Working with Algorithmic Colleagues: Expectations and Experiences of Automated Decision-Making

Technologies of automation are increasingly transforming organisations across the world. Automation is no longer exclusively about making things; it frequently involves making decisions. Automated Decision-Making (ADM) is implemented in organisations to foster efficiency, productivity, and precision.

Lately, instances of automation in public administration have attracted considerable attention in Sweden.

Roughly twenty municipalities have implemented ADM, and critics have raised their voices against ADM as a threat to professional practice.

Although studies have pointed out how these changes might challenge public administration, no research exists that engages with the social dynamics of ADM implementation, from the design of ADM systems to policymaking about their integration, to how it feels to work with ADM as an ’algorithmic colleague.’ This multi-sited (individual) ethnographic project responds to this gap by studying expectations and experiences of ADM across engineers/service designers, policymakers and professionals in public administration.

The project builds on extensive fieldwork (21 weeks) at public administrative bodies that have implemented ADM, along with their contracted IT companies, in Skåne, Gothenburg and Stockholm.

Putting power relations and potential friction between stakeholders on different levels under scrutiny, this project produces essential and novel knowledge about the ongoing development toward a ´smarter´ public administration.