What can you do as a civil servant when the use of technology within your organisation poses risks? In the Algo-Resist project, Waag Futurelab, Tilburg University and Leiden University explored this question together with civil servants.
A municipal IT employee is asked to develop a system that poses serious risks to citizens' rights. The employee explains that the request is not technically feasible and proposes an alternative that carries fewer risks. Another civil servant works as an ethics expert and advises against using a controversial AI model. A software developer openly questions the civil servant's technical expertise. Despite this, the civil servant stands by the negative recommendation.
Are these examples of resistance? Or is this simply part of the job of a critical civil servant?
Discussing resistance
To explore these questions, Waag Futurelab, Tilburg University and Leiden University organised workshops with civil servants involved in policy, evaluation or the use of data-intensive technologies. Participants came from different government organisations and professional backgrounds.
During the workshops, they discussed challenging situations involving technology policies that they encounter, or might encounter, in their work. They also explored how much influence they have over these situations. Through presentations, small-group discussions and group conversations, participants identified different forms of resistance.
Civil servant resistance in practice
The workshops revealed that participants had different ideas about what criticism and resistance mean. Some mentioned deliberately slowing down procedures to prevent potential problems with technology. Others thought of resistance as colleagues who refuse to work with certain technologies.
Various participants said that speaking up can be uncomfortable and exhausting. It can create tensions with colleagues, slow down work processes or lead to additional work. Participants also discussed peer pressure, which can make it difficult to raise concerns. Some felt that their expertise or advice on ethical and legal risks was not taken seriously or was even ignored.
How much room civil servants have to raise concerns also depends on their role. Participants without clearly defined responsibilities often felt more comfortable speaking up. At the same time, their advice was not always taken seriously, precisely because there was no formal procedure requiring their concerns to be considered. Civil servants with more specific responsibilities, on the other hand, felt less free to raise issues outside their own area of responsibility.
When is there room for advice?
Another recurring issue was when civil servants were involved in decisions about technology. Some participants explained that their advice was sought at the beginning of a development or policy process, but not during implementation. This can be problematic because technology changes over time. A system that initially appears to pose no ethical or legal problems may still create risks later on.
Other participants were only involved at the very last stage of decision-making. This left them with little opportunity to influence the outcome, turning their advice into little more than a box-ticking exercise.
Initial findings
Two preliminary findings emerged from the workshops. First, civil servants can respond to potential problems in different ways, ranging from voicing criticism to changing procedures, contracts or technologies. Participants sometimes considered the latter to be acts of resistance. Verbal or written criticism and advice, however, were almost always seen as a normal part of a civil servant's job.
Second, the environment in which civil servants work plays an important role. Criticism and resistance do not happen in isolation from colleagues and the relationships within an organisation. To understand how civil servants respond to problematic technology policies, we therefore need to look beyond their individual situation.
What's next?
The workshops raise questions about how civil servants' roles relate to the ways they express criticism or resistance to problematic tech-policy. How do, for instance, managers deal with these situations? And what role do employees involved in procuring AI systems play? The experiences of people working at the intersection of government and the private sector also raise questions. How do they view the development and management of technology?
These questions offer starting points for further research into how civil servants respond to technology policies they consider problematic.
Do you work for a Dutch national or local government organisation and want to discuss these issues with civil servants from other organisations? Get in touch with Dr Gijs van Maanen at g.vanmaanen <at> tilburguniversity.edu.
Authors: Danny Lämmerhirt, Tessel van Leeuwen, Gijs van Maanen, Aviva de Groot en Afke Alink.
