Category: News

Friday, 22 September 2017, 5:23 pm
Press Release: University of Otago

ACC’s computer-aided decision-making questioned by Otago experts

University of Otago researchers are warning of the potential pitfalls in government departments using computer-based risk prediction models, as has been recently revealed through a controversial new tool used by the Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) to profile and target clients.

The ACC uses a computer model to assist staff managing claims, however, details of what the model does, and how it is used, are somewhat sketchy, says spokesperson for the University’s Artificial Intelligence and Law in New Zealand Project, Associate Professor James Maclaurin.

The most concrete information comes from a short press release issued by ACC indicating that the tool is used to make three types of prediction:

• which clients are likely to need help and should be called proactively,
• which type of case owner should assist the client, and
• how long we should expect a claim to be managed.

“This somewhat vague description leaves open the possibility that ACC uses these predictions to minimise treatment times, either by intervening in patients’ treatment, or (more seriously) by declining applicants with long predicted treatment times,” says Associate Professor Maclaurin.

“The tool makes predictions about future ACC cases using a database of information about 364,000 past claims that were lodged between 2007 and 2013. ACC stresses that details about individual cases are kept private both from ACC staff and from other agencies,” says Department of Computer Science’s Professor Alistair Knott, another researcher on the project.

Management still appears to be ultimately under human control: an ACC ‘case owner’ makes the final decision about each case.

“But ACC workers find themselves in a situation increasingly common in our society: their decisions are guided by advice generated automatically by a machine, based on a large set of data extending far beyond their own experience.

“We are in the same position when we use Google’s navigation system in our cars, or choose a book based on Amazon’s recommendations. In these cases, having a computer in the decision-making loop seems innocuous enough. It seems less innocuous when it guides the agencies whose decisions have serious consequences for people’s lives. We set out six questions that such agencies must be able to answer about the algorithms they use.

“Of course it is a fundamentally a good thing for people’s decision-making to be informed by statistics. Systems like the ACC tool can be quite accurate, but because they don’t reason in the way humans do, it is essential that Governments and companies relying on them are able to answer the following questions:

1. 1. How accurate is the tool, in fact? Predictive tools are easy to evaluate: if the public is to have confidence in the ACC tool, and the courts are to evaluate its use, the agency should give a public account of how it was evaluated. Without divulging personal details, this should include a thorough description of the data set on which it was assessed.
   2. Can the agency explain the way this tool works so that clients could appeal particular decisions?
   3. Does the use of this tool distort the way the agency pursues its stated policy objectives?
   4. By ‘passing the buck’ to the machine, is the agency to ducking its responsibility to make fair and humane decisions about treatment of New Zealanders in need?
   5. Does this tool implicitly discriminate against individuals on problematic grounds such as age, ethnicity or gender? Importantly, there is simply no way to remove this bias without compromising the accuracy of its predictions. There is a real risk that the ACC tool unfairly discriminates against some clients. This possibility needs to be explored in an evaluation of the system.
   6. Are employees effectively trained in the use of the system? While the predictive system is probably intended to be used as a guide, to supplement the case owner’s own knowledge and judgements, it is easy to fall into ‘autopilot’ mode when guided by a system—especially if it is fairly accurate. (The dangers of autopilot mode are particularly clear if the system’s errors are prone to bias, of the kind just mentioned.) The charge of ‘falling into autopilot mode’ is often levelled at judges using the US predictive system.

“Predictive analytics technologies show great potential in informing public decision-making, but it is important for these technologies to be evaluated and scrutinised when used in the public domain. It may be that ACC has addressed the issues we raise in its own internal training and evaluation processes. But we are calling for ACC to provide a public account of how it uses its predictive tool, so as to maintain the integrity of its decision-making,” says Faculty of Law Professor Colin Gavaghan.

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Hazel Armstrong, principal of Armstrong Thompson, was awarded the Countdown Supermarkets Lifetime Achievement Award for her success in the occupational health and safety field. The award was given at the Safeguard New Zealand Workplace Health & Safety Awards ceremony in Auckland, on 28 May 2014. Hazel has been involved in working with unions, employees, employers and government departments throughout her legal career. Hazel was given the award for “her determined advocacy for better health and safety and improved access to the ACC scheme via trade unions, the ACC board, commissions of enquiry, two books, and her legal practice.”

If you would like to discuss your health and safety, ACC or employment issues, contact us.

Armstrong Thompson recently made a submission to the United Nations Human Rights Council regarding discrimination against hearing loss claimants in ACC legislation. Shane Cowlishaw wrote an article on the firm’s submission and ACC hearing loss claimants in the Dominion Post. The article is also featured on news website Stuff.

