"Municipalities must account for the algorithms they use"
"Best student paper award" for Maranke Wieringa
Municipalities use algorithms for different purposes. Some examples of these algorithms are "smart" waste containers and parking sensors. Algorithms sometimes have major consequences for ordinary citizens: they analyse how likely it is for a resident in a particular neighborhood to pay a dog tax or how likely someone is to fraud with benefits. However, concrete guidelines for municipalities on how to deal with algorithms are still lacking. PhD student Maranke Wieringa is working on a toolkit for municipalities that they can use if they intend to work with algorithms.
She recently won the "Best student paper award" at the ACM conference on Fairness, Accountability and Transparency in Barcelona with a paper in which she sets out a definition of "accounting for algorithms".
There are various actors involved in the use of algorithms in the government. They must explain and account to different people at different times.
Governing the digital society
Wieringa is involved in the new focus area Governing the digital society, one of Utrecht University鈥檚 focus areas that promotes research on the social processes of datafication, algorithmisation and platformisation.
More information is available in Dutch.
