The Role of Discretion in the Age of Automation

Abstract

This paper examines the nature of discretion in social work in order to debunk myths dominating prevalent debates on digitisation and automation in the public sector. Social workers have traditionally used their discretion widely and with great autonomy, but discretion has increasingly come under pressure for its apparent subjectivity and randomness. In Denmark, our case in point, the government recently planned to standardise laws to limit or remove discretion where possible in order for automation of case management to gain a foothold. Recent studies have focused on discretion in the public sector, but few have examined it explicitly and as part of real cases. As a consequence, they often leave the myths about discretion unchallenged. Inspired by the literature on discretion and CSCW research on rules in action, this study reports on an empirical investigation of discretion in child protection services in Denmark. The results of our analysis provide a new understanding of discretion as a cooperative endeavour, based on consultation and skill, rather than an arbitrary or idiosyncratic choice. In this manner, our study contradicts the myth of discretion inherent in the automation agenda. Correspondingly, we ask for attention to be given to systems that integrate discretion with technology rather than seek to undermine it directly or get around it surreptitiously. In this age of automation, this is not only an important but also an urgent task for CSCW researchers to fulfil.

EcoKnow

“…The paper has presented a case study of co-creating an adaptive case management system in a municipality based on the DCR technology stack for declarative adaptive case management and carried out as part of the EcoKnow.org research project. The development is grounded in ethnographical field studies of practice carried out before the case study and reported elsewhere [46]. The development was initiated by systematic literature reviews on formal methods for regulatory compliance and understandability of process modelling, followed by a service design study with case workers and citizens in the municipality.…”

“…Before the development and deployment of the case management system in the municipality, ethnographic field studies were carried out to understand the case management practices and the interplay between discretionary decisions and decisions that can be formulated by rules and automated (see [46]). Having the case management system in operational use, it is now possible to focus on the last two items of the hypothesis, i.e.…”

Organisation und Algorithmus

“…In diesem Fall betrifft dies die Rede von Meilensteinen der Fallbearbeitung. Meilensteine bezeichnen die einzelnen Zeitpunkte, zu denen Klientinnen algorithmisch bewertet werden (Holl et al 2018, S. 3 Danaher 2016;Petersen et al 2020;Kleinberg et al 2018;O'Neil 2017).…”

“…Das Problem, über die Verteilung begrenzter Ressourcen entscheiden zu müssen, wird durch Organisationen auf unterschiedliche Weisen gelöst. So haushalten Grenzstellen (Luhmann 1999;Büchner 2018b) und Street-Level-Bürokraten (Lipsky 1980;Petersen et al 2020) in der Bearbeitung von Fällen mit ihrer Initiative, dosieren also ihr Eingreifen, und wirken so als vermittelnde Instanzen zwischen Organisation und Umwelt. Ein weiteres Organisationsprinzip sind Priorisierungen, also Dringlichkeitsbewertungen von internen und externen Ereignissen.…”

Off the record: The invisibility work of doctors in a patient‐accessible electronic health record information service

“…Therefore, studies are needed of real cases in which professionals mediate critical aspects of their work such as discretion and the associated notions of accountability and autonomy in practice (cf. Petersen et al, 2020).…”