Automating Conflict-Of-Interest Reporting

Countless laws across different levels of government (federal, state, and local) and agencies mandate that service providers disclose material conflicts of interest to their customers. Countless private entities, including trade associations and media outlets, have ethics codes with similar disclosure requirements.

Emerging web technologies, often categorized under the rubric of the "semantic web," offer a way to automate conflict of interest disclosure in new and powerful ways. But this requires that an open, standards-based "bias ontology" be first developed. The efficiencies created through the use of a bias ontology offer an opportunity to rethink the scope and methods of conflict-of-interest disclosure regulation. A good place to start would be the Federal Trade Commission's new conflict-of-interest disclosure laws for bloggers who review products. As a complement to mandatory disclosure of conflicts of interests for legally recognized fiduciaries, a system of voluntary certification with significant penalties for false disclosure could be offered. In this way, service providers who want to make a credible claim that they are independent but are not covered by one of the government's mandatory conflict of interest laws could be offered an opportunity to do so.