Case Study · Bias & Fairness
An algorithm sorted unemployed Poles into tiers, and a court found it unconstitutional
What happened
From 2014, Polish public employment offices used an algorithm to sort every registered unemployed person into one of three "profiles," based on points assigned during an intake interview. The profile determined what kind of help - training, job offers, or minimal support - a person was eligible for.
Digital rights organization Panoptykon documented how the scoring criteria were opaque, applied inconsistently across offices, and could not meaningfully be appealed. Poland's Constitutional Tribunal ultimately found the profiling mechanism unconstitutional for delegating a decision affecting citizens' rights to an undisclosed algorithm without adequate legal basis or oversight, and the system was withdrawn.
The business problem
A public-facing scoring system with real consequences for people was deployed without transparency about how it worked or a functioning way to challenge its output.
What could have helped
- A decision-making algorithm needs a documented, explainable basis before it goes anywhere near real consequences for people
- An appeal mechanism that isn't genuinely usable is the same as having no appeal mechanism
- Opacity is itself a legal and reputational risk, independent of whether the underlying scoring is accurate
- Public-sector and regulated deployments face a materially higher bar for explainability than internal tools