The Central Digital and Data Office (CDDO) and Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation (CDEI) have made an updated version of the algorithmic transparency standard for the public sector available on GitHub.
They said they have made the move to for interested stakeholders to submit further feedback on the standard, which was first published in November of last year and sent for use in pilots with a number of public sector organisations.
It provides a framework for organisations to share information on and build confidence in their use of algorithmic tools.
The two bodies have also used GitHub to share the guidance for the public sector in using the standard.
The standard was initially organised into two tiers – a short description of the algorithmic tool and more detailed information on its workings – but the overall structure has been changed to include information relating to the technical specification.
Other changes include the addition of metadata fields, a non-mandatory ‘detailed description’ field, a model on ‘model performance’ and fields on data cleaning, completeness and representativeness.
Wider adoption
A CDEI blogpost on the update said: “As we move into this next phase, we expect to see more teams adopting the standard independently within their own organisations. In this phase, we remain available to support teams completing algorithmic transparency reports and will continue to gather feedback.”
https://cdei.blog.gov.uk/2022/10/10/developing-the-algorithmic-transparency-standard-in-the-open/
It added: “Beyond the standard itself, we are starting to investigate options around how we support publication and access to completed transparency reports. Over the coming weeks, we will be carrying out a discovery phase to assess user needs and consider options for how to approach this.”
CDDO and CDEO they will continue to update the standard based on feedback over the coming months.
