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welcome everyone to the playbook for ethical  technology governance webinar um my name is   john clamme. i am the director of strategy and  growth here at institute for the future and just   to kind of set the table for everyone and give  go through a little bit of the agenda um we have   a 45 minute window planned for this webinar and  the the majority of the time will be jake and   ilana walking you through this playbook um note  that we will set aside 10 maybe 15 minutes for a   question and answer period at the end as i'm sure  many of you will have some questions so please   write those questions in as you think of them  as they come up in the q a section below or   the chat whatever you feel more comfortable  doing so so again thank you um we appreciate   you spending some time with us this morning and  um wanted to first also give a quick shout out   to the tingari silverton foundation who is a  funder for this program they're an austin-based   foundation and also thanks to lane becker who is  an iftf affiliate and he is the co-author of this   so i wanted to say thank you to both  lane and the tingari silverton foundation   before we start um we'll ask you in addition to  your name and where are you from is to enter into   the chat what words come to mind when you think  about ethics and technology one or two or maybe   three words come to mind um jake and ilana will  kind of pick a few of these out throughout and   perhaps not by name just the words so we don't  uh embarrass anyone but but if you could uh put   those words into the chat box if you could  um and that would be very much appreciated   there are no kids present so any words are  acceptable there are no ratings on this um and one other thing to  note as well to the group   after the webinar ends hopefully at some  point today we will send a follow-up email   to everyone who has registered for this  webinar and it will include the video of   the webinar so please forward that on to  your colleagues or any other team members   that perhaps were unable to attend this webinar  today so expect that email from us later today it's great to see all these  these phrases coming in i'm   i recommend to save the chat it's kind  of interesting to look at this word cloud   of ideas that come up um from different people  all over the world so thank you for editing those   yeah so i will quickly just give the overview of  who we are institute for the future we are the   world's leading and longest-running futures  organization at least that we are aware of   we're a 53-year-old non-profit based in palo alto  california and we were started in the 1960s from a   handful of guys that left the random corporation  who were looking at what the internet might be   used for someday so pretty fascinating stuff  that they were working on back in the late 60s   but today we work with many of the world's leading  organizations for-profits non-profits foundations   government agencies ngos across the board um  and and our goal and our mission and probably   why we are a non-profit is we really want to help  organizations to think systematically about their   long-term futures their preferred futures and to  help them to become future-ready organizations and with that i will pass the mic onto jake who  will tell you about today's goals yeah we want to   uh just introduce you to the governance futures  lab what we're up to who we are and what we're   up to we're going to dive into the playbook itself  go through um the the structure of it and also do   a little some demos together to look at how it's  used uh how we uh designed it to be used as a tool   to help think through ethical issues and  governing those issues and as i said practice   get some hands-on practice uh doing that and then  we'll have some time for questions at the end   so the governance futures lab is uh i think it  might be the oldest lab that we've created at the   institute it started about eight or nine years  ago and our goal really is to um to educate and   arm a movement of social inventors uh people that  are uh inspired and tasked and responsible and   um and uh mandated uh to help rethink and recreate  our systems of government so we want to arm   that movement hopefully create catalyze  educate arm a movement of social inventors   with tools and concepts to help build better  governing systems and and we've done that through   um through things like the the toolkit we created  which is a step-by-step uh process for redesigning   government so if you want to know how to do it  here's a here's one way that we think a structured   way to think through from kind of beginning to end  what do you need to think about what are the order   um how do you even begin such a crazy audacious uh  idea as redesigning or reconstituting our society   so we have some structures and platforms and  participatory processes that we use to do that   we also have been working with the us conference  of mayors for the last few years um uh doing   foresight training for mayors and city leaders and  we created a series of uh posters from the future   working with different mayors around the world  and here's uh some examples uh from uh rochester   hills michigan and tempe arizona and  oakland and we work with santa fe and austin   and portland and other places so we we are kind of  opportunistic in finding ways to help futurize uh   those working in government and to help uh provide  structures for thinking through uh at a grassroots   level how how do we get involved in and not just  voting or not just these kind of one-off ways to   participate in politics but really rethinking  the architecture of our political systems okay ilana is going to talk through uh the the  structure and outline what's in the playbook and   then we'll go diving into some of the examples  great so in this playbook that we're going to   walk through today it contains risk zones  scenarios the decision tree tool that jake   mentioned we're going to practice some discussion  questions and further reading so diving into that   what are these we have five risk zones  contained in this playbook which are   areas that we've identified as either current or  or will be threats significant threats as well as   areas that are ripe for technological disruption  so through the research and through interviews   that we did with a number of people working in  government we identified these five risk zones   that we think people need to be paying attention  to and those are law enforcement public health   climate ai and equity and inclusion so within  each