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Short abstract:

This paper investigates the relationship between openness and secrecy in algorithmic systems by drawing on our study of Koronavilkku, an information system devised in Finland during the COVID-19 pandemic, aiming to streamline breaking of the chain of coronavirus infection.

Long abstract:

This paper investigates the relationship between openness and secrecy in algorithmic systems. These values are usually considered as contradictory: openness refers to the circulation of information, which is exactly what secrecy obstructs (Bok 1989). In the contemporary debates about emerging technologies, openness and secrecy predominantly manifest in the form of transparency and privacy. Since both transparency and privacy are posited to be essential for people’s usage of algorithmic systems, this often leads to the discussions about trade-offs. Approaching openness and secrecy in terms of gradations rather than dichotomies (Vermeir 2012), however, might cast better light on the role that the dynamics between access and restriction to information plays in the development and deployment of algorithmic systems.

To investigate such dynamics we draw on our study of Koronavilkku, an information system comprising a mobile application and an elaborated back-end system devised in Finland during the COVID-19 pandemic, aiming to streamline breaking of the chain of coronavirus infection. Through the interviews with key actors participating in the development and deployment of Koronavilkku, we discovered that a complex interplay between the access and the restriction to information is deemed central both for the system’s high uptake and its high churn rates. To understand such diverging outcomes, we ask what kinds of openness and secrecy were valued by different actors and why? What was the purpose of putting certain kinds of information in circulation and obstructing access to others? How did negotiations of information flows lead to disparate evaluations of Koronavilkku as a whole?