Data harvesting and profiling have become a de facto business model for many businesses in the digital economy. The surveillance of individual persons through their use of private sector platforms has a well-understood effect on personal autonomy and democratic institutions. In this article, we explore the consequences of implementing data-rich services in the public sector and specifically the dangers inherent to undermining the universality of the reach of public services, the implicit endorsement of the platform operators by government, and the inability of members of the public to avoid using the platforms in practice. We propose a set of good practices in the form of design principles that infrastructure services can adopt to mitigate the risks, and we specify a set of design primitives that can be used to support the development of infrastructure that follows the principles. We argue that providers of public infrastructure should adopt a practice of critical assessment of the consequences of their technology choices.
翻译:对数字经济中许多企业来说,数据收集和特征分析已成为事实上的商业模式。通过利用私营部门平台对个人进行监视对个人个人对个人自主和民主机构产生了非常清楚的影响。在本条中,我们探讨了在公共部门实施数据丰富服务的后果,特别是破坏公共服务普及性、政府暗中认可平台运营商以及公众无法避免实际使用平台所固有的危险。我们提出了一套良好做法,其形式为基础设施服务可采用的设计原则,以减轻风险。我们提出了一套设计原始设计,可用于支持发展遵循这些原则的基础设施。我们主张公共基础设施的提供者应采用对其技术选择的后果进行批判性评估的做法。