It sounds like Code For America is doing great things! That said, I wish the title wasn’t tech focused, since that’s not the real news here, and the red-herring implication that it might be some kind of algorithmic mistake is not just completely irrelevant, but subtly pushing the narrative that tech is out of control and fallible — the exact opposite of what happened here.<p>Possibly the most important piece of summarizing information in this article is that a person in the position to do so actually decided to expunge records automatically, without waiting for those convicted to defend themselves. That’s pretty good news!
> "As part of the new law, those with prior convictions could now seek to have them struck off their record."<p>I really don't get the thought process that leads to this kind of thing. "Let's make it so we have to have to implement a new system that people petition and we review to determine if we expunge their record."<p>Versus: "The new standard is if the conviction was for X, and the person does not have Y on their record, (etc.), then the record of X conviction is considered expunged. And then behind the scenes automatically make it so."
The software mentioned in the article is Clear My Record [0].<p>[0] <a href="https://www.clearmyrecord.org" rel="nofollow">https://www.clearmyrecord.org</a>
Is this really a sophisticated algorithm or simply a script or database update statement. Every piece of code as reported by the news these days is algorithmic or AI related