ADM Talk: The Platformisation of Welfare Provision: Automated Decision Making

Abstract

Automated decision-making using algorithmic systems is increasingly being introduced in the public administration constituting one important pillar in the emergence of the digital welfare state. Promising more efficiency and fairer decisions, repetitive tasks of processing applications and records are, for example, delegated to fairly simple rule-based algorithms. In this talk, I will conceptualize introduction of automated decision-making in the public administration as platformization of welfare provision.

Taking the growing trend of delegating decisions to algorithmic systems in Sweden as a starting point, I will discuss how the platformization of welfare provision and the emergence of the digital welfare state is legitimated by way of analyzing policy and strategy documents published by the Swedish government and public agencies. Furthermore, I engage with court rulings, exchanges with the Parliamentary Ombudsmen and in-depth interviews to identify legitimation strategies. The aim is to demonstrate how different, partly conflicting definitions of what automated decision-making in public administration is and does, are negotiated between different political and societal actors. Describing this negotiation process as mundanization, I ask how socio-technical imaginaries of the digital welfare state are established and stabilized.

Bio

Anne Kaun is Professor in Media and Communication Studies at Södertörn University, Sweden and is currently heading a comparative project on automated decision-making and the digital welfare state in Estonia, Germany and Sweden.