Trustworthy by design

Abstract

Driven by changes in working practices and technology trends, organizations are increasingly reliant on mobile workers and the data they capture. However, while significant work has been carried out on increasing the usability of mobile devices and applications, little attention has been paid to the quality of data captured by mobile workers. If this data is inaccurate or untrustworthy, serious consequences can ensue. In this paper we study a system targeted at mobile workers in the highways sector that is deliberately designed to increase the accuracy and trustworthiness of the data collected. The resulting Inspections application has been very positively received by workers and we present lessons that we believe can be applied to other applications of this type.

HCI, Civic Engagement & Trust

“…However, residents often perceive that the civic authority have not performed the necessary maintenance of gullies to mitigate the flood risk prior to a flood event taking place. In earlier work [14] we identified the complex hierarchy of organisation and intra-organisational stakeholders involved in the process of civic highways maintenance. Indeed, citizens are often mistaken in their assumption that their local civic authorities both manage and execute repairs.…”

“…The public mobile application enabled users to view real-time flood data, including forecasted rainfall and gully silt level data integrated from a gully collection system [14] used by the council overlaid on a map and list view. Accessing information via the map allowed citizens to view flood information near to their current location.…”

“…Previous work [14] has demonstrated the impact of new technology on working practices in urban maintenance. Our deployment of technology highlighted the challenges civic authorities face in adapting to new levels of citizen interaction with civic processes and suggested the need for a change in working practices -to support such applications.…”

Models and Patterns of Trust

“…Our chosen domain was highways maintenance, where the lack of trust between local councils, highways contractors and subcontractors, fieldworkers and the public is especially prevalent and contributes (tangibly) to significant inefficiencies and their associated costs. As noted in greater detail in our previous work [18], fear of litigation has driven efforts to verify the accuracy of maintenance data collected in the field, costing the UK public some tens of millions of pounds per year. What seems especially noteworthy is that these efforts have done little to produce trust in that data, a symptom of a failure to sufficiently attend to the various social factors that enable trust to thrive.…”

“…In previous work [18], we identify trust as a catalyst for enabling new, more efficient organizational processes. This goes beyond the facile understanding of trust as a necessary ingredient of successful collaborative work, and suggests instead that trust -or rather the degree and quality of trust existing between collaborating parties -circumscribes the possibilities for how parties undertake and complete work.…”