Richard Pope, formerly of the UK GDS project, writes in Software is Politics:
“It’s time to stop designing digital services to just be easy to use and start designing them to be understandable, accountable, trusted, and easy to use.
1. Accountability at the point of use
Imagine if Uber made it clear exactly how much a driver earned and whether it met a living wage, directly on the email receipt …
2. Expose the rules
One obvious way is to examine the source code directly. The U.K. government increasingly opens its code …
3. Reimagine permissions
In a government context, that would mean explaining to users exactly what their data is being used for in a way that is understood …
4. Digital tools for digital consumer rights
For users to really trust stuff in the digital world, they need trusted third parties to do some of the hard work for them. And this means giving elbow room to some new digital watchdogs.”