Suchergebnisse

This article is about paperwork: the work staff in UK integrated health and social care teams did to transform small transactions of everyday care work into big data, which in turn enabled the governance of complex service arrangements. This data-driven approach to governance, algorithmic governance, raises issues of agency and transparency. We address these issues by paying close attention to how care staff articulated their own understandings and apprehensions of the process. The article draws on a study of work roles in UK integrated health and social care teams providing support and follow up for older people and people with mental health problems. Digitised tools were used for the coordination and management of these teams. Staff described how the digitised documentation of care practices produced standardised representations of their work which poorly reflected the complexity of their everyday interactions with colleagues and clients/patients. There was a double-ness to these representations: on the one hand, they were malleable and open to negotiation, on the other they produced tangible consequences hardwired into the system of governance, transforming the work of care into an object outside of itself. In order to bring out the complexities in staff's accounts about paperwork, the article brings the Marxist analytic of alienation into conversation with Actor Network Theory (ANT) to suggest that overstating the hegemonic power of digital technologies risks itself becoming hegemonic. We advocate a nuanced and situated analysis of what digitised documentary practices consist of and what they do in different circumstances.

Innovations create new possibilities for the welfare state. Digital technologies, however, can create a range of surprising and unintended effects. Lost in Digital Translations: Studies of Digital Resistance and Accommodation to the Welfare State in Practice is an exploration of what happens when digital technologies intersect with welfare state practices.

This book seeks to develop a creative critique of digital welfare. Digitalising welfare runs the risk of undermining or suppressing knowledge dimensions that are central in the distribution of welfare – in short, knowledge can be 'lost in digital translation'. The universal welfare state is intended for all citizens. By sensitizing us to what is lost in digital translation, we are made aware of some of the exclusionary mechanisms that impact our digital society.

In this anthology a group of researchers investigate how digitalisation influences the most ambitious welfare state in the world: Norway. Given Norway's extensive welfare system, the process of digitalisation has had a profound impact. Digital technologies are used to enhance cooperation and coordination between health trusts and municipalities, standardizing communication between frontline workers and citizens, and even altering the architectural design of public buildings, all of which influences the quality of welfare services. At the same time, patient security is endangered, vulnerable groups experience even more exclusion from society, and for others, the quality of welfare deteriorates.