Edward Elgar Publishing Digitalization, Data and Welfare: Sociotechnical Approaches to Service Delivery

This insightful book investigates the growing use of digital technologies to support welfare provision and examines which digital tools can have the greatest impact. It explores how these technologies influence and are influenced by social and cultural relations, working life, education, healthcare, markets, and organizations. Vasilis Galis and Vasileios-Spyridon Vlassis bring together renowned experts who analyze digital technologies for welfare provision as sociotechnical phenomena, that is, the welfare state is mutually constructed by welfare practices and digital technologies, an outcome of organizational reconfiguration, political–economic visions, and socio-technical imaginaries. They demonstrate that digitalization is not simply a question of implementing digital technologies but also an introduction of new governmental ideas that transform both the public sector and its services as well as inter-state and state-society relations. The book explores how the rapid implementation of digital tools in the provision of welfare services is bringing fundamental changes to welfare and provides experienced-based accounts of the transformations occurring in public service work. Digitalization, Data and Welfare is an essential resource for students and academics in welfare studies. Its practical insights into inter-state and state-society relations will also greatly benefit welfare policymakers and practitioners in innovation, science and technology.