The terms were developed as part of the Ethical Algorithms project executed at UAI with the support of the IDB Lab, and the proposal may be reviewed and commented by citizens until Friday, November 18th.
Chilean Procurement Agency and UAI invite to comment on standardized bidding terms for the acquisition of algorithms and artificial intelligence with ethical requirements
06 de octubre 2022
The terms were developed as part of the Ethical Algorithms project executed at UAI with the support of the IDB Lab, and the proposal may be reviewed and commented by citizens until Friday, November 18th.
In Chile, artificial intelligence (AI) and algorithms in technological tools are already a reality in State services, many of them implemented as part of innovation projects executed through public procurement.
To support the management of public procurers and facilitate the participation of technological providers, the Public Procurement Office – ChileCompra – and the team of the Ethical, Responsible and Transparent Algorithms project that we executed at Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez (UAI) with the support of the IDB Lab, the innovation laboratory of the IDB Group, prepared a proposal for standard bidding terms for the acquisition of data science and artificial intelligence projects by State administration institutions.
In this case, the standard terms, which contain standardized clauses for tenders of specific categories, will include data ethics milestones such as transparency, privacy, non-discrimination and explainability. This is an unprecedented advancement achieved thanks to public-private collaboration, and it will apply to state purchases of increasingly used services, such as user profiling, facial recognition, fraud detection, predictive models, etc.
The work of the Ethical Algorithms project and the UAI team that supported the development of the terms focused precisely on these aspects. “It is fundamental that the State doesn’t generate new problems when it seeks to solve social issues through its services. For this reason, when it comes to implementing automated or semiautomated systems, these terms must incorporate data ethics requirements that consider aspects of people’s privacy, transparency in decision-making or discrimination risks, among other issues, both in the design and implementation,” states María Paz Hermosilla, director of GobLab UAI.
“These standard terms provide the guidelines for procuring the development of software products that use data science and artificial intelligence, an area that is still rather unfamiliar to public agencies and requires great technical detail in the definition of the acquisition. Through these standardized clauses, we are supporting public agencies that trade on www.mercadopublico.cl in the preparation of their tenders, considering the definition of the problem that needs to be solved and its risks, proofs of concepts, deployment and assessment of bias mitigation proposals, and use and processing of sensitive data,” explains Gabriela Lazo, head of ChileCompra’s Studies and Business Intelligence Division.
The document (Spanish) will be available for public consultation until November 18th in order to receive observations from citizens, organizations and companies in the sector. The received comments will be considered and analyzed to improve the documents that will result in the definitive standard terms that will help public agencies execute their public tenders.