of these risk zones we have two scenarios   that we've created one near term from 2022  and one of a further out future from 2032   and each of these scenarios kind of paints a  picture of where you might find yourself in   that year within this risk zone and then what  are some decisions that you might have to make   that inherently include some dilemmas or  choosing between trade-offs or choosing   between things that might kind of butt up  against your civil service and civic values   so to help with the decision making architecture  we created this decision tree which is actually   an evolution of the futures wheel which we kind of  simplified and bifurcated to this binary positive   and negative choice points of what do you do in  these scenarios and so the idea is to kind of   think through what are the potential positive and  negative outcomes of your decision making of your   policy making and what are some ways that you can  anticipate unintended consequences of the of the   policies that you're creating of the regula of  the regulations that you're making um and either   remedy them or kind of use that hindsight that  you've gained to create different and better   policies and then after each of the decision trees  there are series of questions for consideration   that you can use within your teams within your  departments to think to think a little bit more   deeply about these scenarios and in particular if  this partic if this scenario or if this issue area   doesn't feel immediately relevant or tangible  for you or your department these questions are   designed to help you think about how you might  apply that decision-making architecture to things   that you are actually dealing with on a day-to-day  basis um so that's the that's the basics of what   what's in the playbook um we think the most  exciting part comes from actually walking through   it and doing the uh walking through the scenarios  and using the decision tree so jake is going to um   walk us through an example yeah and we we have  these scenarios um and i will say a little bit   of background we built the ethic the playbook for  ethical tech governance kind of uh on on the back   or the compliment to the ethical os piece that  that iftf did uh sam wooley and jane mcgonagall   colleagues of ours at the institute for the future  working with and targeted toward an audience of   tech companies how do we how do you get ahead of  of uh your products being used and abused uh and   and destroying democracy or creating injustice you  know how how do you think ahead so that the things   that you're building don't end up having these  negative outcomes and we presented that actually   at one of the meetings of the us conference of  mayors in austin and uh it really resonated with   the mayors and city leaders and so uh inspired by  that we thought okay let's let's do a version of   this toolkit or process uh of thinking through the  ethical implications um and adding foresight to   that four city leaders four mayors and four civil  servants so that that is kind of the the way we   ended up uh uh you know creating and designing it  in certain ways and why the scenarios are crafted   the way they are kind of kind of as an audience  of civil servants or people in policymaking   making these decisions uh and doing that from a  government point of view so uh we have we have as   ilana said we have five different zones one of  them is law enforcement and this is a a near-term   scenario that we created i think i think these  issues will be familiar uh to many people it's   in the news every day and that was kind of part  of our design as well is to do something that's   that's now now-ish something you might face  any at this point or have faced these ethical   choices right now and then other things that  push further but have the same structure of   thinking so that we can get ahead of those things  so law enforcement so here's here's the kind of   scenario that you would be working with  in this case so your county recently began   using a facial recognition system to identify  individuals caught on surveillance cameras uh   recently on the recommendation of this system  your department arrested a black residence   resident at his place of work drove him to  a detention center and interrogated him for   several hours before determining the system  had misidentified him you can you can find   many examples of this kind of scenario already  so activist groups are lobbying to yes coded by   bias uh sheila too many examples of this so in  this scenario activist groups are lobbying to   ban every police force in the state from  using any facial recognition technology   in this scenario we're not trying to um you know  add any uh value ahead of time for this but uh   facing choices is what we're trying to to to put  forward here with these scenarios so to counter   this movement you've been tasked uh with proposing  publicly available legally enforceable guidelines   on the acquisition implementation and oversight  of the algorithms that facial recognition systems   use when making criminal justice decisions  in your county so um these are the sort of   ethical choices maybe you're being told maybe  you you agree or disagree with this but this is   this is your task and so how would you go through  about this how would you think through this   let's go to the next slide okay so the  decision tree as we said is kind of a   limited uh in a way can a little bit  more confined or directed version of   the futures will where you think about what if  questions so if you do this what happens next   if that happens what happens next and we have  this positive negative outcome in this case   to think about you know just to put a finer  point on thinking through what are some of   the the things that could happen that that you  hope for or intend with this and what are some of   the things that maybe you you wouldn't want to see  happen and how do you deal with those things so we   we went through with a colleague of ours to to  think through this and and run through the the   tool itself and so in this case the suggestion  was okay let's create an oversight office   a sort of citizen group that would approve uh  any ai and facial recognition warrant or arrest   so it has to go through before you make an  arrest uh or issue a warrant it has to be vetted   by uh you know an advisory group all right what's  up what's a positive thing that could happen well   if it goes well this this oversight office will  prevent false arrests based on algorithmic bias   okay great what and then we go over here what's  something