Policy Rationales for Electronic Information Systems: An Area of Ambiguity

Abstract

Child welfare and protection (CWP) has engaged in the introduction of Electronic Information Systems (EIS), such as electronic recording, assessment and decision-making tools. It has been argued that EIS have adverse consequences in which governments are conceived as homogeneous entities that install EIS for self-interested purposes. Consequently, research focuses on how social workers evade/reshape the sometimespernicious effects of EIS. Insufficient attention has been given to the governmental perspective and to why governments install EIS. In this article, we contribute to this debate by performing semi-structured interviews with policy actors (directors, policy advisers and staff members) in the field of CWP in Flanders. Asked about their rationales for installing EIS, they spoke of administrative, policy, care and economic reasons. However, while advocating these EIS, they also expressed a critical attitude concerning the usefulness of EIS, hoping that practitioners would move back and forth between governmental demands and day-today realities, to establish a more responsive social work. This ambiguous situation in which policymakers seem to be both strong supporters and critics of EIS at the same time is captivating, since it seems no longer necessary to perceive governments as a homogeneous bogeyman and social work as a victim.

Electronic Information Systems: In search of responsive social work

“…Questions such as 'what is the consequence of this decision for the current balance between care supply and care demand' or 'why does this person need this specific kind of care, knowing that many others are waiting' seem to be left out while considering whether a particular client needs help. This is remarkable, because, in general, practitioners often indicate that one of the advantages of EISs is precisely to consider and reconsider the necessity of the requested care (Devlieghere, Bradt & Roose, 2016).…”

“…Over the last few years, governments worldwide have come up with EISs to improve social work practice and assist practitioners in being responsive to the needs of children and their families (Ames, 1999;Cleaver et al, 2008;Garrett, 2005;Gillingham, 2011;Harlow & Webb, 2003, Van Yperen, 1996. This has, for instance, led to the use of the Common Assessment Framework and the Integrated Children System in England, the National Reference Index for High Risk Youngsters in the Netherlands, the Client Relationship Information System in Australia and the Information System for the Intersectoral Gateway (INSISTO) in Flanders (Devlieghere, Bradt & Roose, 2016;Gillingham, 2011;Vanhee, 2014;White et al, 2009White et al, , 2010.…”

“…As technicians, their discretion is being curtailed (Bovens & Zouridis, 2002;Burton & van den Broek, 2009;Parton, 2006;Pithouse et al, 2012) and they evolve from a street-level (Lipsky, 1980) towards a screen-level bureaucrat, spending most of their time in front of a computer screen following the logic of the database (Bovens & Zouridis, 2002). In our view, such a screen-level bureaucrat could even be called a tweet-level bureaucrat, as s/he has to fill in all kinds of preordained and text-limited boxes (Devlieghere, Bradt & Roose, 2016).…”

“…Aas, 2004;Bovens & Zouridis, 2002;Broadhurst, Hall, Wastell, White, & Pithouse, 2010;Broadhurst & Mason, 2012;Hall et al, 2010;Lecluijze, 2015;Manovich, 2001;Parton, 2006;White, Hall, & Peckover, 2009). In doing so, research has identified some major concerns in using EISs, uncovering how such systems tend to reduce social work to a technical practice (Aronson & Smith, 2010;Tsui & Cheung, 2004), emphasising predictability and controllability rather than contributing to the development of a responsive practice (Aas, 2004;Bovens & Zouridis, 2002;Burton & van den Broek, 2009;Devlieghere, Bradt & Roose, 2016;Hall et al, 2010;Parton, 2006;Pithouse et al, 2012). This is, however, not necessarily the case as several authors have demonstrated how practitioners, as well as (middle) managers, use their discretion to develop strategies to shape, reshape and even bend regulations and procedures for using EISs in social work practice, aiming precisely to achieve a responsive social work practice (Aronson & Smith, 2009;Evans, 2010Evans, , 2011Evans, , 2013.…”

La transformación tecnológica del trabajo social en el sur de Chile. Prácticas formales e informales de uso de Tecnologías de Información y Comunicación y sus consecuencias profesionales

“…Es posible identificar los trabajos de CEPAL que describen experiencias de implementación de políticas sociales por medio de TIC, aunque tienen una clara orientación a la promoción de lógicas de eficiencia, modernización y mejora en la gestión pública (Mariscal, Lepore y Carvalho De Lorenzo, 2012;Vásquez y Comisión Económica para América Latina, 2005). Por otra parte, una lectura crítica de esas mismas políticas por sus efectos de transformación de las profesiones del área de la intervención, así como también por su orientación a reducir las relaciones sociales y la pobreza a un plano de necesidades individuales, obviando sus orígenes estructurales (De Martino Bermúdez, 2015); o la interpretación desarrollada por Pombo, Gupta y Stankovic (2018), en el que identifican los potenciales de implementación de tecnologías emergentes en los ámbitos de salud, educación, género, diversidad, empleo y protección social, aunque considerando las profundas desigualdades de acceso a conectividad de la región.…”