This blog is part of a series of publications looking into EDRi’s manifesto for positive digital futures. Read the rest of the series here.

2024 has developed in a political context defined by elections and promises for a better tomorrow. To voice our vision for digital rights in such a changing environment, EDRi published a manifesto on how we can collectively build digital futures that work for all. One of the key needs for this to happen is to ensure technology that makes decision-making just and accountable.

What do we mean when we say we want to develop a collective vision for our digital futures? Here is what we can do to ensure that our technology makes decision-making just and accountable:

• Technology that facilitates decision-making guided by principles of justice, equity, and power-sharing, and that is inclusive, collaborative, and accountable.
• Public and private actors’ power is checked through meaningful transparency and accountability, where equity, inclusion, and justice prevail.
• Building resilient public services and infrastructure that can adapt to uncertainty and are protected against a takeover by private actors.
• Ensuring people affected by technology are meaningfully engaged in digital decision-making and have efficient and effective mechanisms for redress if harms occur.
• Decision-making that is localised, representative, and accountable to those who are impacted by such decisions.
• Technology that does not replace human decision-making, especially in the context of the digital welfare state and the criminal justice system. Public services’ deployment of digital tools is limited, meaningfully transparent, open to public scrutiny, and contestable.

In our manifesto, we suggest clear policy recommendations to make this vision a reality. We call on the European Union’s new policymakers to take action and put people, democracy and the planet at the heart of our digital futures! Join us in our demands now by signing the petition. Together, we can protect human rights, strengthen democracy, and reshape societal systems.