Digital social security futures: disciplinary or relational?

This is a summary of my brand new essay, part of the British Academy’s Digital Society programme series. You can read the full essay here, and find out more about their programme here.

I wrote the bulk of the essay back in March, before the election was called and the renewed debate / excitement / hype / cynicism about digital public services started. Despite this altered context, my central arguments remain unchanged and the question of future directions feels more important than ever.

Digital public services are flavour of the month (currently September 2024) and look set to be so for the foreseeable future. The established direction of travel for the digital welfare state, exemplified in Universal Credit, is based on rules, compliance, surveillance and discipline. In contrast, relational public services are emerging which centre trust, human relationships, choice and agency for the individual.

In my essay, I contrast disciplinary digital social security and relational models, ask whether Universal Credit could adopt relational principles within its digital framework, and whether technology can be a tool for relational working.

Digitisation is no longer an add-on to the UK welfare state and public services, it is thoroughly integrated. This is perhaps most completely realised in Universal Credit (UC), the main working-age benefit for people who are out of work or in low paid employment.

UC is digital first - most claims are made online, and the majority of communication between claimant and DWP is via the online portal. Many decisions and calculations are made automatically, and AI is being used to identify potential fraud as well as support frontline staff. Being primarily digital rather than paper-based has undoubtedly brought some benefits: in the pandemic for example online applications meant the huge upsurge in demand could be dealt with relatively quickly.

However, UC digitisation and automation cannot be understood separately from the underlying policy goals of our social security system: welfare reform policy has for decades focused on shrinking budgets, reducing claimant numbers and forcing behaviour change through conditionality and sanctions. Digitised social security is as much about claimant surveillance and discipline as it is about efficiency and convenience.

Turning claimant identities into data flattens complexity, can exclude people and replicate bias. UC relies on ongoing surveillance to check eligibility, payment amounts, and compliance with conditions; this is incompatible with individual’s privacy. When mistakes occur, which they inevitably do, claimants are up against a system which lacks transparency by design, and which puts all the responsibility on individuals rather than acknowledging that the system might be flawed.

It knows us intimately through our data, and yet is unknowable to us.

Despite the new government making positive noises about the future of DWP, the rather unquestioning enthusiasm for AI in public services suggests that principles such as surveillance and compliance are going to persist.

Somewhat in parallel, recognition of relational practice is growing within public services and the third sector. Premised on the importance of relationships not processes, choice not coercion, and trust rather than suspicion, relational models are an important counterpoint to the discipline-focused model of UC.

Relational services work with whole households and communities, and don’t break people down into separate siloed ‘problems’ but acknowledge and work with complexity. They prioritise the relationships between people and services, and within communities; these relationships are both a feature of the model and also one of their primary means of operation.

Could digital social security embrace relational principles? Or is there a fundamental mismatch between the standardisation and rules required for digitised systems and the person-centred relational approach?

Technology is considered by some to be antithetical to relational working; at best it could free up practitioner time through automating transactional processes. Others see potential for a more integrated approach, in which technology helps relational services to understand more about people, capture learning and improve delivery.

There is much more to uncover about the potential of technology in enabling relational working, and the integration of relational principles in the digital welfare state. There are currently limited examples of how the digital and the relational interact - one of my hopes is for more research into how technology can enable and enhance co-design, person-centred decision making, holistic support, building trust, relationships and social capital, and which parts of a relational system could be digitised and automated without losing its fundamental relational nature. 

Read the full essay here, and please get in touch to tell me your thoughts, let me know about digital / relational research and practice that I might have missed, and if you’d like to work together on exploring the topic further.