Abstract
Abstract
Introduction
The Danish digital welfare state is defined by the use of digital technologies and data to improve, support, or even transform public services. The success of digital public services is frequently articulated as the ability to make data-informed decisions and to conduct data-driven management, making data a core technology that guides both professional analysis and assessment in the public sector.
The intended effects of using data in the public sector are many, but frequently articulated as the ability to identify the most cost-effective processes and the best results. Here, data is generally thought of as a tool that carries with it ‘ready-to-read’ facts on how to achieve these effects; thus, as information to be utilized. However, the work that goes into reading and interpreting data and how it entangles with different ideas, decisions, and goals are frequently overlooked. Consequently, critical studies of data usage in the public sector also tend to see data as information that carries effects over work, such as increased surveillance or risk management, rather than as a technology with possibilities to influence processes and practices in work.
Motivation
Surveillance and risk management, just as the supportive and transforming capabilities of data for social work, are all important and relevant effects to explore. However, 'ominous' predictions or too effect-oriented perspectives both risk diverting a focus to data that overlook critical questions and investigations of how data affects and meshes with the social practices that revolve around its usage. More specifically, questions of how data is being worked with and defined in the interplays between different motives, skills, and contexts, as opposed to something that is always applied the same and with the same purposes. By directing a focus to the social practices around data work instead of looking at data as an instrument of fact, we stand to gain more nuanced and detailed accounts of how data influences social work in new ways.
Case
Of digital technologies in the Danish welfare state – and worldwide - case-management systems (CMS) provide bulks of data on citizens to improve social services. A part of this improvement, however, begins with the data that CMS provides on the social workers working within these systems for managerial analysis and assessment. In this paper, we use qualitative observational data from 13 workshops held by a large Danish municipality for managers within the social and employment services, as well as interviews with two managers in different areas of social work relating to family affairs. We use this data set to explore how data from CMS is both shaping and being shaped by the social practices in and around them to facilitate different types of social work. Our approach is an abductive one, that specifically aims to utilize Anne Marie Mol’s concept of ‘logics’ as a theoretical tool to investigate, visualize, and conceptualize different rationalities and logics that emerge from practices of working with data.
Preliminary results
In our data set, several different logics are found that both guide and shape the way managers approach and work with CMS data to achieve different results. We describe each of these thematically with a focus on the socio-material patterns that arise through the practices they describe. ‘Control’ is one emerging theme and logic that we found, that resonates with the more critical presumption that data is used as a means to surveil and manage risk to achieve more efficient results. However, several other rationalities and practices are present too, such as working with data to identify when and where to protect workers from excessive workloads or to identify where to assist them in certain processes, which are more fittingly described as guided by a logic of ‘care’ or ‘facilitation’.
Conclusion
Data in social work tends to escape critical reflection, as it is more generally thought of as information to achieve an effect, and not so much the social processes and practices that go into working with it. Exploring data work practices from social work managers, this paper shows how data carries more than neutral information but exists as something that evokes new affinities and relations to different logics and rationalities in the ways social work managers engage it. In the pursuit of a data-driven society, emphasis on the work that goes into making data a supportive and transformative tool for social services is key to understanding the society it helps produce. Visualizing different logics in social work management is a way to begin to make this understanding more tangible and approachable for data work in other areas too.
Introduction
The Danish digital welfare state is defined by the use of digital technologies and data to improve, support, or even transform public services. The success of digital public services is frequently articulated as the ability to make data-informed decisions and to conduct data-driven management, making data a core technology that guides both professional analysis and assessment in the public sector.
The intended effects of using data in the public sector are many, but frequently articulated as the ability to identify the most cost-effective processes and the best results. Here, data is generally thought of as a tool that carries with it ‘ready-to-read’ facts on how to achieve these effects; thus, as information to be utilized. However, the work that goes into reading and interpreting data and how it entangles with different ideas, decisions, and goals are frequently overlooked. Consequently, critical studies of data usage in the public sector also tend to see data as information that carries effects over work, such as increased surveillance or risk management, rather than as a technology with possibilities to influence processes and practices in work.
Motivation
Surveillance and risk management, just as the supportive and transforming capabilities of data for social work, are all important and relevant effects to explore. However, 'ominous' predictions or too effect-oriented perspectives both risk diverting a focus to data that overlook critical questions and investigations of how data affects and meshes with the social practices that revolve around its usage. More specifically, questions of how data is being worked with and defined in the interplays between different motives, skills, and contexts, as opposed to something that is always applied the same and with the same purposes. By directing a focus to the social practices around data work instead of looking at data as an instrument of fact, we stand to gain more nuanced and detailed accounts of how data influences social work in new ways.
Case
Of digital technologies in the Danish welfare state – and worldwide - case-management systems (CMS) provide bulks of data on citizens to improve social services. A part of this improvement, however, begins with the data that CMS provides on the social workers working within these systems for managerial analysis and assessment. In this paper, we use qualitative observational data from 13 workshops held by a large Danish municipality for managers within the social and employment services, as well as interviews with two managers in different areas of social work relating to family affairs. We use this data set to explore how data from CMS is both shaping and being shaped by the social practices in and around them to facilitate different types of social work. Our approach is an abductive one, that specifically aims to utilize Anne Marie Mol’s concept of ‘logics’ as a theoretical tool to investigate, visualize, and conceptualize different rationalities and logics that emerge from practices of working with data.
Preliminary results
In our data set, several different logics are found that both guide and shape the way managers approach and work with CMS data to achieve different results. We describe each of these thematically with a focus on the socio-material patterns that arise through the practices they describe. ‘Control’ is one emerging theme and logic that we found, that resonates with the more critical presumption that data is used as a means to surveil and manage risk to achieve more efficient results. However, several other rationalities and practices are present too, such as working with data to identify when and where to protect workers from excessive workloads or to identify where to assist them in certain processes, which are more fittingly described as guided by a logic of ‘care’ or ‘facilitation’.
Conclusion
Data in social work tends to escape critical reflection, as it is more generally thought of as information to achieve an effect, and not so much the social processes and practices that go into working with it. Exploring data work practices from social work managers, this paper shows how data carries more than neutral information but exists as something that evokes new affinities and relations to different logics and rationalities in the ways social work managers engage it. In the pursuit of a data-driven society, emphasis on the work that goes into making data a supportive and transformative tool for social services is key to understanding the society it helps produce. Visualizing different logics in social work management is a way to begin to make this understanding more tangible and approachable for data work in other areas too.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Publication date | 14 Aug 2024 |
| Publication status | Published - 14 Aug 2024 |
| Event | Nordic Working Life Conference 2024 - RUC, Roskilde, Denmark Duration: 14 Aug 2024 → 16 Aug 2024 Conference number: 11 |
Conference
| Conference | Nordic Working Life Conference 2024 |
|---|---|
| Number | 11 |
| Location | RUC |
| Country/Territory | Denmark |
| City | Roskilde |
| Period | 14/08/2024 → 16/08/2024 |