What are the benefits of the “Digital Trust Label”?

By Markus Christen, UZH, Christoph Heitz, ZHAW and Karin Lange, La Mobilière

Together with the DSI Community Ethics, the Data Ethics expert group has organized a public event on the new “Digital Trust Label” of the Swiss Digital Initiative. About 20 persons have discussed advantages and challeges of this new label.

Beginning of this year, the Swiss Digital Initiative (SDI) launched the “Digital Trust Label”; the first of its kind worldwide. The label is intended to promote the trustworthiness of digital applications. Doris Leuthard, former Federal Councillor and SDI President, compares the Digital Trust Label with the trust seal of an organic label or a nutritional value table. According to Leuthard, the SDI has big goals for the label: it should become the new Swiss export hit.

But can the Digital Trust Label deliver what it promises? Niniane Paeffgen from the SDI has outlined in her presentation, how the label has been developed and what comanies need to fulfill in order to get the label. In a lively discussion under the moderation of Markus Christen (DSI), Sophia Ding (Managing Consultant AWK Group) and André Golliez (Swiss Data Alliance) have discussed the challenges of the new label. André Golliez pointed to possible intransparencies in how exactly the label is awarded to companies and argued that the current legal framework such as the EU Data Protection Regulation may be sufficient. Sophia Ding on the other hand argued, that the label is an opportunity for companies to obtain more internal clarity on ethical practices. After the formal part, discussions continued informally at the DSI.

At the event, Christoph Heitz also pointed to the next event of the Expert Group, organized jointly with the DSI and Economiesuisse: An event about the role of data ethics for a sustainable data economy. The event will take place on Thursday September 29 at the DSI.