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. 2022 Oct 14;3(10):100604.
doi: 10.1016/j.patter.2022.100604.

Paper vs. practice: How legal and ethical frameworks influence public sector data professionals in the Netherlands

Isabelle Fest  1 , Maranke Wieringa  2   3 , Ben Wagner  4   5
Affiliations

Paper vs. practice: How legal and ethical frameworks influence public sector data professionals in the Netherlands

Isabelle Fest et al. Patterns (N Y). .

Abstract

Recent years have seen a massive growth in ethical and legal frameworks to govern data science practices. Yet one of the core questions associated with ethical and legal frameworks is the extent to which they are implemented in practice. A particularly interesting case in this context comes to public officials, for whom higher standards typically exist. We are thus trying to understand how ethical and legal frameworks influence the everyday practices on data and algorithms of public sector data professionals. The following paper looks at two cases: public sector data professionals (1) at municipalities in the Netherlands and (2) at the Netherlands Police. We compare these two cases based on an analytical research framework we develop in this article to help understanding of everyday professional practices. We conclude that there is a wide gap between legal and ethical governance rules and the everyday practices.

Keywords: DSML2: Proof-of-concept: Data science output has been formulated, implemented, and tested for one domain/problem.

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Conflict of interest statement

Ben Wagner is a member of the Patterns Journal Advisory Board.

Comment in

  • Responsible and accountable data science.
    Wagner B, Müller-Birn C. Wagner B, et al. Patterns (N Y). 2022 Nov 11;3(11):100629. doi: 10.1016/j.patter.2022.100629. eCollection 2022 Nov 11. Patterns (N Y). 2022. PMID: 36419445 Free PMC article. No abstract available.

References

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    1. EU High Level Expert Group on Artificial Intelligence . European Commission; 2019. ETHICS GUIDELINES FOR TRUSTWORTHY AI.
    1. UNESCO Report of the Social and Human Sciences Commission (SHS) 2021. https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000379920.page=14
    1. IEEE The IEEE Global Initiative. https://standards.ieee.org/industry-connections/ec/autonomous-systems/

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