Report
What a government should never delegate to an algorithm
Key takeaways
- The great failures of public automation were failures of decision architecture, not of algorithms.
- Real human oversight has five conditions and two metrics; without them, it is theater.
- Six decisions are never delegated; the rest are classified with two questions: how much does it affect rights, and how reversible is the error?
- The contradiction rule is the cheapest protection: define by procedure what happens when the citizen and the system assert incompatible things.
Robodebt, the Dutch benefits scandal, the British grading fiasco and the Horizon cases share one cause: people stopped deciding and started signing. Six non-delegable decisions, and a matrix for everything else.
The full document is currently published in Spanish; an English edition is prepared when demand warrants it. The Spanish record carries the complete summary and contents.