Governmental transparency in the era of artificial intelligence

In the last years governments started to adapt new types of Artificial Intelligence (AI), particularly sub-symbolic data-driven AI, after having used more traditional types of AI since the mid-eighties of past century. The models generated by such sub-symbolic AI technologies, such as machine learning and deep learning are generally hard to understand, even by AI-experts. In many use contexts it is essential though that organisations that apply AI in their decision-making processes produce decisions that are explainable, transparent and comply with the rules set by law. This study is focused on the current developments of AI within governments and it aims to provide citizens with a good motivation of (partly) automated decisions. For this study a framework to assess the quality of explanations of legal decisions by public administrations was developed. It was found that communication with the citizen can be improved by providing a more interactive way to explain those decisions. Citizens could be offered more insights into the specific components of the decision made, the calculations applied and sources of law that contain the rules underlying the decision-making process.