You may have to request a human to explain your own pension

The right would be real. Under a draft amendment now circulating in one social security ministry, anyone whose benefit is recalculated automatically could demand, free of charge and within thirty days, that a human being review the decision. The agency would publish a leaflet. The leaflet would be clear — the clearest document in the entire process — and it would be generated by the system it describes.

A retired school cook would be among the first to use it. Her monthly payment would fall by a small amount: not enough to be an emergency, enough to be a question. The letter would cite a recalculation, a legal reference and a case number, in that order of prominence.

The letter would close with a paragraph explaining her right to a human answer. That paragraph would also be generated, in a typeface chosen for reassurance, and would be by a considerable margin the friendliest part of the page.

The desk would exist. The officer would be human, would be pleasant, and would have eleven minutes. On his screen would be a case summary prepared for him in plain language by the same system whose decision he was reviewing, including a field marked indicative outcome that he would be trained not to read first and would read first.

“The review is genuinely independent,” a spokesperson for the agency would say. “The officer is independent of the system. The summary is not. We regard this as the best available arrangement, and we accept that it is a sentence with two halves.”

The agency would publish figures annually and present the high proportion of upheld decisions as evidence that the automation is accurate. Critics would read the identical figure as evidence of something else entirely. Neither side could settle it without the underlying reasoning, which would be available on request in a format described as machine-readable and delivered as a file she could not open.

To challenge the summary she would need the calculation. To obtain the calculation she would file a second request. The second request would be screened for merit before release, and the screening would be performed by the system. At no point would anyone lie to her. Every step would be lawful, documented and answered within the statutory deadline. The loop would close politely.

What she would actually want has no name in the framework. She would not want a review. She would want an explanation from somebody who could have done the arithmetic himself, in front of her, on paper, and who would be willing to be wrong out loud. The right she would be granted is the right to be told the answer by a person. The right she would be looking for is the right to be told it by someone who worked it out.