The Sociotechnical Questions Protocol

This one-page protocol runs through the whole course and is part of the rubric for every major assignment.

You can also fill the protocol in online and copy the assembled result into your notes; nothing you type there is saved.

“The algorithm did it” is never an explanation. Somewhere there is a decision, made by people, that turned a technology toward harm or toward help. The protocol is how you find that decision.

Side A, Interrogating any technology

1. Who designed this, and who was in the room when the problem was defined?
2. Whose problem does it solve, and whose problem does it claim to solve? These are often different, and the gap is where trouble lives.
3. Whose data and whose labor make it run?
4. What does it assume about its users, and who breaks those assumptions? A benefits portal that assumes a smartphone, a fixed address, and fluent English has already chosen its users.
5. Who bears the risk when it fails, and who carries the burden of appeal? In MiDAS, the state made the error and the claimant did the paperwork.
6. What social arrangement does it create or reinforce, and how hard would that be to undo?
7. What did it replace, and what was lost in the replacement?

Side B, Conditions of success

Success stories get the same rigor as failures. Admiring a win without understanding its conditions is how bad replications happen.

1. What made this work: the tool, the institution, or the people it amplified?
2. Whose participation shaped the design, and at what stage? Advising at the end is not the same as deciding at the start.
3. Which guardrails were built in before deployment, and which were added after failure?
4. Would this replicate without its champions, its funding model, or its political moment?
5. Who verified the claims of success, and what would falsify them? Vendor metrics are marketing until someone independent checks.
6. Who maintains this in year five?

Mandated deployments

Some technologies arrive as a condition of funding or law: HMIS for HUD homeless-assistance grantees, electronic visit verification for Medicaid personal care services. Refusal is not among the options, and the protocol still earns its time, because its answers locate the terms that remain negotiable. When a deployment is mandated, add these to Side A and Side B:

1. Which terms of this deployment are negotiable, and who sits at the table when they are set? The mandate usually sets a floor; the software, the configuration, and any data collected beyond the required minimum are often decided locally.
2. What gets monitored after launch, and who sees the numbers?
3. Who can override the system’s output, and does the override stand?
4. What would trigger rollback or exit, and is that written down where the agency can point to it?