Data Protection Authority - DSB (appellant and applicant) – Court Ruling (Austria, 2021)
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Austria's Federal Administrative Court overturned a decision that restricted the Public Employment Service from using an algorithm to predict jobseekers' employment chances. The court found that the service could continue using the tool if they had a legal basis for processing the data. This is important for businesses using automated decision-making tools to ensure they have proper legal grounds.
What happened
The court allowed the Public Employment Service to use an algorithm for predicting jobseekers' employment chances if a legal basis is established.
Who was affected
Jobseekers whose data was used by the Public Employment Service to predict their employment chances.
What the authority found
The court decided that the Public Employment Service could use the algorithm as long as there is a suitable legal basis for processing the data.
Why this matters
This case highlights the importance of having a legal basis when using automated tools for decision-making. Companies should ensure compliance with data protection laws when implementing similar technologies.
GDPR Articles Cited
National Law Articles
The Public Employment Service (AMS) is a service provider under public law with its own legal personality. It is responsible for implementing the labour market policy of the federal government. In order to support workers in their (re-)integration into the labour market, it offers various services which are implemented by its counsellors. In the course of a counselling interview, counsellors have to discuss the client's wishes/expectations, their previous life history and the reasons for their unemployment. The jobseeker's chances on the labour market should also be addressed and discussed. In order to support counsellors in assessing the labour market opportunities of jobseekers, the AMS has developed a concept for calculating the labour market opportunities of jobseekers (AMAS) In concrete terms, AMS uses an algorithm to automatically calculate the probability of currently registered customers being employed for a certain number of days within a certain period in the future. For this purpose, a so called IC is calculated from the following data: age group, gender, group of States, education, health impairment, caring duties, professional group, pre-career regional labour market performance, duration of the business case at the AMS Based on the calculated IC, a classification is made into the following groups: Service clients with high labour market opportunities, care clients with low labour market opportunities, counselling clients with medium labour market opportunities. In order to ensure that the counsellors do not adopt AMAS unquestioningly, the AMS has issued guidelines and corresponding instructions as well as conducted training courses. The Data Protection Authority (DSB) initiated an ex officio investigation into the matter and concluded that the AMS was prohibited from processing data with the help of the AMAS with effect from 1 January 2021, unless there is a suitable legal basis for the data processing. This decision was then repealed by the Federal A
Outcome
Court Ruling
A ruling by a national court on a data-protection matter.
Related Cases (0)
No other cases found for Data Protection Authority - DSB (appellant and applicant) in AT
This is the only recorded case for this entity in this jurisdiction.
Details
About this data
Cite as: Cookie Fines. Data Protection Authority - DSB (appellant and applicant) - Austria (2021). Retrieved from cookiefines.eu
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