Library
White paperMichael Clark
Not the First Instrument
For a UK public body the AI Act is rarely the first instrument to reach an automated decision system: administrative law, including the rule against fettering, the public sector equality duty and data protection law already apply. Bridges found a breach in the failure to enquire, not in proven bias, and unrecorded transparency standard tools are now most likely to sit in arm's-length bodies. The first steps are to inventory tools, produce the departure rate, publish missing records, reconcile assessments, change tenders and test a reconstruction.
Key findings
- For a UK public body, administrative law, the public sector equality duty and data protection law are the instruments likely to be used first against an automated decision system.
- In Bridges, the section 149 breach was the failure to take reasonable steps to enquire into possible bias; a supplier's refusal to disclose did not excuse it, and nor did a human check on each match.
- Where a statute confers a discretion, a system that decides in substance while a caseworker signs in form risks being a fetter on it; the departure rate is the cheapest first evidence.
In the paper
- What is likely to be used first
- Discretion in form, or in substance
- What Bridges decided
- The process duty is one test among several
- The transparency standard reaches triage and scoring tools
- Where the AI Act does add something
- Where to start
Michael Clark
Chief Executive Officer, Standard Intelligence
Your next step