Theoretical Framework of Digital Ethics Concerns for Public Services: Electronic Voting Use Case

Digital ethics has become increasingly important in our society due to technology’s profound impact on our lives. As we integrate digital technologies into all aspects of life, it’s crucial to understand their ethical implications. This paper reviews studies on digital ethics to identify ethical concerns in public services and introduces a theoretical digital framework to address these issues. An automated algorithm simplifies the review process, and the literature review and a workshop on digital ethics were instrumental in shaping the framework. This paper evaluates digital ethics concerns in the context of electronic voting (e-voting) provided by Swiss Post, which is owned by the Swiss Confederation and offers various public services such as e-voting, digital health, e-government, and banking. The workshop brought together experts to identify ethical concerns related to the e-voting use case, with the results analyzed numerically. Insights from this workshop contributed to the development of the inaugural Swiss Digital Ethics Compass. The results of this work will update the academic community on recent developments and emphasize the importance of digital ethics, particularly in sensitive public services like e-voting. This paper aims to foster further explorations and discussions, emphasizing the profound implications of ethical considerations in our technologically driven world. Future work will include analyzing the impact of digital ethics on other public services.