The article explores what goes into one particular child indicator -children placed outside their home -and how it makes its object of description knowable and governable. This indicator is widely used in the making of social policy as a follow-up and performance indicator and is applied also in social research, including cross-national comparisons, to recognize problems and their scope, especially with reference to child welfare. The indicator is analyzed as an instance of commensuration. Commensuration produces depersonalized, public forms of knowledge that are often deemed superior to private, particularistic forms of knowledge. The work demonstrates how the category of out-of-home placement comes into being in a process wherein the particular knowledge of social workers in child welfare agencies is transformed into the macro-social knowledge embodied in the national register and, eventually, incorporated into the indicator. Hence this commensurative process renders differences as magnitude. The empirical case examined is the Finnish child indicator. The commensuration of children placed outside the home has several consequences, which shape both child protection as a social phenomenon and the understanding that the policy measures appear to require. In addition, some suggestions are made for the concrete development of the indicator.
Nordic countries are considered international leaders in producing combinable data on their citizens' encounters with public institutions, as well as the digitalisation of public services. Publicsector professionals increasingly collaborate with private IT companies in developing data analytics products for cost saving and cost-efficiency. This article presents the results of a two-year ethnographic study of a collaboration between the Knowledge Team of a public-sector organisation and a private-sector IT company for developing and maintaining a data management system in one Finnish regional healthcare and social service organisation. The data management system is defined as a data analytics product that provides management with information about clinical and financial aspects of organisation management. We combine perspectives of science and technology studies and the sociology of professions to situate our research on the data management system as a boundary object within the broader context of professional work. Via our theoretical framework, we examine the negotiation process through which the data management system becomes a boundary object in practice. This process includes not only the accommodation of diverse epistemic cultures but also organisational and professional hierarchies that empower some experts to shape the data management system towards their visions and interests. This article applies the 'boundary object' concept to elucidate structural power differentials in public-private partnerships and multi-professional collaborations.
Many states make use of personal identity numbers (PINs) to govern people living in their territory and jurisdiction, but only a few rely on an all-purpose PIN used throughout the public and private sectors. This article examines the all-purpose PIN in Finland as a political technology that brings people to the sphere of public welfare services and subjects them to governance by public authorities and expert institutions. Drawing on documentary materials and interviews, it unpacks the history and uses of the PIN as an elementary building block of the Nordic welfare state, and its emerging uses in the post-welfare data economy. The article suggests that, although the PIN is capable of individualizing, identifying, and addressing individuals, its most important and widely embraced feature is the extent to which it enables interoperability among public authorities, private businesses, and their data repositories. Interoperability, together with advances in computing and information technology, has made the PIN a facilitator of public administration, state knowledge production, and everyday life. More recently, in the post-welfare data economy, interoperability has rendered the PIN a national asset in all the Nordic countries, providing a great advantage to biomedical research, innovation business, and healthcare.
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