Displacement as Regulation: New Regulatory Technologies and Front-Line Decision-Making in Ontario Works

Abstract

This paper explores how new regulatory technologies and front-line decision-makers reshape one another. Drawing on a recent qualitative study of caseworker decision-making in the Ontario Works program, it demonstrates the dialectical relationship between new case management software and caseworkers. While new technologies may attempt to deskill and decentre front-line decision-makers, transforming them into data entry clerks, caseworkers learn how to expertly translate and input client data to produce decisions that more closely match their interpretation of clients’ needs and welfare laws. The ways in which workers “manipulate the system” to produce a particular decision, though common knowledge among their colleagues, are black boxed to program managers, auditors, and benefits recipients.

Loops, ladders and links: the recursivity of social and machine learning

“…Informational and power asymmetries characteristic of these institutions are often intensified in the process. This is notwithstanding the fact that automated systems’ effects may be tempered by manual work-arounds and other modes of resistance within bureaucracies, such as the practices of frontline welfare workers intervening in automated systems in the interests of their clients, and strategies of foot-dragging and data obfuscation by legal professionals confronting predictive technologies in criminal justice (Raso 2017 ; Brayne and Christin 2020 ).…”

Three understandings of administrative work: discretion, agency, and practice

“…Finally, the use of new technologies such as automation, machine learning and artificial intelligence in public policy delivery has important implications for administrative work and constitutes an important area of research. Through an intensive case study of the effects of Social Assistance Management System (SAMS) software on decision‐making in Ontario’s welfare program, Raso (2017) examines the interaction of caseworker discretion with the software. She explains that SAMS was introduced in 2014 as a managerial‐technical solution to curb caseworkers’ discretion that the Auditor General of Ontario has described as too broad.…”

“…Requiring caseworkers to fit benefit recipients into drop‐down menu categories, SAMS itself generates decisions. Raso (2017) documents that even though new technologies may attempt to curtail caseworker discretion and turn them into data entry clerks, caseworkers learn how to tweak the software and input recipient data to generate decisions that match with their understanding of recipient need and welfare laws. This is an important insight as it shows how the use of decisional software conceals rather than eliminates caseworker discretion.…”

Algorithmic Long-Term Unemployment Risk Assessment in Use: Counselors’ Perceptions and Use Practices

“…In public service practice, the outputs of the models trained by algorithms are usually embedded into software that supports routines relevant to the decision makers and those who implement them. The software, usually referred to as a decision support system, provides information that may support humans in completing part of a task or an entire task by analyzing large volumes of data, making a decision, and prescribing actions verifiable by humans (Gillingham 2019a;Wagner 2019;Raso 2017). The level of task execution completeness may also be referred to as the level of automation.…”