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Researchers working to develop tools for online labor mediation
Supported by a three-year, $700,000 grant from the National Science Foundation, the three faculty are working with the National Mediation Board.
Researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst are investigating the use of technology to provide improved support for online dispute resolution. This is expected to lead to systems that could serve as models for advanced e-government services at dozens of federal agencies.
Supported by a three-year, $700,000 grant from the National Science Foundation, the three faculty are working with the National Mediation Board (NMB), an independent federal agency that handles labor relations in the railroad and airline industries, to develop technologies to make the grievance process more efficient, effective and transparent.
“Ninety percent of what government does is process. Almost all of its work entails defining, disseminating, executing, and inevitably modifying, processes of all kinds,” says computer scientist Leon Osterweil, who also co-directs the campus’s Electronic Enterprise Institute. “If all of the government’s constituencies can agree on a particular government process and we can insure it will be done consistently, then we believe that it will breed trustworthiness.”
According to Osterweil, principal investigator for the project, the NMB offers an interesting opportunity to demonstrate this concept. He says the project will build on NMB’s record as an honest broker in the transportation industry and the agency’s time-tested methods for responding to labor disputes.
“Over the years, NMB has developed a sophisticated set of processes to handle disputes,” he says. “If we can define these processes clearly and completely and use them as a centerpiece for discussion among all of the NMB stakeholders, we should be able to reach agreement on a process that is acceptable to everyone and ultimately, automated systems that help everyone.”
Osterweil’s collaborators are EEI co-director Norman K. Sondheimer of the Isenberg School of Management, and Ethan Katsh, professor of legal studies and director of the Center for Information Technology and Dispute Resolution.
Katsh, who helped develop an online dispute resolution process for eBay several years ago, says the NMB offers some specific challenges since every issue involves three parties: labor, management and the government.
“They have to perceive value in this,” says Katsh. “Trust is looming in the background. No one participates in systems that they don’t trust.”
The initial phase of the project, says Sondheimer, is focused on identifying the needs of the NMB as well as the participating unions and companies. Their suggestions and requirements will help shape the technology to be tested. “We’re not trying to dictate what to do,” he says. “We want to give the potential user community voice and choice in negotiating a system. Too many digital government systems are unsuccessful. We believe that by expanding the participation in development of the system, we can overcome some of the inherent barriers to change.”
The project may well result in systems using some form of a secure network providing synchronous or asynchronous alternative dispute resolution and exchanges of confidential information between various parties, says Sondheimer. Such a system would produce more timely results and reduce travel costs while augmenting traditional face-to-face dispute resolution.
“We’re testing the theory of technology as a fourth party,” he says. “If we can really make it work and verify that such systems work for the people in government who will have to use them, then it opens the door for other federal agencies to adopt online dispute resolution.”
Harry R. Hoglander, chairman of the National Mediation Board, says he believes strongly that the application of technology to dispute resolution will bring significant advantages to the agency, the mediators and the parties.
“Through our work with UMass, the NMB will maintain a position of leadership in the federal government, and indeed in the entire dispute resolution community, as we intelligently apply technology to the process of mediation,” says Hoglander. “Years from now, the work we do under the NSF grant will be used as a roadmap for the development and application of ODR technology.”
More: Center for Information Technology and Dispute Resolution
Electronic Enterprise Institute
National Mediation Board