Services
Tech Legality is a boutique consultancy firm specialising in human rights and digital technologies. We help you translate complex human rights and digital technologies issues into concrete and actionable solutions.
Rights-based regulation
Legislators and regulators across the world are changing their approach to holding tech companies accountable for human rights violations linked to, contributing to, or caused by digital products and services. The relevant regulatory and policy areas are diverse, ranging from data protection, privacy, platform regulation and consumer protection to child online protection, artificial intelligence governance, and equitable access to digital technologies. Putting human rights and the rights of children, vulnerable and marginalised groups first, especially those affected by legal or regulatory measures, is key to ensuring governance efforts live up to their goal of enhancing human rights for all in the digital environment.
If you are considering developing or amending laws and policies, or putting in place governance structures for digital technologies, Tech Legality will provide you with a holistic, human rights-based advisory package including the following services:
â—‹ Mapping of legislative and policy approaches, nationally and internationally â—‹ Comparative legal analysis for legislative developments â—‹ Gap assessments of legislative and policy approaches, nationally and internationally â—‹ Impact assessments of planned legislative and policy interventions â—‹ Legislative drafting and expert briefs â—‹ Convening of multi-stakeholder consultations and consensus-building â—‹ Consultations with affected populations, especially vulnerable groups such as children and marginalised populations.
Responsible Technology
Tech companies of all shapes and sizes need to consider their impact on human rights. If you are a company developing or deploying a technology product or service, it is likely you are potentially having both positive and negative impacts on society and human rights. Negative impacts should be mitigated at the design phase and on an ongoing basis as your product or service develops and evolves. Of course, technology products and services are not only deployed by the private sector, but can also be used by public authorities, civil society organisations, international NGOs and humanitarian agencies. Human rights due diligence, including risk identification and mitigation measures are key to tackle difficult topics head on before they lead to human rights violations or become a business risk. Inclusion of rights and wellbeing of people in the Global South, who may be impacted by technology products, is particularly important considering the global reach of tech products and services.
For companies developing or deploying tech products and services, centring human rights in your governance structure, corporate policies, product, services, advocacy and outreach is a key intervention to prevent adverse impacts on human rights. To help you achieve this goal, we offer the following services:
â—‹ Human rights due diligence, including human rights impact assessments (HRIAs), child rights impact assessments (CRIAs) and risk assessments â—‹ Development of human rights policies, standards and reporting mechanisms (including co-creation of such standards with affected populations across multiple jurisdictions) â—‹ Development of trust and safety standards, policies and processes (including co-creation of such standards with affected populations) â—‹ Law and policy research and advocacy services â—‹ Stakeholder engagement and consensus building around law and policy reform, centring vulnerable communities across multiple jurisdictions
Robust research
Technology is developing rapidly, and the pace of change is only likely to get quicker. This means that laws, regulations, and policies need to keep up with the development of new technologies. Cutting-edge research and analysis is needed to understand how existing laws and regulations can be applied to new contexts such as augmented reality, virtual reality, the metaverse, and artificial intelligence, and where gaps need to be filled.
Further, multi-disciplinary research across various contexts and jurisdictions is required to create a reliable evidence base for law and policy decisions on cutting-edge issues such as age assurance, EdTech, safety tech, AI, surveillance, end-to-end encryption, child protection, violence against women, hate speech, disinformation and others. Understanding the impact of technologies on affected populations through participatory research is key to designing a digital environment that caters to the most vulnerable populations. At the same time, new technologies also need to keep pace with the proliferation of new regulations emerging globally as governments attempt to balance support for innovation with the duty to protect society and human rights. Research and analysis related to this rapidly developing legal and regulatory landscape can help companies to ensure they do not incur compliance risks.
Tech Legality can provide comprehensive and multidisciplinary research, analysis and strategic guidance in both cases, with a unique understanding of the global picture in terms of laws, regulations and technology trends that encompasses:
â—‹ National, regional and global trend analysis regarding laws and policies â—‹ Gap assessments and strategy development â—‹ Impact assessments and evaluations â—‹ Studies, reports, guidelines and guidance notes â—‹ Standards development for digital product and service design â—‹ Consultations with affected populations, in particular children and vulnerable communities