‘It Is Always an Individual Assessment’: A Case Study on Challenges of Automation of Income Support Services

Abstract

Income support schemes are key policies in an inclusive welfare state. To make them legitimate they are strictly regulated. As such they provide good prerequisites for standardization and automation, in theory. The aim of this paper is to analyze a case of municipal administration of income support, where automatization is resisted despite managements' ambitions. We focus on the case workers' interpretations of changes conducive to automatization and discuss how different service logics may explain the tensions and resistance of the frontline case workers. Our findings suggest that digitalisation and automatization challenge the balance of two logics and raise concerns of accountability in exercise of public authority; and concerns of value in terms of support towards self-sustainability and social integration of the clients 1 .

Context matters—different entrepreneurial approaches among street‐level bureaucrats enhancing digital inclusion

“…When such technologies are introduced, the street‐level bureaucrats' discretion is constrained and replaced with centralized manufacturing logic and standardization of cases (Busch et al, 2018). These new arrangements are changing the balance of power between the clients, the technical systems and the street‐level bureaucrats (Gustafsson & Wihlborg, 2019).…”

Technology Mediated Citizenship: What Can We Learn from Library Practices

“…In advanced information societies these activities are often digitalized, something which brings to the fore how digital access and skills condition the performing of citizenship (van Deursen & van Dijk, 2018). Swedish research shows that digital diversity involves always exclusionary potential and that citizenship should be examined as an entanglement of human and technology relations [12][13][14][15].…”