If you’d like to discuss this submission, or any other ACC problems you may be having, with our staff, please do not hesitate to contact us.

The Pike River families are right. Individuals should be held accountable even where there were systemic problems within the former Department of Labour. The Independent Investigation Report into the Pike River Tragedy identified the individuals who made decisions not to provide additional resourcing for the Mines Inspectorate and who failed to act on the concerns of the Mines Inspectors.

However, the Investigators were not asked to look at the politicians that made the decisions about Department of Labour funding and the failure to re-regulate. Nor were the Investigators asked to look at the responsibility that Treasury has, who oversaw the funding allocation to the Department of Labour.

It is not good enough to simply absolve individuals of their responsibility solely because the problems were systemic. A less timid and broader investigation needs to take place that encompasses political and administrative accountability.

On 28 April 2013, Hazel Armstrong is launching her new book, “Your life for the job. New Zealand rail safety 1974 – 2000”:

In the early 1990s new workplace health and safety legislation ‘obliged employers to take all practicable steps to prevent harm to their employees’. Your Life for the Job makes clear that New Zealand Rail (NZR) was secretly exempted. Soon afterwards, NZR was sold to a consortium of private owners which renamed it Tranz Rail, cut staff numbers and reduced spending on equipment and maintenance. Eleven of its employees were killed on the job between 1995 and 2000. This shameful record was brought to an end after the RMTU, the rail workers’ union, successfully called for an independent inquiry.

Shunter Robert Burt fell under a moving wagon in May 2000. He was the fifth Tranz Rail worker to be killed in 12 months. His employer had a workplace accident rate eight times the national average. This book, written by New Zealand’s foremost legal expert on workplace health and safety, concludes that the appalling rate of death and injury on New Zealand’s railways in the 1990s is ‘the story of de-regulation and privatisation’.

Author Hazel Armstrong points out that both the 2000 Tranz Rail inquiry and the 2012 Pike River inquiry illustrate what happens when regulators are ineffective and are captured by the employer, Parliament and the government of the day are prepared to compromise worker health and safety for some other end-game; and directors and managers turn a blind eye to hazards.

A client who has a covered workplace injury and a covered pain syndrome, spent 3 years fighting to have her entitlements reinstated. ACC settled her Appeal in June 2012. The client applied for physiotherapy treatment, as this has proved to be the most effective way to manage her pain over the years. The request for treatment was declined.

Recently, the client told her case manager that she was going overseas for two months to visit her elderly parents and also to obtain physiotherapy, which is considerably cheaper in her country of origin than in New Zealand. The Case Manager issued a decision suspending the claimants entitlements for unreasonable non-compliance, because she was “effectively making [herself] unavailable for treatment or rehabilitation”. This occurred despite the fact that no treatment, rehabilitation, or other assessments were planned in the period during which the client will be overseas and the fact that the client has fulfilled every request and requirement of the Corporation. Given that the client had managed her own rehabilitation for three years it is also somewhat ironic.

The recent District Court decision of KB v ACC highlights how difficult it is for injured claimants to obtain ACC cover for work related mental injury where there has been no preceding physical injury.  Where there has been no physical injury, for a claimant to get ACC cover for a work related mental injury, they must have experienced an event that would cause people to suffer that mental injury generally.  In KB v ACC, the Court found that the claimant’s mental injury was not caused by a single event, but rather an accumulation of work related stress.

Consequently, in a case like this where the mental injury is not covered by ACC, the claimant is not precluded from bringing an employment or common law action against her employer or otherwise.  In complex cases like this, we recommend getting legal advice early in the process – as time limits for bringing an action against an employer may run out while ACC is being pursued.

A decision was issued today confirming what ACC should already know but appeared to have forgotten – that it has an obligation to restore an injured person’s independence to the maximum extent practicable.

ACC had declined to provide adequate transport assistance to a 67-year-old man who was wheelchair bound.  Instead, ACC issued a decision to fund a mere two taxi trips per week.  He had to use these two trips to do his groceries, attend all medical assessments (of which there were countless), visit his children and grandchildren in Auckland, and participate in the community.  The claimant had no non-injury related conditions and he had become socially isolated and depressed solely because of his covered injuries.  The Reviewer concluded that the provision of only two taxi trips per week was wholly inadequate to restore the claimant’s independence to the maximum extent practicable.  The Reviewer ordered ACC to contribute towards the cost of a vehicle and any modifications necessary.

The decision is a good reminder to ACC of the purpose of social rehabilitation and the ACC scheme generally – proper and meaningful rehabilitation.