# Computational Accountability in MAS Organizations with ADOPT
## 3 Computational Accountability in Organizational Settings
#### When Does a MAS Support Accountability? A MAS can be said to support accountability when it is built in such a way that accountability can be determined from any future institutional state. Consequently, the MAS must necessarily provide a structure that creates and collects contextualized information, so that accountability can actually be determined from any future institutional state. We consider integral to this process the following steps. A forum must receive all information (including all causal actions) regarding a given situation under scrutiny. The forum must be able to contextualize actions to understand their adequacy and legitimacy. Finally, the forum must be able to pass judgment on agents. We identify the following necessary-but-not-sufficient principles a MAS must exhibit in order to support the determination of accountability. **Principle 1**: All collaborations and communications subject to considerations of accountability among the agents occur within a single scope that we call organization. **Principle 2**: An agent can enroll in an organization only by playing a role that is defined inside the organization. **Principle 3**: An agent willing to play a role in an organization must be aware of all the powers associated with such a role before adopting it. **Principle 4**: An agent is only accountable, towards the organization or another agent, for those goals it has explicitly accepted to bring about. **Principle 5**: An agent must have the leeway for putting before the organization the provisions it needs for achieving the goal to which it is committing. The organization has the capability of reasoning about the requested provisions and can accept or reject them. Principle 1 calls for situatedness. Accountability must operate in a specific context because individual actions take on their significance only in the presence of the larger whole. What constitutes a highly objectionable action in one context could instead be worthy of praise in another. Correspondingly, a forum can only operate in context, and an agent's actions must always be contextualized. The same role in different contexts can have radically diverse impacts on the organization and consequently on accountability attribution. When determining attribution, thus, an organization will only take into account interactions that took place inside its boundaries. Placing an organizational limit on accountability determination serves multiple purposes. It isolates events and actors so that when searching for causes/effects, one need not consider all actions from the beginning of time nor actions from other organizations. Agents are reassured that only for actions within an organization will they potentially be held accountable. Actions, thanks to agent roles (Principle 2), also always happen in context. To adequately tackle accountability by categorizing action, we must deal with two properties within a given organization: (1) An agent properly completes its tasks, and (2) an agent does not interfere with the tasks of others. The principles 2-5 deal more explicitly with the first property, that is, how to ensure that agents complete their tasks in a manner fair for both the agents and the organization. The second property is also partially satisfied by ensuring that, in the presence of goal dependencies, the first agent in sequence not to complete its goal will bear accountability, not only for its incomplete goal, but for all dependent goals that will consequently remain incomplete. That is, should an agent be responsible for a goal on whose completion other agents wait, and should that agent not complete its goal, then it will be accountable for its incomplete goal and for that goal's dependents as well. As an organizational and contextual aid to accountability, roles attribute social significance to an agent's actions.