Related papers: A Human-Centered Review of the Algorithms used wit…
The U.S. Child Welfare System (CWS) is increasingly seeking to emulate business models of the private sector centered in efficiency, cost reduction, and innovation through the adoption of algorithms. These data-driven systems purportedly…
Algorithms in public services such as child welfare, criminal justice, and education are increasingly being used to make high-stakes decisions about human lives. Drawing upon findings from a two-year ethnography conducted at a child welfare…
Child welfare (CW) agencies use risk assessment tools as a means to achieve evidence-based, consistent, and unbiased decision-making. These risk assessments act as data collection mechanisms and have further evolved into algorithmic systems…
Despite algorithms' potential to improve public services, adoption has been limited by concerns about effectiveness and equity. We conduct a randomized controlled trial ($N=4,681$) providing real-time algorithm support to Child Protective…
The algorithmic fairness of predictive analytic tools in the public sector has increasingly become a topic of rigorous exploration. While instruments pertaining to criminal recidivism and academic admissions, for example, have garnered much…
AI-based decision support tools (ADS) are increasingly used to augment human decision-making in high-stakes, social contexts. As public sector agencies begin to adopt ADS, it is critical that we understand workers' experiences with these…
Homelessness is a humanitarian challenge affecting an estimated 1.6 billion people worldwide. In the face of rising homeless populations in developed nations and a strain on social services, government agencies are increasingly adopting…
Risk assessment algorithms are being adopted by public sector agencies to make high-stakes decisions about human lives. Algorithms model "risk" based on individual client characteristics to identify clients most in need. However, this…
The use of algorithms for decision-making in higher education is steadily growing, promising cost-savings to institutions and personalized service for students but also raising ethical challenges around surveillance, fairness, and…
Human services systems make key decisions that impact individuals in the society. The U.S. child welfare system makes such decisions, from screening-in hotline reports of suspected abuse or neglect for child protective investigations,…
Caseworkers in the child welfare (CW) sector use predictive decision-making algorithms built on risk assessment (RA) data to guide and support CW decisions. Researchers have highlighted that RAs can contain biased signals which flatten CW…
Algorithms have permeated throughout civil government and society, where they are being used to make high-stakes decisions about human lives. In this paper, we first develop a cohesive framework of algorithmic decision-making adapted for…
Caseworkers are trained to write detailed narratives about families in Child-Welfare (CW) which informs collaborative high-stakes decision-making. Unlike other administrative data, these narratives offer a more credible source of…
The combination of clinical judgement and predictive risk models crucially assist social workers to segregate children at risk of maltreatment and decide when authorities should intervene. Predictive risk modelling to address this matter…
Algorithmic risk assessment tools are now commonplace in public sector domains such as criminal justice and human services. These tools are intended to aid decision makers in systematically using rich and complex data captured in…
Allocation of scarce resources is a recurring challenge for the public sector: something that emerges in areas as diverse as healthcare, disaster recovery, and social welfare. The complexity of these policy domains and the need for meeting…
Statistics are bleak for youth aging out of the United States foster care system. They are often left with few resources, are likely to experience homelessness, and are at increased risk of incarceration and exploitation. The Think of Us…
Through systematically analyzing the literature on designing AI-based technologies, we extracted design implications and synthesized them into a generic human-centered design framework for AI technologies to better support human needs and…
Scoring systems, as a type of predictive model, have significant advantages in interpretability and transparency and facilitate quick decision-making. As such, scoring systems have been extensively used in a wide variety of industries such…
Child welfare agencies across the United States are turning to data-driven predictive technologies (commonly called predictive analytics) which use government administrative data to assist workers' decision-making. While some prior work has…