Constructing a mutually supportive interface between ethics and regulation

Abstract When the word 'ethical' becomes synonymous with specious, you know that something is amiss. With each data governance scandal, with each creation of a corporate 'ethics board', 'ethical standards' seemingly lose a few more feathers, to the point of generating instant suspicion when invoked in any official report. We argue that a key challenge in this regard is to more precisely define the ethics-regulation interface. In order to do this, we first provide an overview of recent endeavours to develop ethical frameworks around technology. We then look at a successful process of refinement of the ethics-regulation interface: the case of healthcare ethics in the UK. The third section develops an account of what a more robust ethics-regulation interface could look like, which would support a process of cross-fertilisation between the political, ethical and legal approaches. Finally, the fourth and last section critically examines a ‘live’ implementation of such ethics-regulation interface, as put forward in Quebec's ‘Bill 29′.