Public value in the making of automated and datafied welfare futures

Across Europe, the public sector is expanding its efforts to introduce data-driven decision-support and intelligent systems in the administration of welfare. The growing body of research that highlights the impact and harms these systems have on citizens’ lives, raises questions about the guiding ideas, values, and norms that are at the heart of current transformations in welfare. Research in critical data studies contends a silent marketisation of social protection and governance. It implies an intricate entanglement between the procedures and output of service provision on the one hand and the normative outcomes in terms of the well-being and flourishing of society as a whole on the other hand. Thinking with the capabilities approach and buen vivir as well as with the concept of data justice, our paper asks how to conceptualise this relation. It discusses how (in)justice may become a sociomaterial component in automated welfare and emphasises that welfare outcomes and welfare practices, including their procedural aspects, are rather co-produced than just interdependent. We conclude that whether future infrastructures of welfare will create public value or not, depends on the institutional arrangements, policies, and norms built to distribute the emerging benefits and risks equally in society.