negative that might happen well it might   slow down drastically slow down uh police work and  become too expensive and therefore rarely used so   maybe the benefits of this technology are are  thwarted because of this bureaucratic oversight   and then from there you build on so what would be  an um what would you do and then we ask okay what   if now what would you do what would you do if  it slowed down and made too expensive this tool   uh what you could do possibly is examine court  systems to see how warrants are being issued   um you could review other programs and and that  could be leading to a drop in crime instead so   it's kind of taking a more systematic systems view  of that and maybe there's other angles to doing   police work so that's how we go through and you  can see each one of these prompts helps you think   systematically through okay let me do this let  me do that and then you know ending up at the top   what are things you could have done differently  in the first place maybe you go back now and think   about that first choice and say okay let me get  ahead of this what could i have done differently   from the start that maybe wouldn't have led to  some of these negative outcomes that we had to   backtrack and fix later so that's the idea that's  the kind of thinking process that we're trying to   to scaffold here with this tool and as we said uh in the structure of this you're  given questions so you go through this process   and then through um you know through these  prompts and kind of through the lens of civil   service values are the choices we're making at  every point kind of embedding those values that   we had one of the things in our interviews and  research that we found which was kind of very   interesting and i don't know if surprising or not  but we talked to many people working in government   and civil service and they were saying yes uh  you know public values civil service values are   they're they're they're kind of uh so there that  they're not talked about and and therefore they're   they're you know they're they're you're expected  to do this but we don't have a systematic way of   of going through this and um you know i i think  what we're trying to do with this is contribute   to that okay if you have these values how can  you how can you use them in a systematic way to   to think through your decisions if you don't have  a formal process for doing that so that was this   is a hopefully a contribution to that which  would be a more systematic or more structured   process for doing that kind of thinking  through uh civil service values and ethics okay ilana you want to take them through it's  your turn now everyone great thank you jake um   so as as i mentioned um we had a  number of different risk zones so   now we're going to take you into the risk  zone of climate um in the year 2032 and   um again we recognize that not every person  working in government or in every department   is going to um have to be addressing each  of these issues in each of these risk zones   that we're that we're talking about so  trying to embed within the scenarios   um a number of different questions and values  and ethics as jake was mentioning and kind of   thinking about how do the decisions that we're  making um impact or reinforce those values so   we'll talk through a little bit what that  means in this particular scenario in 2032   citizen scientists have created an open source  pollution map of your city along with these   early warning drones that alert residents when  pollution levels rise telling them to stay inside   so recently these drones swarmed a neighborhood  with a warning before the city informed residents   of potential toxic exposure um so understandably  people are upset they feel like this the city   has betrayed them there's a little bit of a  loss of trust that the city's not telling them   uh what's going on in their neighborhood before  these drones do so the department of public health   is proposing a new lengthy regulatory process  for the drones um that the drones have to be   approved before they can be used and residents  are protesting this because they say they're   not getting health information when they need it  from the department of public health and so they   want these open source drones so you as a as a  regulator at the department of public health um   what do you do what do you do about this so  we're gonna walk through um this decision tree   uh which is welcoming us in with an aloha and  hello so we're going to ask you to just put   in the chat and jake's going to call out some  of the things that you're responding in this   scenario in this scenario where the department of  public health wants to regulate these drones but   the citizens who feel like they're getting  more accurate information from these open   source drones or protesting what do you as a  regulator with the department of public health do   so feel free to just put that  in your ideas in the chat so we have one really from aaron here um   regulation could prevent possible panic  due to errors and notification algorithms it's kind of a i think an observation  on that are there other other   choices maybe we should go you want to go back okay from sheila we have uh call an investor  investigatory panel with all represented   investigate the quality of health information  and communications maybe that would be a good   initial uh start to this proposed idea great  thank you sheila so we have a regulatory panel   or an investigatory panel excuse me that's  going to look at um that's going to look   at the results so what is a positive outcome  that might occur from creating this this panel yes add it to the chat so what are what  are the positive outcomes of the best case   outcomes for this proposed idea so  more participation involvement uh   the drones could become more efficient at  detecting pollution and alerting the public   trans create new outcomes transparency  fosters trust with residents lots of minds considering the  benefits for a wider population the   pan the panel will be more transparent great these are great it seems like there's  a lot of uh very immediate positive outcomes   thinking about this investigatory panel so now um  we're gonna switch our mental gears which is part   of the point of this decision tree is to force us  to think in kind of two uh very binary directions   so what are some negative outcomes that might  happen uh because of this investigatory panel polluters shift their emissions  to avoid drone detection right uh yeah a discussion of who wasn't able to  participate in the panel who was left