CR&DALL member, Dr Mark Wong (Lecturer in Public Policy & Research Methods), is part of a consortium of researchers that has been awarded a EPSRC/ESRC/AHRC grant for a £3.3 million project, “Protecting Minoritised Ethnic Communities Online”. Dr Wong is a Co-Investigator and work package lead for this 3-year project.

The project addresses harm on Minoritised Ethnic communities from bias in data and AI processes, particularly algorithmic decision-making, and increased digitisation of health, housing, and energy services.

The £3.3 million project is funded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) through the Strategic Priority Fund as part of the Protecting Citizens Online programme, initiated in response to the 2020 Online Harms White Paper. The project is administered by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research council (EPSRC) on behalf of UKRI.

Mark’s work package based in the University of Glasgow will deliver a “Citizen-led Race Equity Lab” (CREL). CREL will bring together Minoritised Ethnic individuals and community organisations, service and platform designers, data and computer scientists, service providers, the voluntary sector, and local and national policymakers through a transdisciplinary process within which all have an equal voice in the design process to co-create new ideas. The goal is to foster participatory design, development, and assessment of AI and digital systems that are equitable and inclusive by design.

These activities will be facilitated through six co-production workshops in Glasgow and Birmingham. This will involve working with partners including the Scottish Government, NHS, Public Health Scotland, and Minoritised Ethnic community organisations to co-design ideas for new technical tools and disseminate good practice in responsible and fair AI (e.g. mitigating inequitable outcomes on ME individuals in automated decision-making in social housing, health, and energy sectors).

This project plays a critical role in countering discriminatory processes in digitalised services, enabling organisations to address ethnic inequalities in service provision and ensure more equitable service outcomes. The PRIME project will identify the distinctive online harms that ME communities experience because of this digitalisation and draw upon a range of academic expertise to develop innovative and ground-breaking policy guidance and tools for tackling deeply entrenched and persistent racial inequalities in the UK.

Partner organisations include CEMVO Scotland, Muslim Council of Britain, BRAP, The Mental Health Foundation, Public Health Scotland, the NHS Race and Health Observatory, The Scottish Government Digital Directorate, Energy Systems Catapult, The Scottish Convention of Local Authorities, The UK Collaborative Centre for Housing Evidence (CaCHE) and The Scottish Federation of Housing Associations.

The project is led by Dr Gina Netto at the Urban Institute in Herriot-Watt University. The PRIME consortium which includes researchers from Heriot-Watt University, the University of Glasgow, the Open University, the University of Cranfield and University of York, will also work closely with the National Research Centre on Privacy, Harm Reduction and Adversarial Influence online (REPHRAIN).

Mark will soon be recruiting a PDRA for around 3 years to work on this, to be based in Urban Studies.  

Mark commented, “I’m very much looking forward to working on this project and leading the establishment of CREL. The intersection of these pressing issues in our society, particularly AI and algorithmic harm on ME communities, is extremely important and yet remains under-researched in the UK context.”

“As health, housing, and energy services increasingly go “digital first”, it is crucial to mitigate the harms on ME communities, which are often hidden in the designs of digital platform and algorithmic processes. CREL will lead a significant innovation to promote participatory approaches in the development of AI and data, particularly meaningful co-creation with ME individuals and communities in the design process. In putting ME communities at the centre of the design of AI and digital tools, this project will pave the way to advance innovative practices in responsible and fair AI across sectors.

“I’m looking forward to engaging with a wide range of partners who share our enthusiasm in countering harms and bias on ME communities in AI and data. The project will make a significant societal impact by co-creating new knowledge, tools, and technique with ME communities.”

 

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Project summary:

The PRIME project will broaden understanding of online harm and how it can be mitigated through new systems, tools and processes by focusing on Minority Ethnic (ME) communities' experiences of digitalised services, particularly in the areas of housing, health and energy. We will draw on knowledge, methods and skills from social policy, cyber security and privacy, data mining and machine learning; human computer interaction, applied linguistics and educational technology.

The project will engage with a wide range of individuals from ME communities, community organisations, public agencies and energy suppliers to identify and categorise the nature of the harms experienced, and assess the adequacy of existing systems and processes to counter them. The project will translate this knowledge into the co-design and coproduction of novel, effective and scalable social and technological harm-mitigating solutions through a Citizen-led Race Equity Living Lab (CREL), to be led by Dr Mark Wong.

The outputs will include policy guidance in the fields of housing, health and energy as well as cross-cutting recommendations for improving online services more generally; educational resources for harm mitigation to enable individuals and organisations to more effectively protect themselves; as well as better privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs) that counter discriminatory processes in digitalised services. We will also produce benchmark datasets, tools and models to enable organisations to address ethnic inequalities in service provision and demonstrate more accountability to the public in terms of greater transparency and equitable service outcomes.