Relational digital futures

A quick post today, reflecting on a couple of things.

Last week, Jeni Tennison, Executive Director of Connected by Data, put a call out on Bluesky for thoughts about what the new ‘digital centre’ of government in DSIT should do, and how. She got a LOAD of responses and published a blogpost of her initial reflections and the big themes emerging from the submissions she received.

I loved this bullet point in the section about how the government wants to approach public services:

“How does this Government want to treat the public? Autocratically? In partnership with them? In service to them? As if the public is basically honest or basically fraudulent? As customers or as citizens? Are we aiming for something relational or transactional?”

As someone whose primary interest is how technology affects society (and vice versa) this set of questions is at the heart of my concerns about the government approach to digital public services. Technology as a policy instrument is not neutral: it delivers the policy objectives of the minister(s) and government that set it in motion. We can see this clearly in things like Universal Credit, and the now scrapped Home Office algorithm.

When the default position is that people are out to cheat the system, one of the primary aims of digitised services is to gatekeep, monitor and ration. This sets up an antagonistic dynamic between service and user, rather than one in which the service is truly in service to the user. I’m not saying that there should be no controls or safeguards to reduce the risk of fraud or misuse, but having that as a starting point is in my view fundamentally flawed.

Rather, digital public services should start from a point of trust and cooperation, and an assumption that users want agency and have rights. In other words, work on relational principles. Relational models start from a place of mutual trust, and are responsive to the needs of the individual.

The extent to which these principles are compatible with national public services is really untested right now. As I explore in my essay Digital Social Security: Towards Disciplinary or Relational Futures?, there are some big questions to explore:

Is there a fundamental mismatch between the standardisation and rules required for digitised systems and something that addresses each person as an individual?

Is technology a barrier to relational work or a tool for its design and implementation?

Is technology enabler rather than gatekeeper, a facilitator or an end in and of itself?

My feeling is that there is a role for technology in relational working, and much to learn from relational models in how government plans and delivers its digital vision. There is much more research to be done to understand how technology can enable and enhance co-design, person-centred decision making, holistic support, and building trust, relationships and social capital.

If you’re interested in or already working on any of these topics please get in touch.