Assembly Passes First in the Nation Legislation to Provide Oversight and Assessment of State Agency Use of Automated Decision-Making

Speaker Carl Heastie and Assembly Science and Technology Committee Chair Steve Otis today announced the passage of the Legislative Oversight of Automated Decision-making in Government (LOADinG) Act to provide assessment, transparency and oversight of automated decision-making systems used for high stakes decisions by state agencies (A9430-B, Otis).

“As the world rapidly moves around us, we must ensure our state agencies have the tools they need to keep up with the shifting technological landscape,” said Speaker Heastie. “This bill allows us to observe how automated decision-making systems would better the services at state agencies while providing the necessary framework for proper oversight of these programs.”

“Automated decision-making and artificial intelligence provide great tools for improving services. These tools must be accompanied by guardrails, transparency, and oversight to make sure that management of these systems remain controlled by humans and that they do not provide faulty, biased or discriminatory outcomes,” said Assemblymember Otis. “This legislation is the first in the nation to establish a statutory framework to provide state agencies and the public with a process for ongoing assessment of the evolving use of automated decision-making.”

The LOADinG Act requires state agencies to provide an assessment of all automated decision-making systems used for decisions affecting individual receipt of public benefits, rights, civil liberties, safety, welfare or statutory and constitutional rights. This legislation also requires any automated decision-making systems to have meaningful human review and impact assessments completed on a regular basis.

This bill also provides state agencies a process for redaction of the assessment if there are public safety and privacy concerns before it is posted to the agency’s website. If the assessment report highlights any discriminatory or biased outcomes, the state agencies are required to stop using the automated system.

This legislation has also passed in the Senate.