How Accountability is Implemented and Understood in Research Tools

Understanding and Formalizing Accountability for Cyber-Physical Systems

“…Thus, any system that claims to be accountable must necessarily support different notions of accountability depending on the context. To validate this assumption, we recently conducted a systematic mapping study [6] and found that implementations of accountability mechanisms in the literature are very diverse and do not follow a unified model or interpretation of accountability.…”

Accountability for Cyber- Physical Systems

“…Instead, many publications and implementations take accountability as an end in itself, usually relying on a vague dictionary meaning of the term. In our review of technical implementations [Kacianka et al, 2017] we found that systems will often implement "something" and then just call it "accountability", without trying to ground that in any definition or understanding of the term. In a recent systematic literature review of algorithmic accountability, [Wieringa, 2020] writes that many organizations are "advocating for more algorithmic accountability, yet a thorough and systematic definition of the term lacks, and it has not been systematically embedded within the existing body of work on accountability."…”

“…In [Kacianka et al, 2017] we conducted a systematic mapping study of the computer science literature in search for a common definition of accountability. However, we found that few papers even rely on a definition at all; instead they will often just implement something and claim it makes a system accountable.…”

“…This thesis is built on ideas that were first published in several papers. [Kacianka et al, 2016] outlined our initial idea, [Kacianka et al, 2017] systematically mapped the literature on accountability, [Kacianka and Pretschner, 2018] outlined our initial thoughts on formalizing definitions of accountability, [Kacianka et al, 2019a] showed how to derive causal models from system models, [Kacianka et al, 2019b] showed how we can transform models of human behavior to causal models, [Kacianka and P öchhacker, 2020] discussed the social problems in constructing causal models and presented the core idea of this thesis, using structural causal models to express accountability definitions and compare them to system models. Chapter 5 is unpublished, but under review at the submission of this thesis.…”

Algorithmic Accountability in Context. Socio-Technical Perspectives on Structural Causal Models

“…Accountability, however, is an ambiguous term in itself and was never clearly defined in computer science. Kacianka et al, (2017) found that most implementations of accountability do not use a peer reviewed definition of accountability and either provide no definition at all or rely on a loose dictionary definition. Despite being used as an umbrella term, accountability gained much prominence within the academic discussion, most prominently at the ACM Conference on Fairness, Transparency and Accountability.…”