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Publications in Scientific Journals:

N. Holten Møller, G. Fitzpatrick, C. Le Dantec:
"Assembling the Case: Citizens´ Strategies for Exercising Authority and Personal Autonomy in Social Welfare";
Journal PACMHCI Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction - CSCW, 3 (2019), 244.



English abstract:
This study examines caseworkers´ and citizens´ interactions when assembling resource development
applications for citizens with serious health and personal issues. As with other types of welfare schemes,
the application serves as a mechanism of both support and control. From our study, we illustrate how an
increased reliance on data is transforming the citizen-caseworker interaction in social welfare. We
characterize this transformation as `datafication´: a phenomenon where the increased reliance on data for
decision-support across contexts of data production makes it challenging for individual citizens to contest
or correct data-born accounts of their situation. Our contribution is two-fold: first, we empirically
characterize the citizen-caseworker interaction in the application process. Second, we discuss how citizens´
private resourcing complements the formal application process and provides them with strategies to give
authority to their case and exercise personal autonomy. The private resourcing practices we observed
show how integrating supplementary accounts from citizens into the systems that caseworkers rely on
could make citizens´ experiences and social context legible. This in turn has policy and technology design
implications as public services increasingly introduce data-driven modes of case management.

Keywords:
Digitization; Casework; Public services, Citizen-government collaboration, Decision-support, Accountability, Datafication; Autonomy; Agency, Vulnerable citizens; Information systems; Case management; Social Welfare


"Official" electronic version of the publication (accessed through its Digital Object Identifier - DOI)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3361125

Electronic version of the publication:
https://publik.tuwien.ac.at/files/publik_286137.pdf


Created from the Publication Database of the Vienna University of Technology.