In 2021, Ethical Intelligence Associates, Limited (EI) partnered with two UK Housing Associations (Platform Housing Group and RHP Group) to create and introduce an ethics-based SMART home IoT device Procurement Framework. This carefully curated framework captures the rights of tenants, the responsibilities of the housing associations, and the values of sustainable living in action. 

EI recently caught up with Matt Ballantine, Head of Technology and Transformation at RHP and Jon Cocker, Chief Information Officer from Platform Housing, the two champions of this initiative.

Q: Briefly, can you tell us about RHP and Platform Housing?

Matt: RHP is a housing provider in South West London, providing support to around 10,000 households. We’ve been in existence for just over 20 years now.

Jon: Platform Housing Group is the largest Registered Provider in the Midlands and one of the largest in the country, owning over 46,000 homes. Over the last two years, we have built more social and affordable homes in England than any other social housing provider and are a strategic partner for Homes England.

We are committed to active and sustained engagement with our strategic partners and communities. Our core social purpose is to make a real and positive difference in the lives and prospects of local customers and the communities they live in. We are working on expanding the availability of affordable homes across the Midlands to do this. Our goal is to play a full and active part in alleviating the housing shortage across the region.

Q: Let’s talk about the good, the bad, and the ugly. What positive impacts versus misuse cases have you seen with technology in the housing industry?  

Matt: I think we are still in the very early days of the use of smart home technology by landlords. The past decade has seen the emergence of several competing ecosystems for smart technology for general use, with Apple, Google, Amazon, Samsung and others vying to take control of the home. But as a landlord, we generally take the view that we provide the home for the customer to use, and much of the real smart platform stuff so far is much more up to them.

However, for some of the services we provide in homes and for the core infrastructure of the buildings themselves, we are starting to see connected smart devices such as the control systems for heating boilers, or being able to report on humidity and moisture in properties, a big issue leading to damp and mould.

Jon: I’ve seen some positive customer impact using smart home technology. The one that stands out was a system that connected people and helped alleviate loneliness for vulnerable people during the pandemic. It made a real difference in people's lives. 

In terms of misuse, I think that this technology sits in people’s homes could allow some practices that are not ethical, such as detecting when someone is home to chase rent. We need to be transparent with customers about the data we collect, what we won’t collect, and how we will or will not use it. 

Q: Taking a step backwards, housing is not typically a topic anyone would immediately associate tech ethics with. However, you actively procure technology for your properties and residents. Why did you feel that ethics was so crucial to this process?

Matt: For me, two things happened that raised this issue. The first was personal – my energy company started to send me an analysis of how they thought I was using power in my home segmented down into heating, lighting, home entertainment, refrigeration, etc. I asked myself, “Do I really want my electricity and gas supplier to know this about me?”. Their analysis was an extrapolation of smart meter readings, combined with several other data references that they had.

The second was more work-related. When in conversation with a peer at a London local authority, we both realised that experiments with devices that were tracking things like humidity could provide enough data to suggest whether a tenant had collapsed in their home. This got us both wondering if we were inadvertently opening up duties of care that no one had adequately understood. 

Jon: As technology becomes more pervasive in our homes, the potential for misuse increases. As a technology professional, I’m probably in a better position than most to understand the risks of these devices to privacy. Still, many of our customers might not be, so it’s our responsibility as a landlord to protect our customer data as much as possible. Defining an ethics framework allows us to follow a simple process to ensure we do the right thing for our customers.   

Q: Why do you want to bring smart home technology into your properties? 

Matt: I’m not sure if we necessarily do. However, the ethics framework now helps us make those decisions.

Jon: There are benefits to both our customers and us. The obvious one is being able to monitor the condition of a property without needing to gain access to it. This means that our customers don’t have to take time out of their day to wait for an engineer, and it also means we have to make fewer visits, thus saving time. It may also be possible to help customers with fuel poverty etc. 

Q: What was your motivation for pursuing an ethical procurement framework for smart home technology? 

Matt: In some cases, smart technologies are becoming bundled with products that were formally dumb. Again, examples would be things like heating sources. We need to make decisions concerning whether we should enable these services. In addition, these decisions need to be made in a way that takes into account more than the question of whether it will make it cheaper to manage a customer’s home.

Where I have seen IoT technologies used in industrial or commercial settings – say, refrigeration in supermarkets – there is a huge cost benefit to be had in remotely and intelligently managing such devices. But nobody lives in a supermarket, and putting a smart sensor in a freezer that holds ice cream isn’t telling you anything in particular about how anyone lives their life.

The minute you put smart, connected things into people’s homes, however, you are opening up a field of view that could be remarkably personal. We need to fully understand that and make decisions accordingly.

Jon: It’s essential to put the customer at the heart of any decision-making, and a framework gives a clear guide path to ensure that happens. Working with RHP on this also ensured that the process could be used across other providers and did not get tailored to our way of doing things. 

Q: In your view, is this a common limitation to the adoption of ethics in your field? What are some of the stumbling blocks to the adoption of ethics in housing?

Matt: My own hunch is because most of the technology at the moment is being introduced into parts of our organisations that have traditionally focused on bricks and mortar, not the people. Telecare is “smart” technology that has been around for decades now, and the logistics and ethics of providing an emergency button to a vulnerable customer to call for help are reasonably well understood. But a boiler or a window that is connected – well, that’s a very new set of considerations to accommodate.

Jon: I’m not sure there are stumbling blocks to the adoption. I just think that it’s not considered as much as it should be and perhaps takes a back seat to the business benefits that a solution can provide. 

Q: What were the most significant things you discovered and learned in the project with EI?

Matt: The value of working in partnership with another housing provider to double the intellectual input but doing so more cost-effectively. We had more knowledge “in the room” from the sector to help balance off ideas with practicality.

Jon: EI came from outside the housing sector and asked the obvious questions that perhaps we can miss because we are so close to the industry. A few times, an analyst made a comment that made me stop and think about my own assumptions. 

Q: How has the procurement framework and ethics work with EI impacted your organisations? 

Matt: It’s added a new step into processes that get people to think about why they are doing things, rather than just focusing on the shiny new tech or very local benefits.

Jon: I think it has changed mindsets in the business. We have fully aligned our procurement process for this type of technology to the ethics framework and are using the defined gateways before we move to the next stage. Based on this process, we will be launching a high-volume IoT pilot in March. 

Q: Any final words for our readers?

Matt: Find ways to get people to think beyond the short-term implications of the decisions that they are making about technology.

Jon: I think all organisations should be giving consideration to data ethics. We all aim to be customer-centric, but this puts the customer at the centre of the project and asks how this work will help or impact them.