out   selection becomes a politicized  battle yes thanks vanessa   governments start using drones for other purposes  right yeah they're not you know what else can they   what other data is being gathered  and how can that be used or abused   industries could lobby to heavy heavily  regulate the drones and render them   useless borderline useless right these are  great the negatives are really coming right   uh yeah or even the perception that  the drones are doing that right so let's go with that um the the the uh last one that you just read about  um governments using drones for other data   collection purposes right or even the perception  which was part of it which could could undermine   this as well even just the the hint uh or you know  the conspiracies that might float uh be associated   with this that the government is using it to spy  on people or gather other data yes thank you so   so the use of it and the perception of it so so  you again in your shoes as a regulator with the   department of public um public health what do you  do in response to this potential negative outcome yeah how would you respond to that okay people  um either government is using it or people   perceive that the government is using gathering  data and using it as a surveillance mechanism   how would you deal with that you could do a series  of public information notices uh on the use of   drones what's their purpose right drone data could  be available open source yeah that's that's great   yeah anyone can look at it um the optics release  guidelines on use um find out what the prevalent   narrative is for the drones in the public  and create communication plans based on that   set up an oversight board inviting civil society  orgs you know what i love about this uh uh   sometimes there's like uh you know oversight  uh infinite regress that happens right over   who's policing the police who's overseeing the  overseers and all of that um which is which is   why i love the kind of ethical dilemmas and the  choices that this this process brings out like   how do you how do you deal with that do we just  keep adding other layers or is there other ways   to look at that so just thinking through those  those layered consequences helps us helps us   see that sometimes clear information about what  happens with the data consequences for regulators   if they abuse it right yeah so so some some real  teeth to that look at how bad actors could hack   the system yeah even you know black hat hackers  which some governments and organizations use to to   see how the system can can be abused or broken  into or you know do that ahead of time right   great so these are these are great and as you can  see they've they have kind of taken us multiple   layers past this initial decision of creating an  investigatory panel um so uh what we would then do   is think about okay what could you have done  differently in the first place to anticipate some   of these negative outcomes what would you have put  in place um and we kind of walked through it that   way but i want it for the for the last kind of  interactive part i want to bring it back to the   positive side because what we also want to think  about is you know things that have a seem like   they have an initial positive outcome might also  have a negative outcome for certain uh populations   or uh down the line so when we thought about what  positive outcomes might occur we would then prompt   okay well what are some negative outcomes that  might occur because of these positive outcomes   um so just some thoughts on i know we had a lot  of a lot of great ones about improving trust   and transparency uh but what we want to force you  really to think about is what are some negative   outcomes that might occur from that and and  some of those conversations came up in box   number three of certain people aren't included  in the in the panel or um changing the way that   the drones operate certain lobbying effects  so i want to open that up to a conversation   too to just enter in the chat again what are some  negative outcomes that might occur after this   initial positive outcome one size fits all might  not um be the case some language groups excluded   yeah exclusion i think is a it's a big part  yeah particip participatory is one of the   positive outcomes but how wide is too wide  and then you know uh if everyone is involved   when does it become too unwieldy that's always  an issue with with government participation yeah   great so these are great and and as  you can see we went really quickly from   trust to lack of inclusion or from openness to not  being able to have um control or efficiency and so   these are some of the the conversation points that  we really want to encourage people to have about   these trade-offs about these um kind of dilemmas  that are embedded within each of the decisions so   and you can get a sense of how the decision tree  works you could obviously continue to have these   brainstorm conversations for multiple hours or  weeks on end about policy decisions um so and then   again after the after we go through these multiple  layers of consequence and and potential outcomes   uh we have these questions for consideration so um  as examples with this one you know if the wisdom   of the crowd is trustworthy is it your place  to regulate how it spreads information so again   this question of openness and open source to um to  regulation or as a government agent how would you   work with the citizen scientist to rebuild trust  in your agency and so again we saw those some of   those conversations around well the openness  or the investigatory panel can create trust   but then there are issues of inclusion um and  and openness so really again wanting to encourage   encourage these conversations within um your  departments and you know just just add a little uh   meta commentary on this you can go through all  of this and then get to the point where you go   back and say this this doesn't work i  mean that's a perfectly fine outcome   it's to try to get ahead of these things and  not learn the hard way as any foresight work uh   does so the process is really to to to do  that to look at the outcomes and then to   weigh those choices like there are going to be  negative outcomes for almost any policy right   there's going to be people left out or you know  those at a disadvantage for certain policies so   getting ahead of that thinking through that  i you know there was a question from bogdanna   earlier which was really great it's you know  what is the process of going through does does   each civil servant go through it