Suspicion machines ⚙️

Consultancy Role

Consulting firms play a pivotal role in the development and deployment of predictive models for municipalities. Chris Benson and Daniel Whitenack discuss how the city of Rotterdam engaged Accenture to build a predictive model for welfare fraud detection. Initially, the consultancy set up the model and handed it over to the city, which later upgraded its data science capacity to manage the model independently 1. Whitenack notes that Rotterdam eventually excluded certain features like nationality from the model, reflecting a growing understanding of ethical data use.

The city put out a tender asking for someone to come in and build a predictive model for this purpose. Accenture won that tender, put someone on it, and there was a Rotterdam data scientist involved.

--- Daniel Whitenack

This collaboration highlights the challenges and responsibilities municipalities face when integrating external expertise into their systems.

   

Data Practices

The deployment of predictive analytics in Europe reveals a complex landscape of successes and failures. Justin explains that while some agencies have successfully integrated these tools, others struggle due to a lack of understanding or inadequate training 2. The trend began in the early 2000s with credit risk scoring and predictive policing, but has since expanded into welfare risk analytics. Justin observes that some agencies have dropped ineffective systems, while others have built internal capacities or collaborated with universities and startups.

You see some agencies that drop those systems, and at the same time, you see other agencies that kind of build up internal capacity and build those tools themselves.

--- Justin

This bifurcation illustrates the varied approaches to adopting machine learning technologies across different sectors and countries.