Digitalization, Data and Welfare: Sociotechnical Approaches to Service Delivery

by Vasilis Galis (Editor), Vasileios-Spyridon Vlassis (Editor)

Overview

This insightful book investigates the growing use of digital technologies to support welfare provision and examines which digital tools can have the greatest impact. It explores how these technologies influence and are influenced by social and cultural relations, working life, education, healthcare, markets, and organizations.

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781035338146
Publisher:	Edward Elgar Publishing
Publication date:	08/10/2025
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x (d)

About the Author

Edited by Vasilis Galis Professor, Technologies in Practice (TIP) and Vasileios-Spyridon Vlassis, Assistant Professor, Technologies in Practice (TIP), IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark

Table of Contents

Contents
PART I INTRODUCTION
1 Introducing digital technologies for welfare provision 2
Vasilis Galis and Vasileios-Spyridon Vlassis
PART II HOW ARE DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES
INTEGRATED IN CONTEMPORARY
GOVERNANCE?
2 Aiming at a moving target: how to research the automation of
welfare 25
Agnes Liminga, Anne Kaun and Stine Lomborg
3 The beginning of AI-driven welfare? An inquiry into how
public sector AI experiments shape the Danish welfare state 38
Jakob Laage-Thomsen, Helene Ratner and Ida Schrøder
4 Interoperability for welfare: digitalization and state
transformation in Greece 57
Giorgos Pertsas
PART III THE ROLE OF THE PRIVATE SECTOR IN
STATEHOOD
5 Outsourcing response-ability: tales from ‘agile’ governance 73
Irina Papazu, Cancan Wang, Jessamy Perriam and Sanna
Marttila
6 Unstable by default: the public-private framework in
broadband access for vulnerable populations in the Midwest
US 91
Kainen Bell, Jorge Rojas-Alvarez, Chieh-Li (Julian) Chin,
Anita Say Chan and Tracy Smith
7 Navigating between the (non-)use and endurance of
information platforms for refugees: a case study of Integreat 107
Olga Usachova
8 Infrastructure after welfare: communal infrastructure and the
problem of (digital) monopolisation 122
Caroline Anna Salling
PART IV HOW DO DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES FOR
WELFARE PROVISION TRANSFORM PUBLIC
SERVICE WORK?
9 Digitalization as imaginary: a study of self-employment in
care and platformization of German eldercare 140
Franziska Baum
10 “Let’s make data meaningful for teachers”: configuring the
teacher through data visualizations 155
Helene Friis Ratner
11 Implementing a sociotechnical network for welfare
technology in a small Swedish municipality: bringing the
invisible work into the light 170
Karin Skill and Vangelis Angelakis
PART V EXPERIENCE-BASED ACCOUNTS OF
THE ALTERATIONS OF WELFARE VIA
DIGITALIZATION
12 Thief or toddler: Experiences of unemployed benefit
recipients in the Dutch digital welfare state 185
Margot Kersing, Lieke Oldenhof, Kim Putters and Liesbet
van Zoonen
13 Flexible access? Digitalisation of Danish healthcare through
video consultations 203
Cæcilie Sloth Laursen, Sisse Finken and Rachel Douglas-Jones
14 The role of relatives in e-governance access among elderly
citizens: vignettes from the Danish Covid-19 vaccination 218
Tobias Pedersen, Victor Vadmand Jensen, Signe Strandsbjerg
Kloppenborg and Rasmus Mølgaard Hansen
PART VI AFTERWORD
15 Afterword: Digitalization as a zombie grand narrative craving
specification 235
Christopher Gad

Editorial Reviews

‘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. Digitalization, Data and Welfare 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.’

Kean Birch

‘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. Digitalization, Data and Welfare, 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.’

Jannick Schou

‘In bringing together contributions engaging with different national contexts and interrogating a range of themes, Digitalization, Data and Welfare 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.’

Lina Dencik