AI was supposed to help this city recruit staff for local kindergartens. Denied transparency, parents compared results to understand the automated decisionmaking

Krzysztof Izdebski, Policy Director at Poland’s ePanstwo Foundation, has authored several publications on freedom of information, technology, public administration, corruption and public participation. Citizens and decisionmaking officials are deprived when only companies creating tools for public institutions have the full knowledge of the algorithms’ functions.

If there is a general lack of trust towards governments today, are we then — as citizens — also right to distrust the tools provided to us by the public administration?

An answer to this difficult question is becoming very urgent in the field automated decisionmaking and AI.