Can Robots Understand Welfare? Exploring Machine Bureaucracies in Welfare-to-Work

The exercise of administrative discretion by street-level workers plays a key role in shaping citizens’ access to welfare and employment services. Governance reforms of social services delivery, such as performance-based contracting, have often been driven by attempts to discipline this discretion....

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of social policy Vol. 51; no. 3; pp. 519 - 534
Main Authors CONSIDINE, MARK, MCGANN, MICHAEL, BALL, SARAH, NGUYEN, PHUC
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Cambridge, UK Cambridge University Press 01.07.2022
Subjects
Academic disciplines
Accountability
Advisors
Algorithms
Automation
Bureaucracy
Case management
Decision making
Efficiency
Employment
Employment agencies
Governance
Information systems
Job training
Labor market
Performance management
Reforms
Return to work programs
Robotics
Robots
Social policy
Social reform
Social security
Social services delivery
Welfare
Welfare services
Work
Governance of activation
Machine bureaucracies
Digitalisation
Street-level bureaucracy
Australia
Discretion
Welfare-to-work
Welfare reform
Public employment services
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Summary:The exercise of administrative discretion by street-level workers plays a key role in shaping citizens’ access to welfare and employment services. Governance reforms of social services delivery, such as performance-based contracting, have often been driven by attempts to discipline this discretion. In several countries, these forms of market governance are now being eclipsed by new modes of digital governance that seek to reshape the delivery of services using algorithms and machine learning. Australia, a pioneer of marketisation, is one example, proposing to deploy digitalisation to fully automate most of its employment services rather than as a supplement to face-to-face case management. We examine the potential and limits of this project to replace human-to-human with ‘machine bureaucracies’. To what extent are welfare and employment services amenable to digitalisation? What trade-offs are involved? In addressing these questions, we consider the purported benefits of machine bureaucracies in achieving higher levels of efficiency, accountability, and consistency in policy delivery. While recognising the potential benefits of machine bureaucracies for both governments and jobseekers, we argue that trade-offs will be faced between enhancing the efficiency and consistency of services and ensuring that services remain accessible and responsive to highly personalised circumstances.
ISSN:0047-2794
1469-7823
DOI:10.1017/S0047279422000174