Recommendations for Government Development and Use of Advanced Automated Systems to Make Decisions about Individuals
This work provides guidelines for government agencies to implement contestability in automated systems, which is crucial for legal compliance and error detection, but it is incremental as it builds on existing policy discussions.
The paper addresses the need for contestability in government automated decision-making systems to ensure fairness and due process, resulting in a set of recommendations derived from a multi-stakeholder workshop.
Contestability -- the ability to effectively challenge a decision -- is critical to the implementation of fairness. In the context of governmental decision making about individuals, contestability is often constitutionally required as an element of due process; specific procedures may be required by state or federal law relevant to a particular program. In addition, contestability can be a valuable way to discover systemic errors, contributing to ongoing assessments and system improvement. On January 24-25, 2024, with support from the National Science Foundation and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, we convened a diverse group of government officials, representatives of leading technology companies, technology and policy experts from academia and the non-profit sector, advocates, and stakeholders for a workshop on advanced automated decision making, contestability, and the law. Informed by the workshop's rich and wide-ranging discussion, we offer these recommendations. A full report summarizing the discussion is in preparation.