Why voice matters in system design and transformation
Embedding 'voice' in system design and transformation goes beyond simple consultation.
Embedding 'voice' in system design and transformation goes beyond simple consultation. It involves a commitment to actively listen and integrate diverse perspectives at every stage of system design and operation. This includes the voices of children, young people, parents and carers, practitioners, managers, other professionals and the wider community.
In the context of children's information, 'voice' can be understood in two key ways:
Voice AS Information
This includes the rich, qualitative experiences, views, wishes, and feelings of children, young people, and their families. It is the information that forms the core of a child's record and story, but which can be filtered or lost in systems focused on quantitative data.
Voice ABOUT Information
This involves the perspectives of all stakeholders on how information systems function. This covers how information is gathered, processed, shared, and used, ensuring the processes themselves are fair, transparent, and trustworthy.
A system transformation that doesn’t integrate these multiple voices risks reinforcing existing biases, power struggles, and inequalities. By prioritising voice, we move from a 'tick-box' compliance culture to one built on trust, relational practice, and a shared commitment to social good.
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Voice plays a critical role in system design and transformation, particularly in information systems. Diverse voices improve inclusivity, ethical practices, and the promotion of social good. Here is a summary of why voice matters:
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Voice ensures that diverse perspectives are included in system design, addressing systemic disadvantages and political biases in information systems. It helps to identify whose voices are heard and whose are silenced, thereby redressing imbalances and promoting fairness and justice.
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By integrating diverse voices, systems can move beyond a narrow focus on quantitative data and include qualitative and ethnographic approaches, ensuring that what is important to know is measured and considered.
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Voice fosters trustworthiness and transparency in information collection and processing.
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Diverse stakeholders can establish accountability mechanisms and policies to resolve disputes and complaints, ensuring that systems are held to high ethical standards.
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Including voices of professionals and those impacted by decisions ensures that data systems enhance relational practices of care, respect, empowerment, and inclusivity.
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Voice keeps the human at the centre of decision-making, ensuring that data processes do not become overly automated and detached from the people they serve.
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Recognising the expertise of children and families in their own lives; and the diverse perspectives and expertise of professionals and communities in everyday experiences of information ethics helps organisations uphold ethical values and best practices.
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Establishing roles such as a "Voice Lead" alongside data ethicists can model and support professional skills and values, such as sincerity, honesty, and evidence-informed decision-making.
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Voice integrates checks and balances to monitor the social impact of systems, ensuring equity, diversity, and the reduction of algorithmic bias and unintended harms.
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It also includes stakeholders in discussions about environmental considerations, such as minimising the ecological impact of data systems.
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Voice ensures that individuals, including children and young people, understand how their data is collected, processed, and used. It helps them grasp what it means to share information and fosters trust through transparent communication.
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Voice enables professionals and communities to question and challenge aspects of information-driven technologies, moving beyond mere compliance to focus on the necessity, legitimacy, and ethical implications of information practices.
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Voice is essential to mitigate risks and ethical challenges related to emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI).
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By establishing mechanisms for communities to challenge data-driven technologies and simple appeal systems to correct harmful automated decisions, voice helps ensure new technologies are human-centred and oriented toward social good. Involving children and families in buying, testing, monitoring and evaluation of the impact of AI helps mitigate a variety of risks such as algorithmic bias, data and privacy, and professional accountability.
In summary, embedding voice in system design and transformation is essential for creating inclusive, transparent, and ethical systems that prioritize human-centred values, social equity, and environmental sustainability. It ensures that systems are not only functional but also just, accountable, and responsive to the needs and concerns of diverse stakeholders.
The framework for ethical and effective information use
The Children's Information Project is developing a common ‘framework for effective information use’ that incorporates key design features and practices which have been identified in the relevant literature and through intensive fieldwork as essential dimensions of effective information use. The framework is in development and may be subject to change, however, it offers a helpful structure to consider integrating voice into system design and transformation.
The framework is intended to serve as a common definition to articulate what ethical and effective information use means in practice.
The Framework identifies four interconnected domains:
- Understanding need
- Integrating voice
- Best use of information
- Appropriate action
These domains are underpinned by eight (8) areas of practice and learning essential to ethical and effective information use:
- Map system
- Map information
- Theory of change
- Draw from national datasets
- Use broad sources of local information
- Bring voice into co-design of information systems
- Enhance voice information in aggregate and strategic reporting systems
- Improve voice in operational information use
Children's Information Project framework diagram
Ethical and effective information use is also shaped by infrastructure and governance, and behaviours and culture. Integrating voice is at the heart of ethical and effective information use. It enables better understanding of need and is intrinsically linked to better use of information and appropriate action. By bringing voice into the codesign of information systems.