[jaabe]

I work in the public sector, so we never do evil things like that. I do often wonder if we’re digitizing too much.

Like I pay for public transportation (I’m Danish, we have great public transportation) with an App, which is nice and all, but the user experience is actually worse than when it was just a piece of paper.

We’ve saved the public billions by making some processes easier, but we’ve also digitised a lot of stuff because there was (is) this general idea that digitisation is always better, and it’s just not. Especially not from a user perspective, if you’re a social worker you now have to know how to use 5-10 complicated and error prone IT systems, on top of your regular job, and we just keep on adding more. I mean,those 5-10 systems are linked to their work on top of that there are another 5-10 adiministrative systems and maybe 50 different digital forms.

None of these systems are necessary mind you, 30 years ago, almost none of them existed and our social workers performed better for less money back then.

Overall digitisation has been a benefit though. We’ve managed to eliminate a lot of repetition, we’ve made the total public sector cheaper and we’ve increased the overall quality of our services, but from a user perspective things have mostly deteriorated.

I have no idea how to fix it either.

[Dahoon]

I'm not sure I agree that the public sector doesn't do what you call evil things. Like right now in Denmark there are the whole watching every move everyone make via logging phones even though the EU says it is illegal. There's also the thing with forcing children to answer questionnaires that will likely be in the system for... ever basically.

Lots of public sector sites also use Facebook and have Google analytics on their site, so they partake in what Facebook does. Maybe not evil but not good either.

[jaabe]

I agree, I should probably have specified which part of the public sector I was in. At a municipal level we try not to do evil things.

[antpls]

> Especially not from a user perspective, if you’re a social worker you now have to know how to use 5-10 complicated and error prone IT systems, on top of your regular job, and we just keep on adding more. I mean,those 5-10 systems are linked to their work on top of that there are another 5-10 adiministrative systems and maybe 50 different digital forms.

The workers are users of those IT systems, but not the end-users of the social services. Those workers' jobs shifted in nature. Their new work is to interact with numerous different IT systems to provide a social service. In the long term, all those workers are currently gathering data that will help to build a new digital social service which won't have those inefficiencies. They work toward the transition to a "better" digital world for the end-users of the social service.

> None of these systems are necessary mind you, 30 years ago, almost none of them existed and our social workers performed better for less money back then.

"better for less money" : According to what sources? What indicators?

> but from a user perspective things have mostly deteriorated.

Same questions, from the end-users perspective of the social services. What indicators are you using?

We could imagine providing a social service without human social workers at all, enabled by digitization, like in all other sectors.

[jaabe]

> “better for less money" : According to what sources? What indicators?

I’m tempted to say “pick one”. Workers are less satisfied, more stressed and less efficient. Citizens are less satisfied and receive a lower quality of service. Financially it depends, on paper it’s better but if you add in the cost of sick days and the impact of lower citizen life quality has on society, then a lot of digitisation has been disastrous.

Not all of it, mind you, just some of it.

[antpls]

Again, you don't give any sources or references about what you are stating.

If I can chose an indicator, then I pick my personal experience. I live in Europe and I'm happy with the digital experience of social services I have. I'm 28 years old so I experienced a bit of the pre-internet administrative era and digitization is definitively an improvement. Oftentimes, processes are simplified and can be done remotely, which is definitively a net plus for all disabled people.

> Workers are less satisfied, more stressed and less efficient.

Digitization must be accompanied with change management, and the society's laws must be adapted to a digitized society. In my personal opinion, we should develop idea such as Universal Basic Income, and not make "work" as mandatory as it was. I agree with you that operating everyday administrative softwares isn't a fulfilling job to everyone.