by themselves  or they do it collectively um and then you know   how do you process that information i think  you could use this individually yes um that's   one use case another is to do it in your in your  group your policy group or with with city leaders   and decision makers i really think and we we  talked about this with a lot of our interviewees when when policies are made when decisions are  made there are these trade-offs that are happening   whether they're made explicit or not i think this  could be a great tool to go through with citizens   to say here's either here's what we thought and  how we got there and here are the trade-offs that   we made or let's go through it in a in a kind  of public way to think through this and where   where are the places that we're willing to  give a little bit of you know uh the ethical   trade-offs or the some of the the uh you know  who's left out and trying to deal with that   but we know there's gonna be issues and there's no  perfect answer but you know i could see this being   a much more transparent way to talk through these  ethical issues not only for foresight but for   for public communication and buy-in i i think  it could be used in those in that sense as well yeah thank you so we're gonna go uh we're gonna  john is gonna talk about the um   what we have this playbook is is publicly  available you can use it we designed it to be   self-facilitated and that's why you know speaking  of trade-offs some of the trade-offs with with the   kinds of things you could you could think through  the different implications in a broad sense which   we kind of narrowed it into this into you know  limited but hopefully uh enabling the constrained   version of positive and negative to help you  know help think through that in a systematic way   um so it it's it's there it's it's it's gonna be  given to you i think in an email um and we can   you know share that with you and you're welcome  to share with anyone but we also want to provide   facilitation services we can run workshops with  you we can we can help work with the with with   a group or the organization or agency so  we have some offerings here where we can   come in and collaborate with you to to think  through this and use the tool for different   um occasions thanks jake yeah as jake mentioned  that the playbook itself is free and we will   be sending that as part of the follow-up  email but there are three offerings that   we would like to walk through briefly and answer  any questions that you might have um if you would   like to implement this playbook within your own  organization um there are two different workshop   options a half day and a one and a half day and  as you can see on the slide the half day workshop   would simply be where our group comes in and gives  an introduction or an overview of the playbook   and risk zones and scenarios we would allow you  and provide you with dedicated time to practice   using the tools on both the decision tree and  additional prop questions that you could use um   with small breakouts and this would be accompanied  with expert facilitators i have a feeling you're   looking at two of them right now um the the second  offering is the day and a half offering so this is   much more of a a specific deep dive into the  playbook um and this is you know everything   that we mentioned above so that introduction and  overview and sort of how to do it but we will take   you deeply into two of the risk zones specifically  um we'll walk through that decision tree and with   the feedback and the input from the facilitators  on site and even more than that there will be much   more hands-on application um so you can practice  using these these methods and applying them to   your own work with the feedback feedback and input  again from the iftf facilitators um both of these   sessions um we can provide various discounts  for government agencies and other entities so   so please talk to us or follow up with that on the  half day session would run somewhere between the   the 20 to 30 000 range and the day and a half  workshop is more in the 60 to 75 000 range   again what we propose is that you let us know  what your level of interest is we can provide a   specific one-on-one follow-up call and meeting  with you to walk through how you can use it   specifically for your organization then the  last piece is is a custom speech so we can   create a customized speech for your organization  where jake orlano or someone else here at the   institute can come um and give that speech to  your group and that is in that five thousand   dollar range so those are the three offerings  that we wanted to to propose to this group   and again we would i will outline these in that  follow-up email and and hopefully we'll have an   opportunity to talk with you specifically  about your needs and how iftf can help with this and now i wanted to walk through some of  the the questions that we received during um   during the webinar so again feel free to keep  typing them in as they come up um one that   we wanted to tip off with was from francis  and she asked what have you done or do to make   certain no bias is present with this process  and the questions asked the main premise is   there's something inherently wrong with  protesting that's a great question i mean these um   uh we're trying to uh as best we can simulate what  a civil servant might face or a policy maker might   face and you know we're not necessarily trying  to make a value judgment on protest or not   ahead of time we want to think we want to provide  a scenario um you know a plausible use case   for civil servants to think through that so  you know we don't have necessarily an opinion   about the protest but it's something that  might happen right and and you know maybe   maybe the protesters have a valid point  that you need to think through and then   to bring that in to the um to the decision tree  process okay what are the negative outcomes   you know expanded protest or more aggressive  protests how do we deal with that so um or maybe   you know the protesters have a valid point uh  you make a decision that addresses some of their   complaints ahead of time through this so we're  just trying to to lay out the the kind of agents   and dynamics of of a plausible situation and  then you know the the decision tree there is um   is is really there to help think through those  what-if questions and to keep doing that and   looking at the layers of intended and unintended  consequences that that could happen and yes   garrett uh protest and riot and insurrection these  these terms are