Is the Digital Welfare State Fair?

Abstract

One of the most profound shifts seen in governments around the world in recent years is the emergence of the digital welfare state. This transformation has seen the welfare state, which came of age in the 20th Century, increasingly dependent on digitalised, automated, and data-driven forms of public administration, which are fundamentally altering the nature of welfare provision itself. This transition raises a fundamental question: what does fair process look like in this new welfare state? Using new datasets, this lecture will explore how public officials, welfare claimants, and welfare rights advisors reason about the processes of the UK’s flagship social security programme, Universal Credit-one of the most sophisticated digital welfare systems anywhere in the world. It will show that, while the new era of digital welfare is characterised by a paradigmatic, shared intention to put claimants' preferences at the heart of how processes are designed and operated, the logic of what constitutes a fair process for claimants diverges in important ways between officials, claimants, and advisors. The lecture will make the case that a greater appreciation of these "process logics," the perspectives from which they derive, and where and how they differ, can shed valuable light on tensions within and disagreements about fair process in the digital welfare state.  

This lecture is free and open to all. Registration is not required to attend in person.