Shared values/conflicting logics

Abstract

In this paper, we describe results from fieldwork conducted at a social services site where the workers evaluate citizens' applications for food and medical assistance submitted via an e-government system. These results suggest value tensions that result-not from different stakeholders with different values-but from differences among how stakeholders enact the same shared value in practice. In the remainder of this paper, we unpack the distinct and conflicting interpretations or logics of three shared valuesefficiency, access, and education. In particular, we analyze what happens when social services workers have ideas about what it means to expand access, increase efficiency, and educate the public that conflict with the logics embedded in the e-government system. By distinguishing between overarching values and specific logics, we provide an analytic framework for exploring value tensions as values are enacted in practice.

Working toward Empowering a Community

“…There has been a large body of HCI work in understanding how the nonprofit sector adopts social technologies in their work, from collaborative data system [51] to e-governing portals connecting with communities [50]. As social media becomes a prominent communication channel, studying the use of these platforms during political conflicts reveals how stakeholders cope with and react to debatable issues [4].…”

The Design Fictions of Philanthropic IT

“…In the face of these challenges, there remains significant pressure for the sector to find ways to better integrate these tools in order to "keep up" with technological progress in other sectors. While some researchers have suggested ways of ameliorating these issues through the redesign of specific tools and systems [41,43,44,45,46], a bigger problem is beginning to manifest across the breadth of this research. Beyond the features or designs of particular tools, recent research suggests that the underlying logics and assumptions built into these tools may be more broadly out of alignment with the logics and core values of the nonprofit sector [14,22,42,43,44,45].…”

“…While some researchers have suggested ways of ameliorating these issues through the redesign of specific tools and systems [41,43,44,45,46], a bigger problem is beginning to manifest across the breadth of this research. Beyond the features or designs of particular tools, recent research suggests that the underlying logics and assumptions built into these tools may be more broadly out of alignment with the logics and core values of the nonprofit sector [14,22,42,43,44,45]. For example, charity-based approaches to philanthropic IT fail to support the care work that characterizes everyday philanthropy [22]; new tools for "micro-volunteering" stand in contrast to the "philosophies" of volunteer coordinators [45]; and the deployment of electronic health record in a volunteer-based clinic was plagued by an underlying "mismatch between the technological and human infrastructures" which led "to diminished volunteer roles, an increased workload for paid employees, and a negative impact on the quality of patient care" [42].…”

“…In line with other HCI research in this area, our prior research centered on examining philanthropic practice and the user experiences of philanthropic IT systems (e.g., [41,43,44,45,46]). In this paper, we take a markedly different approach, stepping back from the moment of use to examine the anticipatory discourse that shapes the user experience before and beyond the moment of use (see [7,23,49]).…”

Resisting Resolution: Enterprise Civic Systems Meet Community Organizing

“…One of the enduring questions of smart cities, which goes back much further to early visions of how computation would impact policy making and governance, is what does it take embed computing such that it can bridge the world of professional civil servants who rely on enterprise-grade platforms to carry out their work in the world of community groups with constrained technical expertise and capacities? As Voida et al have pointed out previously, it is not just that there might be a gap in technical expertise, but that there is also often a gap in the organizing principles-or logics-that shape how professionals adopt new computing capabilities versus how a community group might adopt those very same capabilities [6]. These gaps, along with misaligned incentive structures [7], make for enduring challenges in developing multi-stakeholder coalitions that bridge the different organizational worlds of civic work.…”