very fluid and and uh the way we   have typically thought about them and stereotype  them i think are changing very rapidly as well   great thanks jake and actually another question  from francis um asks so when you do this do you   have multiple positive and negative outcomes but  you create something like a risk log to mitigate that yeah i don't know lana  if you want to take that one   um yeah i think part of the like like jake was  saying you know when when we get to the end of   the decision tree and go through these  questions part of the idea is okay well   what do you do now what how do you take this  foresight how do you take these this kind of um future hindsight and apply it to what you're doing  now and part of that can be yes looking at these   at the various risks if you want to create a  risk log and kind of weigh them against each   other and think about how does that impact  your decision making now and which of how   are you going to weight some of these  risks versus the others and think about   these trade-offs think about the dilemmas and is  that going to affect your policy decision is that   going to change the policy decision that you're  making so we don't have a like a specific chart   for for logging these risks but i think that's a  that's a really great way of putting it because   that is essentially what you're doing every time  you think about the potential negative outcomes   of your initial decision or even the negative  outcomes of a positive outcome is um logging those   risks and then using them to to weigh against  the decisions that you're making or the dilemmas   that you're trying to address so also imagine  just in that in that use case of the climate   and the drones and the you know the data gathering  one of the negative outcomes was that people   feel like the government is going to you know  gather other data and that there you know   there's this sort of conspiracy side of things  that may be generated right whether it's valid   or not um i think there's a lot of valid about  how how you know power the powerful use data but   imagine you've you've weighed these trade-offs  and you say okay yeah we think this is still   valuable this is really it's a really good thing  even though you know it might cause some of   these issues get ahead of that narrative you know  start building your campaign your anti-conspiracy   campaign ahead of time before you ever launch  it or engage groups that you think might have   skepticism toward it ahead of time so you know  i think i think these kind of things help you   not only you know maybe make different decisions  but but prepare to launch in a way or to engage   different groups and and create processes that  will alleviate potential barriers and hang ups and   and backlash that might happen ahead of time get  ahead of that great thank you thank you both um a   question from ashish uh the question is a sidebar  question when working with city officials how are   you navigating their tendency to retain control  versus having openness to be more experimental   or collaborative learning oriented decision making  i ask considering the background of trust deficit   and quasi-authoritarian or  adversarial governance behavior i want to pass that to ilana too that is a that's a great question um so the first  the first way that i would answer that is um   i think similar to what jake said about using  this with citizens to kind of establish that open   report and see where each group is coming from  and kind of see your different priorities and   how you would decide to how you might decide to do  something or what your priority is based on where   you're coming from i think that's just as valuable  internally um and to kind of see where those edges   and boundaries are of what can be open what you  know where there can be innovation where there   can be creative prototyping and who has the uh who  has the autonomy to do that within a government   um and and sometimes there might be somebody at  a lower level who has the id ideas who has the   desire to do something but they run up against  um the structure of of the bureaucracy and the   red tape and they can't they can't make those  decisions and so they have um if if you're walking   through this with a department or with an elected  you can kind of see where people's different um   edges are in terms of what they're able to do  and what they're able how they're able to make   decisions um and so of course that walking  through a decision tree isn't necessarily   going to overcome an authoritarian government  but i think it might help within a department   or within an agency or even across agencies of get  a getting a bit of an understanding of where some   of these decisions or innovations or prototypes  might actually take place where there's openness   for it where there's space for it um and how you  can get creative with doing some of these things thanks ilana i have a handful of questions  that i'll sort of try to combine here but   um the general theme is who would be the best  candidates to take a workshop like this in   other words what types of organizations  or people or roles or job titles um   would be the best fit and kind of what is the  ideal size how many people within the workshop   yeah very good practical questions i mean we we we  wanted this to to target government workers policy   makers decision makers but we also wanted it to  be as best we could applicable to civil servants   working in different roles but i would say you  know having having been spurred by mayors we   were thinking about kind of key decision makers  uh as one audience city managers um you know uh   the people that are doing uh policy city councils  uh chief technology officers uh internet security   types uh that might be working making these  decisions looking at outcomes looking at   if i roll a policy out what what are the impacts  going to be even i mean as we've as really started   to highlight in this conversation public  relations and uh you know the messaging that   goes along with a rollout of policy too this this  is very important as part of that communication   side of things as well so you know broadly uh  anyone working in the civil service who is who are   wrestling and making these decisions and and kind  of crafting policy um you know from the top to to   other people in layers of the bureaucracy that  are that are implementing and rolling this out   ideal size uh you know i i hesitate  to put hard numbers on things but   i tend to like a kind of working group in the 15  to 25 range i have to say um but as we said you   could