The Public Employment Service (AMS) has won its years-long legal dispute with the Data Protection Authority over the use of the AMS algorithm “Labor Market Opportunities Assistance System (AMAS).” The Federal Administrative Court has definitively overturned the decision of the Data Protection Authority from August 19, 2020, after more than five years. However, this ruling brings little benefit to the AMS—since all data related to AMAS had to be deleted at the time, the project is permanently dead.
The dispute centered on whether the digital tool, designed to assess the labor market opportunities of unemployed people, would have a significant influence on the decisions made by AMS staff. The so-called Labor Market Assistance System (AMAS) was intended to be rolled out nationwide in Austria at the beginning of 2021. However, in August 2020, the Data Protection Authority stopped the project by official order. At the time, the authority criticized, among other things, the lack of a legal basis for the project and identified prohibited individual case decisions (“profiling”).
The AMS had essentially planned to use a computer algorithm to classify unemployed people into three categories—high, medium, and low labor market opportunities—in order to allocate support measures more efficiently. Those with medium prospects would have received the most funding. The responsible advisors, however, were still supposed to make the final decision on unemployment benefits, such as whether someone would receive an expensive skilled worker training program.
Development undone in one stroke
“With this tool, we wanted to make labor market interventions much faster and improve integration into the job market,” said AMS head Johannes Kopf on Thursday in a statement. “Ten years after the project began and five years after the Data Protection Authority’s order, we have now been certified as having acted legally at the time. Public prejudgments, as we had to experience during this period—especially when made against better knowledge—damage public discourse, reveal hostility toward technology, and undermine trust in institutions,” Kopf criticized.
Due to the Data Protection Authority’s order, not only was the practical use of AMAS prohibited, but also the storage and processing of data. “As a result, in the fall of 2020 the AMS had to delete everything that had been done and developed in connection with AMAS. This destroyed almost all innovation, valued at around €2.5 million, in one stroke,” Kopf explained.
“We will not revive AMAS now; too much time has passed, and today one would probably use AI instead of the regression calculations of that time,” said the AMS head. The AMS remains in exchange with other European labor market administrations and continues its own research.
