Public interest technology must be for everyone

Would we trust the lawyer who advocated a case for just one day? Then why do we trust technologists who build demos and disappear?  

Imagine a defense lawyer who slips into court only once and, before leaving, gives all the evidence to the prosecution and the government. Little would be accomplished other than bonding between professional peers and prematurely declaring a higher good. Typically, a lawyer makes a commitment that goes beyond a single event. An ideal lawyer would advocate vigorously, stay for the verdict, file an appeal, and perhaps fight all the way to the Supreme Court.

Some civic technology projects seem to be the work of a “one-day lawyer.” Technology promised to save us from the pandemic, for example, but instead of limiting the spread of the virus, most pandemic technology merely gathered private health data for possible later exchange. Civic tech often helicopters in a solution based on observations in the air that inevitably fails when it meets actual people on the ground. Even with excellent interface design considerations, many tech projects do not consider the common good.

With the dominant role of the internet in daily life, a new field of scholarship seeks to understand how technical infrastructure represents the public interest.

Law in the public interest dates to Louis D. Brandeis, who observed in 1905 that the best legal minds of his generation served only the wealthy. How can a legal case be fairly argued, Brandeis asked the Harvard Ethical Society, if all the talent is on one side? In an adversarial court system, an imbalance of advocates left no one to represent the public interest of the many against the private interests of the few.

Public interest law encouraged professionals to advocate for those without other means of representation. By the mid-20th century, taking pro bono legal cases became a normalized routine for top lawyers at large firms. It also had clear professional measures of success if a pro bono case reached the Supreme Court.

Public interest technology in the 21st century seeks to expand what public interest law did in the 20th century. Technologists who seek to follow this model need to move beyond “one-day lawyers” and toward a totality of care in collaboration with other experts.  

The tech industry already encourages engineers to use a portion of time to develop side projects. Many could directly support the public interest. This could level the playing field against powerful interests in technology.

In my experience and observations of digital government over the past two decades, I’ve noticed that successful projects served the common good by catering to multiple populations in three ways. Public interest professionals leverage their expertise to advocate for universal access to shared infrastructure; to represent future generations; and to collaborate in service of the vulnerable.  

1. A 100 percent strategy: The translation from successful consumer products to government application is not always easy. Consumer technology can satisfy the needs of a chosen 80 percent but someone has to go the last mile to 100 percent. Public interest technology solves for the leftover 20 percent of the population through innovation and collaboration. Private interests have the luxury of creating and then serving consumer niche markets. Public interests must contend with the outliers, rare events and unprofitable cases. Political constituents fall into all categories and live in all places.  This dynamic is not limited to the public sector. Transaction-based ecosystems must accommodate a wide variety of people. Digital financial transactions need to push toward 100 percent for a healthy economy.

2. Remembering the future: Technology in the public interest levels the playing field against short-term goals. No technology lasts forever but systems need to be in a strategic relationship with emerging technology for the next generation. Decoupling from proprietary software toward open data standards is one path forward. In September 2021, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) replaced its requirement to submit quarterly and annual reports using the unsupported Visual FoxPro software; the software was popular in the 1980s, but the last FoxPro version was released in 2007. Regulatory agencies such as FERC embraced strategic thinking by switching to global business standards that build in incremental collective change. A long-term perspective centers on the cumulative impact of policies or the needs of future generations decades later. If global energy conglomerates had to wait years, imagine what it is like for the average citizen trying to navigate complex government systems.

3. Duty of care: An essential part of public interest law is the duty to those they serve. Advocating for the public interest requires an awareness of local structural constraints that restrict freedom of choice. A duty of care could be translated into listening to and empowering the vulnerable. Public interest technology can help to break down structural barriers that limit human flourishing. The vulnerable not represented within a block of political power can be overlooked by statistical certainty. Even in systems designed to be efficient in 95 percent of cases, public interest tech must find a solution path for the remaining people. Five percent of the U.S. population is still a staggeringly high number of people to disenfranchise from government or financial services.

A commitment to solving for 100 percent, remembering the future, and collaborating with the vulnerable are three possible criteria for evaluating civic tech projects.

Skilled professionals pledge to not prioritize their personal gain to the detriment of their clients. Professional obligation constrains the misuse of privileged information. This prevents a lawyer from taking the opponent’s side, or a surgeon from harming patients under anesthesia. In a word: ethics.

Ethics in public interest technology is particularly acute in projects that generate data or analyze sensitive information. The public interest of the data must take precedence. Authorities in Amsterdam routinely gathered religious affiliation for the municipal registry. No one foresaw the German invasion that used government data to target Anne Frank and other Jewish families. Ethical thinking must inform the balance of privacy, transparency, analysis, vulnerability and potential later exploitation.

Public interest data professionals are actively involved in the entire cycle: planning, implementation, revision and repair. This opens up new professional possibilities for people with a wide variety of training. In another time, the heroes protecting knowledge from information marauders were called librarians. With a librarian ethos and a commitment to collaborations, a new path is opening up in technology development.

Technology in the public interest does not stop at the easy cases, the low-hanging fruit, or serving only the obvious majority. Scholarship on public interest technology brings digital innovation to the rest of us.

Anne L. Washington, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of data policy with New York University and director of the Digital Interests Lab.