Towards digital dole parole: A review of digital self‐service initiatives in Australian employment services

Abstract

This article reviews developments in digital self‐servicing in Australian employment services. The article draws on program implementation documentation to describe recent digital self‐service initiatives known as the Targeted Compliance Framework and the Online/New Employment Services Trials. The term “digital dole parole” is used to signify the transfer of employment services supervision onto the new digital dashboard through which job seekers have become responsible for reporting attendances at activities and job search and to monitor their own “compliance”. These initiatives are the technologies that will underpin the shift to digital employment services in the New Employment Service model. This shift will radically change the employment services quasi‐market, and the street‐level delivery of labour market programmes. As these are significant shifts in the location of administrative power and street‐level discretion, the article identifies opportunities for future scholarship in this new age of “digital dole parole”.

Can Robots Understand Welfare? Exploring Machine Bureaucracies in Welfare-to-Work

“…In Australia, frontline staff have been obligated since 2003 to use a prescribed IT system for recording all client interactions, including how jobseekers are meeting their mutual obligations. The level of employment support jobseekers are eligible for in Australia is also largely determined by a profiling instrument, the Job Seeker Classification Instrument (JSCI), which is administered by entering responses into a software package that generates a statistical estimate of jobseekers’ probability of long-term unemployment (Casey, 2021). This ubiquitous use of computer systems is emblematic of what Bovens and Zouridis describe as ‘screen-level’ bureaucracy: a form of administration in which contacts with clients ‘always run through or in the presence of a computer screen’ (2002: 177).…”

“…While ADM is used for claims processing in several countries, Australia’s proposed online employment service is almost a unique example of welfare-to-work programmes being delivered via a machine bureaucracy. Under the model, which Casey (2021) likens to ‘digital dole parole’, jobseekers assessed as ‘job-ready’ will have access to a ‘jobseeker dashboard’ via an app and government website. The entire suite of employment support services will be contained within this dashboard, which will also be used to verify claimants’ compliance with mutual obligations.…”

“…The entire suite of employment support services will be contained within this dashboard, which will also be used to verify claimants’ compliance with mutual obligations. These requirements will be detailed in digital job plans that will be generated based on pre-determined rules ‘hard-wired into the system’ (Casey, 2021: 7). If jobseekers fail to verify how they are fulfilling their job plan, demerit points will be automatically applied, triggering sanctions at specific thresholds and for certain breaches (e.g., missing job interviews).…”

“…However, this method of filtering discretion through market governance instruments is now being eclipsed by a new project of digitising discretion – with Australia, again, at the vanguard of reform. Since 2018, it has been piloting an online employment services model that is due to be rolled out from mid-2022 (Casey, 2021). While ‘digitalised welfare’ (Coles-Kemp et al, 2020: 177) in the form of delivering benefits via online applications is a feature of welfare administration in numerous countries, what sets the Australian experiment apart is the proposal to fully automate PES for most claimants, who will now self-manage their own forms of activation under the watchful eye of algorithms rather than the direct gaze of advisors.…”

Introduction to the Special Issue on Big Data and Social Policy in Australia

“…People living in poverty are disproportionately affected by the dilemmas created by government use of big data. Their lives are monitored and scrutinised with greater intensity (Fowkes, 2020; Casey, 2021). They are more likely to be reliant on public provisioning and disproportionately visible in the records of criminal justice institutions.…”