopting and implementing an approach that properly takes Human Factors/User Experience into consideration with the purpose of:
- identifying meaningful behavioral and cultural markers that can be elaborated by the systems;
- identifying functional requirements in order to guarantee integration of the technology within relevant cultural practices, safety, and possibly a positive user experience.
Stakeholders’ consultation and other forms of awareness-raising and participatory tools will allow initiating and sustaining constructive external relationships over time, based on mutual trust and cultural open-mindedness. These considerations will be reflected and implemented in activities like socio-technical requirements, responsive portal front-end, and use-case community building.
Ethical analysis and compliance
Furthermore, Ethical analysis and compliance has the threefold goals of:
- identifying, prioritising and managing key ethical, societal and legal issues in INTERLINK;
- exercising due diligence in monitoring project’s research goals, activities and outcomes and guarantee that they are compliant with existing EU and national legislations and Horizon 2020 ethical guidelines, and are well accepted by society;
- paving the way for developing policy recommendations and contributing to the evolution of regulations and standards.
Gender equality issues and gender-aware project management
Finally, the INTERLINK consortium pursues gender equality issues and gender-aware project management. Some of the partners are actively involved in the definition of gender-aware policies for their organization, such as Fondazione Bruno Kessler, which was a partner in the FESTA project. Several female researchers are involved in the project as key figures. The Consortium is committed to couple scientific excellence with social awareness and responsibility and to align research outcomes to the values, needs and expectations of European society.