do this by yourself you could think through  this on your own or you could have it as a kind of   public meeting i could see this being you know  implemented in a virtual setting where people   could comment on each one of these things and you  could you could kind of roll it out in a virtual   way where there could be dozens or hundreds  of people contributing in an asynchronous kind   of way so um hopefully you know as we said  it's sort of it's made and designed to live   on its own but it you know we can see these other  uk use cases where you could come together in a in   a sort of condensed way and and do it in a room or  maybe spread it out asynchronously and virtually   all of those i think are valuable with this great  thanks jake um question from elizabeth how do you   help policy makers use their values to weigh risks  or is that something you leave to them smiley face uh you know in our research and  interviews the civil service values   i mean going back you know 80 years and  being written in these old british tomes   about integrity and fairness  and all of those things they they hold true in a way but we didn't want  to over prescribe exactly what those are those   they'll be slightly different so to answer your  question is yeah you know their your values   should weigh in on the kind of ethical choices  what are the trade-offs what are you willing to   to to to accept as this decision are you  are you willing to accept some manner of   uh you know non-participation to get this rolled  out because this is so important right or do you   need to you know uh go a different way because  your values say that's that's that's too much   we're not going to do that's too unfair for this  uh you know uh or it might lead to less trust and   lack of integrity for what we're doing so yeah  those are those are kind of embedded in the   ethical thinking that each each group would bring  to those choices in those trade-offs thanks jake   um quick housekeeping note we are at time um so  understand if you do need to jump and then go to   your next meeting for the day but we do have a few  more questions so so we will continue to answer   those um and again this will be in the video recap  as well so i just want to give you a heads up on   the time yeah for all of those who are leaving  thank you so much uh and yeah we're going to   stay on for a few more questions and thanks again  to tingari silverton foundation here in austin   and hopefully this will live on in in many  different um uh cases and you know hopefully   you find it very useful all right let's let's get  into some of these other yeah yeah jake i had one   from another from mcdonough asked i'm curious  about the risk zones do you think the risk zones   affect the decision tree structure in some way  because of the different nature of the risks   i think that's a that's an interesting question  um the decision tree itself is supposed to   is designed to be applicable across all  risk zones ones that we've considered   for this particular playbook and any  that might come up in the future so   ideally it's a tool that is was created neutrally  so that it can be applied to a number of different   number of different risk zones and issues and  threats and opportunities that come up again with   the idea being that we really want to we really  want to encourage or force people to think about   both positive and negative outcomes of something  and so um structuring it that way allows us to   get into those nuances of these of these zones  of the risks of the threats that we're facing got it um here's one that's anonymous but  how far e-governance can achieve fairness   and accountability in our communities and how can  we use e-governance to strengthen risk management   another good question i mean i think our default  setting is very skeptical about technology silver   bullets and e-governance you know has has seen  great advances with participation with speed   of government with how information is is  gathered and inseminated you know estonia   for has always brought up as a great example of  how you integrate that a kind of digital version   digital transformation and governance lots of  lots of positive benefits there but you know   adding e to a broken bureaucracy is not going to  work either or a corrupt one or you know um so   it it takes a sort of good will and commitment  to to put these into into practice and even still   you know data overload we've seen that just  having more information doesn't necessarily   lead to better outcomes oh yeah we're going to  be transparent but you know that data can be   manipulated it can be reconceived you know all  of those things happen once it gets out into   the wild and woolly public sphere uh it's open  game um but you know just basic stuff speeding   up uh bureaucratic processes um you know do i do  i need to get pulled over sorry for for a speeding   ticket uh you know uh those kind of things maybe  we don't want those processes speed up but i do   want to get my driver's license faster i want  to get my my fees paid or my my license to do   other things in a in a quicker fashion where i  don't have to go down to some sort of long line   to work in so those kind of efficiencies i think  are a nice promise of e-government but uh you know   i um it's not some sort of magic transformation um  that automatically happens without a whole other   things happening around the system and um just  embedded in that question the person who asked   it was asking about fairness and accountability  and of course whenever you're talking about   anything digital they're questions of access  they're questions of you know who has broadband   or who has the ability to access or use the  technology and then of course any platform that   is built upon which the e-governance system  is is being more efficient or is being used   um no platform it is actually neutral because  people built the platform so there is likely going   to be some sort of challenge or bias or some sort  of issue embedded in the way that the platform   itself was built and so there there then become  this whole slew of questions of how do we consider   how those platforms are being built so that  the e-government system or the different   ways that we're using it do have that fairness  and accountability built in or have some checks   along the way to make sure that we are accounting  for those things yeah i love the example from some   uh some folks we know in brazil who have used  the the government uh sort of uh reimbursement   process which is open to the public uh for  for elected officials and civil