Digitalization, Data and Welfare Sociotechnical Approaches to Service Delivery
Produktdetaljer
Biografisk notat
Edited by Vasilis Galis Professor, Technologies in Practice (TIP) and Vasileios-Spyridon Vlassis, Assistant Professor, Technologies in Practice (TIP), IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark<i>‘The modern welfare state is being transformed by and through digitalization, sometimes for the better and sometimes for worse. We desperately need more research on how digitalization impacts critically important welfare systems so we can make the difficult collective and democratic decisions about their future and our future welfare needs. </i>Digitalization, Data and Welfare<i> is a book that takes this task seriously, delivering on the promise to unpack the implications of digital welfare systems for modern societies without succumbing to technological or political-economic determinism. We have choices to make and this book can help us to make these choices.’</i>
- Kean Birch, Institute for Technoscience and Society, York University, Canada,
<i>‘Welfare states are undergoing profound changes in the face of intensified digitalization and ever more pervasive data regimes. Yet, all too often, the complex lived experiences and sociotechnical practices at the heart of these transformations are overlooked or misunderstood. </i>Digitalization, Data and Welfare<i>, offers a powerful response to this. Through a masterful combination of empirical detail and theoretical innovation, it unravels the new face of welfare. The book is sobering reading and will be an absolutely essential guide for anyone trying to decipher the inner workings of the digital welfare state.’</i>
- Jannick Schou,
<i>‘In bringing together contributions engaging with different national contexts and interrogating a range of themes, </i>Digitalization, Data and Welfare<i> provides crucial insights into a still uncharted but rapidly emerging development that has significant implications for the future of the welfare state. This is an important intervention for anyone grappling with the realities and imaginaries of digitised welfare in an age of data-driven innovation.’</i>
- Lina Dencik, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK,
Vasilis Galis and Vasileios-Spyridon Vlassis bring together renowned experts who analyze digital technologies for welfare provision as sociotechnical phenomena, that is, the welfare state is mutually constructed by welfare practices and digital technologies, an outcome of organizational reconfiguration, political–economic visions, and socio-technical imaginaries. They demonstrate that digitalization is not simply a question of implementing digital technologies but also an introduction of new governmental ideas that transform both the public sector and its services as well as inter-state and state-society relations. The book explores how the rapid implementation of digital tools in the provision of welfare services is bringing fundamental changes to welfare and provides experienced-based accounts of the transformations occurring in public service work.
Digitalization, Data and Welfare is an essential resource for students and academics in welfare studies. Its practical insights into inter-state and state-society relations will also greatly benefit welfare policymakers and practitioners in innovation, science and technology.