Table of Links
3. Theoretical Lenses
4. Applying the Theoretical Lenses and 4.1 Handoff Triggers: New tech, new threats, new hype
4.2. Handoff Components: Shifting experts, techniques, and data
4.3. Handoff Modes: Abstraction and constrained expertise
5. Uncovering the Stakes of the Handoff
5.1. Confidentiality is the tip of the iceberg
6.2 Lesson 2: Beware objects without experts
6.3 Lesson 3: Transparency and participation should center values and policy
8. Research Ethics and Social Impact
Acknowledgments and References
6.2 Lesson 2: Beware objects without experts
While the FAccT community has advocated for a range of artifacts as interventions toward transparency and participation [e.g., 51, 57, 88], these artifacts have largely been divorced from the contextual changes they introduce [89, 113]. In our case the Census Bureau invested significantly in such interventions towards transparency and participation. Going beyond simplistic information disclosures, they created an impressive variety of boundary objects through which stakeholders could negotiate decisions about the DAS (§4.5). Further, the Bureau implemented many considerations that members of the FAccT community (and beyond) have long advocated for: toward explainability through stakeholder education efforts, toward contextual transparency through products like the demonstration data, and toward contestability through ongoing dialogue and levers for change (namely, the value and allocation of the privacy budget). Despite the Bureau’s enormous efforts, however, these boundary objects were only partially successful in facilitating meaningful participation and accountability, and in some cases they ultimately undermined trust.
The mobilization of any given boundary object is dependent not only upon the object itself, but also upon the motivation and orientation of those brokers that span and connect communities [72]. The Bureau’s boundary objects were in need of trusted local experts to carry them across community divides. Nurturing such experts is not a trivial task. Yet without them, the collaborative outcomes for which boundary objects are created in the first place might never come to fruition. Future work should explore in more detail what effective boundary object brokerage might look like in practice. A too narrow focus on artifacts can overlook the processes needed to engage them.
As the Census Bureau case demonstrates, boundary objects cannot travel alone. The Bureau’s focus on creating boundary objects, however innovative, was insufficient to build trust and comprehension among a diverse ecosystem of stakeholders. The epistemological and disciplinary chasms separating the communities which the Census was attempting to bridge were just too wide [19]. We encourage the FAccT community to think about the expertise needed to shepherd and use such boundary objects effectively in order to broker meaningful trust and participation.
Authors:
(1) AMINA A. ABDU, University of Michigan, USA;
(2) LAUREN M. CHAMBERS, University of California, Berkeley, USA;
(3) DEIRDRE K. MULLIGAN, University of California, Berkeley, USA;
(4) ABIGAIL Z. JACOBS, University of Michigan, USA.
This paper is
