Exploring idea of applying for NSF/DASS grant

[Frijol]

NSF recently released this really cool grant Designing Accountable Software Systems. I'm putting some time into exploring ideas for an application. Using this issue to collect related ideas/articles/communities (on the Data Together repo because it feels very much in our area of thought). Please feel free to reach out if you want to chat about this!

Logistics

• Grant is due April 19
• Funds $750k for up to 3 years
• Requirements for PI are: tenured or tenure-track position, or a primary, full-time, paid appointment in a research or teaching position at a US-based campus of an organization eligible to submit, must have at least one PI or co-PI with expertise in software design and at least one PI or co-PI with expertise in law or the social, behavior or economic sciences (so, e.g. I am not personally eligible and am seeking PIs)

Language from the grant that stands out

• foundational research aimed towards a deeper understanding and formalization of the bi-directional relationship between software systems and the complex social and legal contexts within which software systems must be designed and operate.
• bring researchers in computer and information science and engineering together with researchers in law and social, behavioral, and economic sciences
• develop rigorous and reproducible methodologies for understanding the drivers of social goals for software and for designing, implementing, and validating accountable software systems
• must create general advances in both (1) understanding the social, behavioral, economic and/or legal context of software design; and (2) improving the methodology for designing accountable software beyond specific use cases
• as concepts of ethical responsibility, authority, autonomy, compliance, approval, consequences, causality, equity, and fairness become operationalized by software, their definitions and implications become critical concerns in the software design process

DASS seeks proposals that address some of the following questions, or closely related questions.

• In designing software that is accountable, what legal, behavioral, and social science is required to analyze the intent, consequences, policy goals, and ethical, cultural, and societal dimensions of regulatory processes?
• How do we specify, develop, and reason about software compliance and accountability in the presence of ambiguity, uncertainty, and contradiction?
• Can regulations be written in a manner that leads to formal functional or security specifications that can be implemented in the software?
• What are the (clean slate) methodologies needed for software requirements, design, development, testing, and maintenance of accountable software?
• How can evolution in regulation lead to principled approaches to regulation-compliant software evolution?
• How can languages for expressing and implementing policies best manage tradeoffs between expressibility and analyzability?
• What are the specialized domain- and regulation-specific programming languages needed to develop these programs?
• What are the novel formal verification and validation techniques needed to ensure and/or demonstrate compliance to stakeholders?
• Can formal methods identify and suggest reasonable alternatives/repairs to sets of interacting regulations that are inconsistent across stakeholders, contexts, or time?
• How can methods provide for meaningful involvement of policy stakeholders in software development processes throughout the software lifecycle?
• How might methods designed to allow flexible policy implementation support rapid prototyping of more and less likely intended consequences of proposed regulation, as well as unintended consequences and harms?
• What methodologies can be used to predict and understand how changes in regulation affect software and its consequences?

Communities that would be cool to involve

• GetDWeb/DWeb Camp community (getdweb.net)
• Humane Tech Community
• Digital Civil Society Lab at Stanford
• The Maintainers
• Sustain Open Source Forum

Articles/ideas in this space

• DWeb Principles
• CARE Principles
• Concept of public digital infrastructure: https://www.digital.nsw.gov.au/transformation/public-digital-infrastructure
• Standard and understandable systems for open licensing e.g. Creative Commons—apply to e.g. ToS?
• What is good/what is worthy of critique in other assessment patterns e.g. environmental assessments?