Third Review of the Directive on Automated Decision-Making

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Overview

Directive on Automated Decision-Making

Released in 2019, the Directive on Automated Decision-Making seeks to ensure transparency, accountability, and procedural fairness in the use of automated decision systems in the federal government. The scope of the directive covers systems used to make or support administrative decisions impacting external clients (e.g., citizens, businesses). It applies to systems developed or procured as of April 1st 2020.

Federal institutions subject to the directive are required to complete and publish an Algorithmic Impact Assessment (AIA) to the Open Government Portal. The AIA tool is a questionnaire that determines the impact level of an automated decision system based on factors related to the system's design, algorithm, decision, impact, and data.

Third review

Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat (TBS) is completing the third review of the directive. The review takes stock of the current state of the directive and identifies risks and challenges to the government’s commitment to responsible artificial intelligence (AI) in the federal public sector. These issues highlight critical gaps that limit the directive’s relevance and effectiveness in supporting transparency, accountability, and fairness in automated decision-making. They also identify problems with terminology, feasibility, and coherence with other federal policy instruments.

As part of the third review, TBS is proposing a series of policy recommendations and accompanying amendments to the directive. The recommendations would help ensure that automated decision systems impacting federal public servants are fair and inclusive; reinforce transparency and accountability; strengthen protections against discrimination and harm; and clarify requirements and support operational needs.

Periodic reviews are not intended to be exhaustive. They seek to adapt the directive to pertinent trends in the Canadian and global AI landscape, while gradually refining the text of the instrument to support interpretation and facilitate compliance.

Stakeholder Engagement

TBS is engaging with a broad range of stakeholders during the third review, including in academia, civil society, other governments, and international organizations. The goal of stakeholder engagement is to validate the policy recommendations and provisional amendments proposed in the review and identify additional issues that merit consideration as part of this exercise or in future reviews.

In September 2022, TBS launched the second phase of stakeholder engagement. This phase will involve outreach to federal AI policy and data communities; agents of parliament; bargaining agents; and international organizations. The first phase ran between April and July 2022, and drew on the expertise of federal partners and subject matter experts in academia and other governments. The What We Heard Report linked below provides a summary of the outcomes of this phase.

Stakeholders are invited to review and comment on the proposal for amending the directive and AIA, which is laid out in the consultation materials below.

Consultation materials

  • Key issues, policy recommendations, and provisional amendments [link to be added]
  • One-page overview of policy recommendations [link to be added]

Reference materials

  • What We Heard Report (phase 1 of stakeholder engagement) [link to be added]
  • Report on the third review of the Directive on Automated Decision-Making [link to be added]
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