A covenant with transparency: Opening the black box of models

The importance of transparency in the design and use of decision support models, which depends on the ethical and technical attributes of the model, is discussed. Transparency is an essential tool for preserving the autonomy of users and empowering them relative to model builders. It should help clients ad users to get the best possible outcome for those affected by the model. It can serve as a way to communicate to non-users how the model works. A covenant with transparency would help users verify that the other two covenants are being fulfilled. The emphasis on transparency not only allows modelers to live up to their ethical obligations, it also undermines the power inequality, since an informed user is in a better position to evaluate a model.