Socially meaningful transparency in data-based systems: reflections and proposals from practice

The purpose is to present proposals to foster what we call a socially meaningful transparency practice that aims to enhance public understanding of data-based systems through the production of accounts that are relevant and useful to diverse publics, and society more broadly.

The authors’ proposals emerge from reflections on challenges they experienced producing written and visual accounts of specific public sector data-based systems for research purposes. Following Ananny and Crawford's call to see limits to transparency practice as “openings”, the authors put their experience into dialogue with the literature to think about how we might chart a way through the challenges. Based on these reflections, the authors outline seven proposals for fostering socially meaningful transparency.

The authors identify three transparency challenges from their practice: information asymmetry, uncertainty and resourcing. The authors also present seven proposals related to reduction of information asymmetries between organisations and non-commercial external actors, enhanced legal rights to access information, shared decision making about what gets made transparent, making visible social impacts and uncertainties of data-systems, clear and accessible communication, timing of transparency practices and adequate resourcing.

Socially meaningful transparency aims to enhance public understanding of data-based systems. It is therefore a necessary condition not only for informed use of data-based products, but crucially for democratic engagement in the development of datafied societies.

The paper contributes to existing debates on meaningful transparency by arguing for a more social, rather than individual, approach to imagining how to make transparency practice more meaningful. The authors do this through their empirical reflection on our experience of doing transparency, conceptually through our notion of socially meaningful transparency, and practically through our seven proposals.