Public organisations increasingly rely on algorithmic systems for the execution of their tasks and the provision of public services. These public algorithmic systems can inflict harms on citizens by creating Kafkaesque situations. Exemplary cases of Kafkaesque algorithmic systems are the Dutch childcare allowances scandal and the Australian Robodebt scheme. Algorithmic Kafka emerges from possibilities for arbitrary conduct in the constitution of algorithmic systems. Following from the fundamental principles underlying democracy and the Rule of Law, governments should protect citizens from any arbitrary use of power by public organisations. Nonetheless, current design practices of public algorithmic systems do not provide this protection and are lacking democratic legitimacy.

This thesis provides design principles for institutional interventions that restructure design practices of public algorithmic. More specifically, these design principles prescribe how current technocratic and businesslike design practices can be shifted to practices that are embedded in a democratic and Rule of Law context. The institutional interventions facilitate public servants in coordinating the formulation of a socio-technical specification for public algorithmic systems. Furthermore, the interventions reduce arbitrary use of designerly power by strengthening the dialectic between public servants and politicians. The design practices that emerge by establishing the position of system-level designer will curb the emergence of algorithmic Kafka.

This chapter proposes an analytical lens to comprehensively address the role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) applications in mediating arbitrary exercise of power in public administration and the citizen harms that result from such conduct. It provides a timely and urgent account to fill gaps in conventional Rule of Law thought. AI systems are socio-technical by nature and, therefore, differ from the text-driven social constructs that the legal professions dealing with Rule of Law issues concentrate on. Put to work in public administration contexts with consequential decision-making, technical artefacts can contribute to a variety of hazardous situations that provide opportunities for arbitrary conduct. A comprehensive lens to understand and address the role of technology in Rule of Law violations has largely been missing in literature. We propose to combine a socio-legal perspective on the Rule of Law with central insights from system safety—a safety engineering tradition with a strong scientific as well as real-world practice—that considers safety from a technological, systemic, and institutional perspective. The combination results in a lexicon and analytical approach that enables public organisations to identify possibilities for arbitrary conduct in public AI systems. Following on the analysis, interventions can be designed to prevent, mitigate, or correct system hazards and, thereby, protect citizens against arbitrary exercise of power.

Algorithmic and data-driven systems are increasingly used in the public sector to improve the efficiency of existing services or to provide new services through the newfound capacity to process vast volumes of data. Unfortunately, certain instances also have negative consequences for citizens, in the form of discriminatory outcomes, arbitrary decisions, lack of recourse, and more. These have serious impacts on citizens ranging from material to psychological harms. These harms partly emerge from choices and interactions in the design process. Existing critical and reflective frameworks for technology design do not address several aspects that are important to the design of systems in the public sector, namely protection of citizens in the face of potential algorithmic harms, the design of institutions to ensure system safety, and an understanding of how power relations affect the design, development, and deployment of these systems. The goal of this workshop is to develop these three perspectives and take the next step towards reflective design processes within public organisations. The workshop will be divided into two parts. In the first half we will elaborate the conceptual foundations of these perspectives in a series of short talks. Workshop participants will learn new ways of protecting against algorithmic harms in sociotechnical systems through understanding what institutions can support system safety, and how power relations influence the design process. In the second half, participants will get a chance to apply these lenses by analysing a real world case, and reflect on the challenges in applying conceptual frameworks to practice.

Algorithmic systems used in public administration can create or reinforce digital cages. A digital cage refers to algorithmic systems or information architectures that create their own reality through formalization, frequently resulting in incorrect automated decisions with severe impact on citizens. Although much research has identified how algorithmic artefacts can contribute to digital cages and their unintended consequences, the emergence of digital cages from human actions and institutions is poorly understood. Embracing a broader lens on how technology, human activity, and institutions shape each other, this paper explores what design practices in public organizations can result in the emergence of digital cages. Using Orlikowski’s structurational model of technology, we found four design practices in observations and interviews conducted at a consortium of public organizations. This study shows that design processes of public algorithmic systems (1) are often narrowly focused on technical artefacts, (2) disregard the normative basis for these systems, (3) depend on involved actors’ awareness of socio-technics in public algorithmic systems, (4) and are approached as linear rather than iterative. These four practices indicate that institutions and human actions in design processes can contribute to the emergence of digital cages, but also that institutional – opposed to technical – possibilities to address their unintended consequences are often ignored. Further research is needed to examine how design processes in public organizations can evolve into socio-technical processes, can become more democratic, and how power asymmetries in the design process can be mitigated.