#Weeknotes 4

Weekly update | 2020-05-20 | By: Digital Council for Aotearoa New Zealand
Back to top
Photo of a laboratory corridor
New Zealand lab (image courtesy of the New Zealand Story).

Last week was another big week for the Digital Council. We finalised our major research topic for the year after careful consideration and targeted stakeholder feedback.

Council to research automated decision making

We’ve decided to explore the topic of automated decision making as a case study in trust.

We believe automated decision making (or ADM) will enable us to uncover some important insights into trustworthiness and trust, while continuing to add value to what others are already doing in this area.

There are several other good reasons to explore this topic, including:

  • the potential for very high impact for New Zealand, including for disadvantaged or marginalised groups
  • it was a research topic rated as highly important during stakeholder discussions
  • there is an existing knowledge base to start from with key concepts identified and defined
  • it provides strong connections to trust and provides potential to produce research relevant to a wide range of people and organisations.

Other research topics considered

Other topics we took a long and hard look at as potential case studies in trustworthiness and trust included the development of artificial intelligence, emergency access to private data, digital learning and Government as a Platform.

We may come back to these topics over time, when we focus on the themes of inclusion and innovation. But for now we’re focused on trust and automated decision making.

Thanks to the people we talked to

We tested our research ideas with a range of stakeholders — so thanks to everyone who helped us think through the options and finally land on this topic.

We’d like to acknowledge input from the disability, Māori, Pasifika, refugee and migrant, business, trade union, gender, human rights, privacy, LGBT, policy, social work and privacy sectors.

What’s next?

Right now, we’re in the process of designing the research project, which will include a literature review to identify the ways in which trust and trustworthiness can be built and undermined in the context of automated decision making, as well as the strategies suggested or tried to increase trust and trustworthiness.

The research design will also include participatory processes to explore the experiences and perspectives of people in New Zealand whose lives are affected by automated decision making.

We look forward to keeping everyone updated on the research work now that our topic is settled on and inviting participation in our work in the coming weeks and months.