Creating Future Welfare: How digitalisation and automation shape knowledges and values that govern hybrid welfare practices

Research problem and specific questions

This project explores digitalization and automation by focusing on the hybrid character of welfare services and how knowledge regimes shift over time. Two empirical areas – social work and psychotherapy offered within public health care – are in focus. Research questions focus on: what knowledge and value positions precede the development of tools and devices for digitalisation and automation? What models of knowledge and groups of expertise are involved and how? How are values considered in practice when digital/automated devices are developed? What assumptions about the practices and the intended professional user are the tools based on?

Data and method

The research traces how knowledge regimes have evolved over time. Data include news media coverage, sector specific publications, and policy documents. For the psychotherapy case we will also conduct witness seminars with professionals to capture previous struggles that have shaped current developments. We conduct in-depth studies of current and ongoing developments through interviews with IT professionals and welfare professionals involved in this development, and meeting ethnography.

Societal relevance and utilization

The development of the future welfare state is a national concern, especially in areas such as social work and psychiatric care, where needs already exceed resources. The knowledge that this project generates will contribute with a more informed understanding of the implications of the hybrid character of the current making of future welfare, and the knowledge regimes that underlie it.

Plan for project realization

The research is conducted in a multidisciplinary research environment and structured around five work packages, one which is focusing on developing the theoretical framework, two that are organized around the empirical strands, and two work packages that run throughout the project time focusing on communicating and disseminating research results and synthesizing the project results. The researchers involved have long experience of the methods and theories used and access to the empirical data is already secured.