Soheil Human

The concept of consent plays an essential role in the use of digital technologies as an enabler of the individual’s ownership, control, and agency. Regulations such as the GDPR assert this relationship by permitting use of consent as one of the possible legal bases for the lawful practice of data processing. Through this, obtaining consent is widely practised in the digital world, and can be perceived as an essential means to enable the individual’s agency regarding the management and ownership of their personal data. While different legal frameworks specify various requirements and obligations regarding the legal validity of consent, which should be, e.g. valid, freely given, specific, informed and active; existing and ongoing research shows that the majority of people are not empowered to practice their digital right to privacy and lawful “consenting” due to various malpractices and a lack of technological means acting in the individuals’ interest.

The W3C Consent CG (https://www.w3.org/community/consent/) aims to contribute towards the empowerment of humans concerning their rights of privacy and agency, by advocating interdisciplinary, pluralist, human-centric approaches to digital consent that are technologically and legally enforceable.

The mission of this group is to improve the experience of digital “consenting” while ensuring it remains adherent to relevant standards and laws. For this, the group will: (i) provide a space for people and stakeholders to come together (ii) highlight and analyse concepts, issues and problems about digital consenting (iii) propose and develop solutions. Some concrete areas for the working of this group are: (a) developing interdisciplinary solutions; (b) documenting and achieving legal compliance; (c) improving the user experience; and (d) utilising existing and developing new concepts and standards for digital consent.

In order to join the group, you will need a W3C account. Please note, however, that W3C Membership is not required to join a Community Group.

CALL FOR PAPER

The 55th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences Mini-track on

Human-centricity in a Sustainable Digital Economy

http://hicss.hawaii.edu | HICSS-55 | January 4 – 7, 2022 | Hyatt Regency Maui, Hawaii, USA
Paper Submission Deadline: June 15, 2021 | 11:59 pm HST

The internet and the global digital transformation have changed many different aspects of our lives. Not only the economies and the societies but also people’s personal lives have been influenced by this new and ever-emerging era of our history. While the digital age has made it possible to provide novel services and solutions for the end-users, it has also caused serious concerns in different individual and societal levels, such as issues regarding online privacy, algorithmic bias, fairness and accountability of information systems, transparency, governance, and explainability of information systems, end-user manipulations, fake news, traceability, etc. The development of human-centric and end-user empowering information systems can be one approach towards “digital sustainability” since they enable individuals to influence how their data is used, by whom, and for which purpose. Many novel and personalized services are emerging in this direction, which make the digital economy sustainable, i.e. a positive place that focuses on human users. 

This minitrack aims to attract research that advances the understanding of human-centricity and end-user empowerment in a sustainable digital economy. As the transformation is multidimensional in nature, the minitrack adopts an interdisciplinary perspective, which considers human-centricity and end-user empowerment across application domains (e.g. software development, digital commerce, healthcare, administration, mobile apps, social media, and online services) and disciplines (e.g. economics, computer science, sociology). Among the relevant topics are:

• Characteristics and design of sustainable human-centric information systems
• Evaluation of existing information systems from a human-centric perspective
• Co-creation and co-production of human-centric sustainable information systems
• Analysis and design of technologies (e.g. AI, Blockchain) that empower end-users
• Design of human-centric end-user agents, AI and machine learning
• Fairness, transparency, accountability and controllability of information systems
• Legal or economic aspects of human-centricity in information systems
• Identity, privacy and consent management systems
• Business value of human-centric and/or user empowered solutions
• Sociotechnical studies of human-centricity in information systems
• Opportunities and challenges of digital behavior change, habit formation, and digital addiction
• Digital nudging for increasing social or ecological responsibilities
• Ethical concerns regarding human-centricity and/or sustainability
• COVID-19’s impact on human-centricity or sustainability of information systems

Publication of Papers

HICSS is the #1 Information Systems conference in terms of citations as recorded by Google Scholar. Presented papers will be included in the Proceedings of HICSS-55. Selected papers will be invited for a fast-track in Electronic Markets – The International Journal on Networked Business.

A Special Issue on “Human-centricity in a Sustainable Digital Economy” at Electronic Markets is planned.

Important Dates

June 15, 2021 | 11:59 pm HST: Paper Submission Deadline

August 17, 2021: Notification of Acceptance/Rejection

September 22, 2021: Deadline for Authors to Submit Final Manuscript for Publication

October 1, 2021: Deadline for at least one author of each paper to register for HICSS-55

January 4 – 7, 2022: Paper Presentations

Organizers

Soheil Human, Vienna University of Economics and Business (WU Wien), Austria

Gustaf Neumann, Vienna University of Economics and Business (WU Wien), Austria

Rainer Alt, Leipzig University, Germany

About the HICSS Conference

Since 1968, the Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS) has been known worldwide as the longest-standing working scientific conferences in Information Technology Management. HICSS provides a highly interactive working environment for top scholars from academia and the industry from over 60 countries to exchange ideas in various areas of information, computer, and system sciences.

According to Microsoft Academic, HICSS ranks the 36th in terms of citations among 4,444 conferences in all fields worldwide. The Australian Government’s Excellence in Research project (ERA) has given HICSS an “A” rating, one of 32 Information Systems conferences so honored out of 241 (46-B and 146-C ratings). Data supplied by the Australian Research Council, December 2009.

Unique characteristics of the conference include:

• A matrix structure of tracks and minitracks that enables research on a rich mixture of cutting-edge computer-based applications and technologies.
• Three days presentations of peer-reviewed papers and discussions in a workshop setting that promotes interaction leading to revised and extended papers that are published in journals, books, and special issues as well as additional research.
• A full day of Symposia, Workshops, and Tutorials.
• Keynote addresses and distinguished lectures which explore particularly relevant
• topics and concepts.
• Best Paper Awards in each track which recognize superior research performance.
• HICSS is the #1 IS conference in terms of citations as recorded by Google Scholar.
• A doctoral consortium that helps participants work with senior scholars on their
• work-in-progress leading to journal publications.
• HICSS panels that help shape future research directions.

Author Instructions

• http://hicss.hawaii.edu/authors/

Many colleagues at the Lab are interested in topics of Fairness, Accountability and Transparency. For those doing a PhD in this area, I can highly recommend the doctoral consortium of the ACM FAT 2020 conference in Barcelona: https://fatconference.org/2020/callfordc.html

I’ve been lucky enough to chair Track 4 on Practice and Experience and it’s already obvious that the quality of the final papers is likely to be high. Thus for those individuals interested in these topics at a doctoral level, the deadline for submission is 1 November 2019.

For everyone else, please consider attending the main conference. https://fatconference.org/2020/index.html which will take place from Monday, January 27th through Thursday, January 30th, 2020.