The UK Government is currently
piloting an Algorithmic Transparency Standard across the public sector; new
research shows that adopting the Standard is both achievable for policing and
could also bring significant benefits, such as improved public confidence and
sharing best practice.
Led by Northumbria
University Associate Professor Dr Marion Oswald, MBE, the research explores the implications for police forces of participation in the Government’s new Algorithmic Transparency Standard. Based on interviews
with police personnel and representatives of commercial providers, the research was conducted in parallel to the
piloting of the Standard by the Cabinet Office and the Centre for Data Ethics
and Innovation. The aim of the Standard is to ‘promote trustworthy innovation by providing better
visibility of the use of algorithms across the public sector, and enabling
unintended consequences to be mitigated early on.’
Rewards outweigh
risks
Interviewees
generally thought that the rewards for the police of a carefully tailored
Standard implemented at the right stage of algorithmic development outweighed
the risks. Participation in the Standard
provides an opportunity for the police to demonstrate the legitimacy of
technology use and build public confidence. As one research participant
commented:
“If people are worried, there's an
opportunity there as opposed to a risk, there's an opportunity to be open.
There's an opportunity to be transparent. There's an opportunity to explain, to
reduce concerns.”
The Standard
could also be used to develop increased sharing among police forces of best
practices and indeed failures. Research participants were keen for compliance with the
Standard to become part of a system
to drive reflective practice across policing around the development and
deployment of algorithmic technology. For example, one interviewee suggested:
“It might also be possible to create a peer
reviewing mechanism of sorts. I feel that without this oversight, we will be
missing the main benefit of transparency; the ability to ensure that algorithms
used in the public sector are up to the task, and are being built properly,
with proper attention to the data, and to the drift that occurs with
algorithms.”
In order to
contribute to improving the quality of policing technology, the report
concludes, the Standard should be linked to methods of oversight and promotion
of best practice on a national basis, to enable police forces to learn from
each other. Otherwise, the Standard may come to be regarded as an
administrative burden rather than a benefit for policing.
Transparency
concerns mitigated
The research
recognises the confidentiality concerns around policing contexts and tradecraft,
where revealing technical details could provide an advantage to criminals. Ways
that these concerns could be mitigated include a non-public version of the
Standard for sensitive applications and tools, which would be available for
review to bodies with an independent oversight function.
To support police
compliance with the Standard, supplier responsibilities – including appropriate
disclosure of algorithmic functionality, data inputs and performance - must be
covered in procurement contracts and addressed up front as a mandatory
requirement of doing business with the police.
The report also
suggests a number of areas for improvement, including around the scope of the
Standard and clarification of the stage of project development at which the
Standard should apply. A lighter touch version of the Standard –
‘Standard-Lite’ – is proposed for early or trial stage projects.
Dr Oswald, who was awarded an MBE in the Queen’s Jubilee Birthday Honours list 2022 for services to digital innovation,said: “Transparency has not traditionally been
associated with policing technology, for understandable reasons, but this is
changing. Our interviewees – both from policing and the commercial sector –
recognised how transparency can bring rewards. It can enable the public to
understand more about how the police are using technology and the reasons for
this. It can also enable the police themselves to learn from each other and
improve what they are doing.”
The full report ‘The UK Algorithmic Transparency
Standard: A Qualitative Analysis of Police Perspectives’ by Marion Oswald (Northumbria
University, Alan Turing Institute), Luke Chambers (Northumbria University),
Ellen P. Goodman (Rutgers University), Pamela Ugwudike (Southampton University)
and Miri Zilka (Cambridge University) is available to read on the open-access online pre-print community, SSRN.
