A user orientation has been central in the digitalization visions of the Nordic countries. Even though an attention to user needs are one of the core drivers for public sector innovation, the realization of these visions is not unproblematic. In the context of a dwindling welfare state, citizens are increasingly expected to take over the responsibility of welfare tasks.
Previous research on attempts to build patient-oriented ICT-mediated health and government services revealed challenges relating to need to change professional roles, organizational structures, technological infrastructures, and extant regulatory frameworks and governance mechanisms.
This project seeks to build more knowledge on this kind of underlying, fundamental aspects (implications) of digitalization (what does it take, what does it do) in the case of what – in lack of a better term – may be named ‘informal welfare work’. In a nutshell we wish to 1) map the social and infrastructural complexities around the provisioning of informal welfare work, 2) propose a model of the user that has at its core ontological difference and variation in self-determination and capability, 3) design and test a prototype for support of informal care workers.
Thus, we do not think the solution is “bring in more technology” or “work on the change willingness” of public sector organizations. Instead, the overall framing for this project builds on the insight that emerging visions for a change of services and relations play together with the underlying digital infrastructures as well as the social, administrative, and regulatory context.
The care work, institutional values, design of the infrastructures, and the political structures are not always aligned, and this can lead to unintended and undesired consequences. Our previous research on digitalization of the public sector (over the last 20 years) has equipped us with theoretic/analytic and methodological resources to address such multifaceted, techno-socio-political complexity (and in addition, from a design-oriented/interventionist/engaged perspective, not only observational). Thus, we plan concrete activities to underpin/support ongoing digital innovation in public service provision which has an informal dimension. In this way the project will fulfill the aims of the research programme, to “combine and integrate knowledge-based, digital innovation efforts with research on the related effects and impact on society and end-users.”
More specifically, we seek to investigate and illuminate what it takes to truly provide user-oriented, user-controlled, user-led services. Aim to generate (articulate, exemplify) challenges that public sector digitalization encounters (fundamental ethical questions, value-conflicts, choices, but also practical – what kind of services, infrastructures etc.)
Some questions we think it is pertinent to raise:
-Is “the user” a resourceful, capable individual who wish to ‘participate’ – or do we need more nuanced conceptions? (bringing in a more ‘relational’ view on users, the role of next-of-kin, informal care, etc)
-Does “the user” wish to be autonomous? Or how to think about the ‘logic of choice’ in relation to the ‘logic of care’? what types of self-determination, what types of support is needed?
-What does it imply to shift from “provider-centric” to “user-centric” logic of service provision? To take a user perspective implies to investigate the ‘social worlds’ around each user.