A taxonomy of explanations to support Explainability-by-Design

TL;DR

This paper introduces a comprehensive taxonomy of explanations designed to support Explainability-by-Design in automated decision-making, aiding compliance, transparency, and stakeholder understanding across diverse regulatory and organizational contexts.

Contribution

It presents a novel nine-dimensional taxonomy of explanations, including a machine-readable ontology, to systematically classify and generate explanations for various regulatory and business needs.

Findings

Taxonomy effectively classifies explanations for compliance and transparency

Ontology facilitates automated explanation generation

Examples demonstrate practical benefits of the taxonomy

Abstract

As automated decision-making solutions are increasingly applied to all aspects of everyday life, capabilities to generate meaningful explanations for a variety of stakeholders (i.e., decision-makers, recipients of decisions, auditors, regulators...) become crucial. In this paper, we present a taxonomy of explanations that was developed as part of a holistic 'Explainability-by-Design' approach for the purposes of the project PLEAD. The taxonomy was built with a view to produce explanations for a wide range of requirements stemming from a variety of regulatory frameworks or policies set at the organizational level either to translate high-level compliance requirements or to meet business needs. The taxonomy comprises nine dimensions. It is used as a stand-alone classifier of explanations conceived as detective controls, in order to aid supportive automated compliance strategies. A machinereadable format of the taxonomy is provided in the form of a light ontology and the benefits of starting the Explainability-by-Design journey with such a taxonomy are demonstrated through a series of examples.