Last week, thousands of students in England and Wales received their A-level exam grades. The catch? The grades were the result of an algorithm rather than actual exams. Almost 40% of students received lower grades than they had anticipated. The students were faced with the prospect of missing the opportunity to attend their university of choice. Earlier today, however, the UK Government made a complete U-turn and decided to ignore […]

Big data and data science transform organizational decision-making. We increasingly defer decisions to algorithms because machines have earned a reputation of outperforming us. As algorithms become embedded within organizations, they become more influential and increasingly opaque. Those who create algorithms may make arbitrary decisions in all stages of the ‘data value chain’, yet these subjectivities are obscured from view. Algorithms come to reflect the biases of their creators, can reinforce […]

Algorithms play an increasingly central part in our societies. The impact of these quantification objects extends beyond our everyday interactions with information technology. Algorithms contribute to the evidence-base that underpins organisational decision-making of public and private sector organisations. The decisions that algorithms help inform may guide the allocation of substantial resources and consequentially deeply affect the lives of people across the globe. Algorithms are perceived as the state-of-the art and […]

Models are used to inform policymaking and underpin large amounts of government expenditure. Several authors have observed a discrepancy between the actual and potential use of models in government. While there have been several studies investigating model acceptance in government, it remains unclear under what conditions models are accepted. In this paper, we address the question “What criteria affect model acceptance in policymaking?”, the answer to which will contribute to […]