A Transparent Decision-Making in the Digital Age

This paper examines how the use of algorithms in public decision-making affects administrative proceedings, particularly in relation to compliance with the principle of transparency. Algorithms, especially those based on machine learning, possess an inherent degree of opacity—linguistic, legal, and structural. Since these algorithms do not follow a predetermined logic but generate and create new pathways, they have often been described as black boxes, whose inner workings are difficult to discern. Given this fundamental opacity, which makes the functioning of algorithms potentially knowable but not always comprehensible, it becomes evident that the right of access to source code alone is insufficient to ensure an adequate level of transparency. Considering these premises, and taking into account judicial and scholarly perspectives, this paper explores how the concept of transparency—hypothetically compatible with the use of algorithms in public decision-making—evolves in response to these challenges.