This paper analyzes the unique challenges of conducting participatory design in large-scale public projects, focusing on stakeholder management, fostering engagement, and integrating participatory methods into institutional transformation.
While much has been written on digital government as a general trend, this working paper instead examines how civic tech is changing American government, focusing on an influential constellation of actors who shape the understanding and implementation of technological opportunities.
This paper describes results from fieldwork conducted at a social services site where the workers evaluate citizens' applications for food and medical assistance submitted via an e-government system. These results suggest value tensions that result - not from different stakeholders with different values - but from differences among how stakeholders enact the same shared value in practice.
CHI '14: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
This article analyzes the translation of law into computer code and the use of automated decision-making systems in government to make legal distinctions. Specifically, how are algorithmic decisions tied to law, and what happens when legal effects are mediated through technologies?
This paper introduces a method for auditing benefits eligibility screening tools in four steps: 1) generate test households, 2) automatically populate screening questions with household information and retrieve determinations, 3) translate eligibility guidelines into computer code to generate ground truth determinations, and 4) identify conflicting determinations to detect errors.
This paper examines three key questions in participatory HCI: who initiates, directs, and benefits from user participation; in what forms it occurs; and how control is shared with users, while addressing conceptual, ethical, and pragmatic challenges, and suggesting future research directions.
Well-designed, user-focused tools that allow for simple application are key to ensuring that families most in need receive the Child Tax Credit. Reaching these households will require a robust effort from the IRS to create user-friendly tools in partnership with organizations with a direct connection to eligible recipients.
This discussion paper advocates for states to use the implementation of OBBBA (One Big Beautiful Bill Act) as a catalyst to build integrated, cross-agency data systems.
A case study describing how Massachusetts is building long-term public-sector capacity to deliver people-centered digital services by strengthening in-house expertise, shared tools, and agency-embedded support.
The article discusses the phenomenon of model multiplicity in machine learning, arguing that developers should be legally obligated to search for less discriminatory algorithms (LDAs) to reduce disparities in algorithmic decision-making.
This study assesses five commercial RIdV solutions for equity across demographic groups and finds that two are equitable, while two have inequitable performance for certain demographics.
Algorithmic impact assessments (AIAs) are an emergent form of accountability for organizations that build and deploy automated decision-support systems. This academic paper explores how to co-construct impacts that closely reflects harms, and emphasizes the need for input of various types of expertise and affected communities.
ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (ACM FAccT)
