Ethics

Designing ethical services

Learn why you should consider ethics when designing and building digital services.

How to consider ethics

All teams designing and building MoJ digital services should be mindful of how their design may impact people and society.

This guidance will help your team:

• develop services responsibly, so you can reduce, mitigate or remove harm from users
• prepare for your service assessment

Why you should consider ethics

There are many reasons to consider ethics. Some positive impacts include:

• making sure vulnerable people are not exploited or put in danger
• lowering the chances of your service harming people
• reducing the risk of re-traumatisation and making people feel psychologically safe (by using a trauma-aware or trauma-informed approach)
• making sure no groups are discriminated against (by understanding bias within your team)
• making sure people trust your service and that they do not lose confidence in MoJ (for example, by explaining where you’ve used AI and automated decision-making)