Big Sky Thinking

James Taylor, who writes one of the best blogs out there on automated decisions, posted a good definition and explanation of "Decision Services" that is worth a read. James's definition of "decision service" is "a self-contained, callable service with a view of all the conditions and actions that need to be considered to make an operational business decision."

He goes on to explain some of the conditions that a decision service must meet. My favorite addition is: "not only should [a decision service] respond sensibly when it cannot decide, it should ensure that enough context is returned as to why it could not decide to assist a manual process."

That's an excellent point that gets at a key concern that some of my clients have about automated decisions--a perceived lack of control or transparency about how decisions are made. This is particularly important to clients that have compliance responsibilities such as government regulation, Sarbanes-Oxley, or HIPAA. It's critical that those organizations have the ability dramatically increase decision speed and quality through automation, while maintaining the ability to provide explanation and justification to external authorities, and/or fairness to their stakeholders or customers.

Thanks to James for a great post.