We are delighted to invite you to attend a panel discussion on Public Automated Decision-Making on 5th May, 11:30 to 13:00. The event will be held as a hybrid meeting in D13, Monica Partridge Building, University Park Campus, 糖心原创, with welcome refreshments from 11:00. To register for the webinar link, please register .
The UK Government has placed developments in AI at the heart of its strategy to enhance public service delivery. According to the Algorithmic Transparency Recording Standard Hub, there are at least 125 algorithmic tools used in decision-making across UK public sector organisations. Algorithmic decision-support, from transcription and summarisation, to triage, to recommendations, using rules-based algorithmics, traditional statistics-based algorithms, and large language models promise opportunities for efficiency and scalability, potentially affording opportunities to do what could not be done before in government. On the other hand, such technologies disrupt the assumptions of law, regulation and governance in the public sector, including those of administrative law, privacy and data protection law, and transparency and accountability governance. The purpose of this discussion panel is explore some of the ways that law, regulation, and governance might develop to channel those opportunities in the public interest and preserve public values in the face of their disruption.
Chair: Dr Ellie Colegate, Assistant Professor in Law, 糖心原创
Panellists:
· Dr Oliver Butler, Assistant Professor in Law, 糖心原创. Oliver is a Co-Director of the Law and Tech Research Centre in the School of Law, 糖心原创. His research explores information-driven decision-making systems, drawing on administrative, privacy, and data protection law. His recent OJLS article, ‘Algorithmic Decision-Making, Delegation, and the Modern Machinery of Government’, is available open access .
· Professor Alison Young, Law Commission of England and Wales. Alison was appointed as Law Commissioner with responsibility for public law and the law in Wales on 18th March 2023. In that capacity she is overseeing a law reform scoping project on automated decision making in the public sector. She is the Sir David Williams Professor of Public Law at the University of Cambridge, and a Fellow of Robinson College. She is also an academic associate at 39 Essex Chambers and an Emeritus Fellow of Hertford College, Oxford.
· Dr Adam Harkens, Lecturer in Public Law, University of Strathclyde. He is a founding member of the Strathclyde Centre for Doctoral Training in Human Rights-Based Decision-Making. His research critically analyses the ways in which public power is transformed or displaced through the design and deployment of digital decision-making tools and platforms. He is currently writing a monograph due for publication by Edward Elgar Publishing, entitled ‘The
Algorithmic State: Power, Constitutionalism and the Future of Administrative Law’.
· Caroline Selman, Public Law Project. Caroline is Senior Research Fellow at the Public Law Project. She is currently leading a Nuffield-funded project on ‘’. For over 30 years, PLP has produced independent, rigorous and impactful research on the public law system. It has developed an open register of public automated decision-making tools through its Tracking Automated Government () project.