The Business Council of Australia (BCA) and its members support the objective of the new automated decision-making (ADM) transparency obligation, and recognise transparency as key to building trust in the responsible use of AI and data-driven technologies. The key issue for this consultation is not whether transparency should exist, but how the obligation is interpreted and implemented in practice.
The OAIC’s guidance will determine the practical operation of the regime. This submission sets out where the BCA considers the guidance should provide clear and practical boundaries, so organisations can implement the new requirements consistently and effectively.
The BCA’s key points are:
- Provide greater clarity on scope and definitions: Clarify the boundaries of the obligation, including what constitutes a “computer program”, when a decision is “substantially and directly related” to its use, and the types of technologies and use cases intended to fall within scope.
- Distinguish decision support from decision automation: Recognise that automated decision-making exists on a spectrum, and distinguish between systems that support human decision-makers and systems that autonomously make, materially determine or substantially replace a decision.
- Focus on high-impact decisions: Adopt a risk-based interpretation that focuses on decisions with direct and material consequences for individuals’ rights or interests, such as significant employment decisions and decisions related to credit, insurance, healthcare, housing, access to public benefits and other essential services.
- Protect commercially sensitive information: Confirm that compliance with the ADM transparency obligation does not require disclosure of proprietary algorithms, source code, model architecture, trade secrets or other commercially sensitive information.
- Promote regulatory consistency and interoperability: Seek consistency with broader Commonwealth, state and territory AI, privacy and ADM initiatives, and interoperability with established international frameworks, without exceeding the requirements of the Australian framework or duplicating existing sector-specific regulation.