System development a la MODDE

This paper describes the MODDE (Model of Decision support system Design and Evaluation) framework in some detail. The work is in progress and is being currently applied to the EMBRACE project being developed for the Refugee Review Tribunal (RRT) of Australia. Refugee law is the general legal area we are working in, while the specific domain under investigation is that of the decision makers at the RRT. EMBRACE is a decision support system being designed to assist the RRT in maintaining consistency of decisions, and preserve discretion of decision makers as well as making it easier to cope with high volumes of work in decreasing time frames. The use of the MODDE framework is intended to facilitate systematic attention to important features of decision making in our specific legal domain and to provide a sound basis upon which to evaluate a part of the system intrinsic to user acceptance. Copyright 2001 ACM.