About

Our Vision

Our vision for the Internet of Things is built around the concept of the TrustLens –a future computational infrastructure supporting the three pillars of a user-centred IoT ecosystem: empowerment – providing citizens with insight and meaningful control over their data, and means to access/use data for their own purposes; transparency – presenting individuals with understandable and relevant information on how their data is being acquired and used, and the associated risks and benefits; accountability – means to support principled and enforceable data use, combined with verifiable evidence that appropriate measures are being taken.

However, before we can realize the TrustLens, several key issues need to be investigated: What are the appropriate governance arrangements covering IoT deployments? How do we deliver meaningful accountability? How can we develop an understanding of the interplay between individuals and devices, and the wider relationship to social/cultural norms? What are the attitudes of citizens and communities to privacy and risk in an IoT context? How should risks and benefits be communicated? How do users make informed decisions to judge the trustworthiness of information?

Answers to these (and the many other questions that will certainly emerge) will lead us to develop prototype solutions that will be evaluated with members of a local community. Our ambition is to create a means by which a user can review the characteristics of an IoT device in terms of its impact on their personal data, answering questions such as: What type of data is it capturing? For what purpose? Who sees it? What are the (potential) benefits and risks? They also should be able to exert a degree of control over their data, and be guided to assess its reliability and accuracy.