servants so   they took that information and started to suss out  corruption that was happening in double billing so   like okay yes uh you know mr decosta you uh you  charged your lunch in sao paulo at 1201 and you   also charged you know this other thing in brasilia  10 minutes later for another you know 300 um   dollars or whatever uh so you know that that  kind of accountability if we have that data   there's there's some oversight  that can happen as well i like that   part of it maybe we got a little bit of  corruption i had another question from ashish uh   what was the biggest facilitation adjustment  you all needed to make during these sessions   these seem like very valuable points of  contact to participate and support leaders yeah that's a great question i'm so glad  you asked it because we really went through   an evolution with this um you know we had  the ethical os which existed which had   a structure to it we worked with mayors we talked  to them about what what what's what messages are   resonating with them what are they what do they  need to think through this and as we've uh kind   of intimated here the the original idea was to do  a futures wheel which is if you've seen it it's   just like what's the prime mover what thing is  happening okay what's the what's the first level   what's gonna happen right if you shut down the  internet what are the things that are to happen   to people how are they you know they're going  to communicate they're going to protest okay so   you go to the next level what if that happens  then what happens and then the third level if   that happens what happens next and so it's kind of  an open-ended way of doing that and when we were   uh doing play testing with this and demos for  people and we just gave them that tool to say   okay you know basically what you've done but  but think through that people kind of it was   too slippery and a little bit too amorphous to  think through all right i'm gonna do an oversight   committee i don't know i had you know some people  had a hard time uh self-facilitating that and we   wanted this to be something that kind of lives on  its own so the the the the trade-off that we made   of doing this positive and negative is really is  really to constrain that and of course it's more   complicated than that i mean you know for us like  oh are we are we putting it too much in a box to   think about positive and negative um but i think  it helps i think it just helps you think through   in a in a way that just kind of forces your  hand a little bit to make it a little bit more   constrained and a little bit more directed to  think through those those kind of consequences   um and but but still being useful and i you know  i i think still reflecting a kind of plausible   reality of how how things might go so that was our  that was our trade-off um we have a thing at the   institute called the foresight engine which was an  online uh uh participatory forecasting tool which   had a one of the one of the architectures of that  was a you know you had a scenario and then you   start thinking about what is kind of a dark thing  that could happen and what's a positive thing that   can happen so that was in our mind as well if you  want to if you want to go back into the mental   weeds of where we're uh where we came up with  this but yeah that's the idea is to to limit it   enough to make it useful and self-facilitated  but not so limited that it doesn't reflect   reality to some degree great and just we'll finish  with these last couple of questions which are   again more of a practical nature but um so folks  wanted to know who would run or facilitate these   workshops and and are they remote or in person  and what would each of them look like in practice well jake and i would facilitate them um at the  beginning and we would we would work with you   closely to figure out exactly what your needs are  um we could do them in person that would be very   exciting it's been a while but we could do them  in person we could do them remotely and we really   like them to be hands-on with small breakout  groups so you can have these deeper discussions   and get into the nuance of the questions um  and the dilemmas and the trade-offs and and   the values and the ethics that aren't necessarily  explicit but are so important to be thinking about   when you're talking about these questions so um  we would we depending on what the structure is   whether that's the half day or the day and a half  um we would again dive into some of the risk zones   and walk through the decision tree and really  spend time with each decision point about what   you know what are the implications what does  this mean what might you have done differently   how do you change your policy um and then if it is  the day and a half we would we would get a little   deeper into who are you and what's you what are  you working on what are the things that are most   relevant or um most urgent for your department  or for your city or for your municipality and   so how do you then take this thought process and  this decision-making architecture and apply it to   the specific issues and policies that you're  considering and um working on right now great well well thank you i think we'll wrap it  up now jake, ilana, thank you very very much for   walking us through the playbook um thanks to  everyone that joined us and is still on the   call because we are a few minutes over um but yes  in closing um thanks to tingari silverton um who   funded this project elaine becker who helped to  co-author it um and we would very much like to   work with you and your organizations and and set  up a workshop with you so um i'll remind you that   we will send an email that will cover all of this  information as well as the video um and oftentimes   if you are interested in doing this please forward  that video on to other folks in your in your   office your team your colleagues so you can all  get on board with this happy to have individual   meetings with you as well so um we'll look forward  to communicating post webinar but again thanks to   everyone for joining and most importantly jake  ilana thank you thanks john thanks everybody   for your great questions i mean this was our  our our launch meeting we had good confidence   we've done the work but to see it you know in the  wild and get reactions to it and your questions   were great and deep and challenging and we really  appreciate your your time today thank you so much reach out if you want to if you  want to talk more thanks all

2021-07-21

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