Digital Governance Design Clinic
The people and institutions that are responsible for technology’s impacts are, generally, not technology companies - they are the people who use technology and are responsible for the decisions and services they affect. In practice, that means that responsibility for technology’s impact - especially in high-impact settings - is more likely to rest with professionals, like doctors and lawyers, than technologists. The Digital Governance Design Clinic Project is an experiential education model designed to bridge two critical gaps for duty-bearing professionals in the design, development, and deployment of artificial intelligence (AI): (1) fostering an applied, critical, substantive understanding of the role of technology in their work; and (2) co-developing frameworks for strategically and tactically leveraging the collective action and governance mechanisms that shape professional technology standards - especially on behalf of marginalized communities.
The gaps in professional governance don’t only paralyze the evolution of critical fields, they also neglect the critical role that professionals like doctors and lawyers play in representing and defending the interests of those they serve. Doctors are, in addition to medical health experts, patient representatives in front of powerful institutions and interests - all of which are digitizing, prioritizing data over participation, and adopting AI at an unprecedented rate. Lawyers are even more literal representatives of their clients’ interests - and yet, most law schools neither train critical technology skills, nor how to shape the field of law toward their clients’ interests. Said more directly, duty bearing professionals are important sources of technical expertise for their communities and technology companies - and, more importantly, they are also the way many of the most vulnerable communities engage with powerful systems. And, right now, those professionals lack the research, capacity, and governance to perform either function amidst the rapid digital transformation of their fields.
The Digital Governance Design Clinic is an interdisciplinary education model that gives doctors and lawyers practical experience designing and governing the technologies shaping their industry. This program positions the practitioners and institutions responsible for establishing our highest-integrity professions to lead the design and deployment of our highest-impact technologies.
To read more on the background thinking behind the clinical model, please see: The Governance Gap
Professional Education
While there are a number of important and impressive public interest technology programs, they are typically focused on specific implementations of technology and are rarely integrated with professional schools, let alone the professional governance surrounding their corresponding fields. Similarly, field-specific professional training rarely includes any treatment of how to be an effective advocate for values-aligned digital governance - whether in the design of better systems, or organizing to deconstruct problematic systems. There is a significant need for building practice-focused training infrastructure that supports emerging professionals in duty bearing fields to lead the digital governance of their respective infrastructures.
Tactical Focus
One of the largest barriers to progress in achieving the intended goals of public interest digital transformation is not “what” needs to change, but instead, “how” to resolve governance conflicts without violence or wholesale destruction. The work of moving from, for instance, statements of principles to the achievement of more just digitization processes and outcomes relies on the identification and use of contextually-available forms of structural leverage. This points to a need to both develop a systematic approach to intervening in public interest digital governance and to integrate that approach into specific contexts with attendant levers, extant governance structures, and incentives.
The Digital Governance Design Program
The Digital Governance Design Clinic project will pilot an applied education model in two professional schools - the Sandra Day O’Connor School of Law at Arizona State University and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. The Clinic is a combined course and applied experience infrastructure, designed to teach practitioners how to articulate their needs and values in the design of AI, how to specify and negotiate for its appropriate development, and how to ensure that it realizes the intended goals in deployment.
Our coursework focuses students on three, cross-cutting core competencies: (a) understanding the rights and governance of collecting and reusing data from regulated contexts; (b) negotiating appropriate and aligned contracts with technology companies and vendors; and (c) critically defining the appropriate role for automation and participation, especially in prediction systems (ie, AI/ML tools).
The clinical program will pair students with professional governance institutions, a technology provider developing relevant tools, or a service provider exploring how to use technology. In each case, students will develop research and practice-based materials designed to create short-term value, map the governance footprint of the issue they’re working on, and take concrete steps toward advancing the governance of technology and data within their area of practice.
Arizona State University
Sandra Day O’Connor of Law
Read a two-page concept note here
Mount Sinai Medical School
Icahn School of Medicine (2024)
Read a two-page concept note here