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Closing the Loopholes: Categorizing Clients to Fit the Bureaucratic Welfare System

Authors:
Johanne Svanes Oskarsen

Keywords: Categorization; Representations; Street-level Bureaucracy; Work; Digitalization

Abstract:
Categorizing clients is an essential part of the work in public services traditionally done by street-level bureaucrats. However, in the Norwegian Labour and Welfare Administration, this work has been distributed between supervisors, the front-line workers interacting with clients, and central unit caseworkers, who make decisions regarding financial welfare benefits on behalf of the bureaucracy. In cases regarding disability benefits, supervisors do the work of closing loopholes in clients’ cases to improve the client’s chances for being granted benefits, before a caseworker further processes the case. Both knowledge about the bureaucratic system with its laws and rules and knowledge about the client’s situation is vital to do this work well. Digitalization or automation of case management processes and the increased use of self-service solutions may make this work more difficult. Thus, it may hinder the individual assessment that clients have a right to. This paper contributes to a growing interest in public services in Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) by giving a detailed account of the work that street-level bureaucrats do to represent citizens’ cases digitally.

Pages: 40 to 45

Copyright: Copyright (c) IARIA, 2020

Publication date: March 22, 2020

Published in: conference

ISSN: 2308-4138

ISBN: 978-1-61208-761-0

Location: Valencia, Spain

Dates: from November 21, 2020 to November 25, 2020