We work with an administration who might define jobs to be done like “pre-traumatize or scare away people who want to live here”:
This is the kind of stuff that makes me very leery of working with any level/arm of government. Designers and developers like us built this. Would CfA or a brigade build something similar if it were framed in just the right way on the SOW to make it seem fair and ethical?
Right now, I don’t think we have a clear value or operating principle that we can use to steer away those who might approach us with such projects, and to remind us and others that the tech we make is not neutral now nor in the future. That’s why I’m proposing a new operating principle to ensure that we look out for, combat, and reckon with as a community decisions like this: Added operating principle "Fairness for all" by werdnanoslen · Pull Request #18 · codeforamerica/Mission-Vision-and-Operating-Principles · GitHub
I’d also suggest adopting Data for Democracy’s Global Data Ethics principles, including the following:
“Ensure that all data practitioners take responsibility for exercising ethical imagination in their work, including considering the implication of what came before and what may come after, and actively working to increase benefit and prevent harm to others.”