From discretion to algorithms

Digitization-ready legislation and the automation of administrative work processes

Abstract

An ongoing, ambitious digitization agenda is currently transforming Danish public organizations as digitization-ready legislation is becoming a cornerstone in organizational development projects. ‘Digitization- ready legislation’ refers to the practice of vetting existing and new laws to make them simpler and unambiguous with the aim of allowing automation. In principle, robots are meant to do routine administrative work to save resources – but this has the consequence that more routine tasks need to be created across organizations by reducing legislative elements, which otherwise demand professional discretion. We show how digitization-ready legislation depends on the reduction of discretion in administrative work processes, through the simultaneous reorganization of work, legislation, and development of digital solutions. The article challenges the distinctions between ideas, policy making, legislation, technology implementation and organizational practice often assumed in macro studies of digitization. Through an empirical study based on documents and interviews with managers across the public sector, we show how these elements are associated in networks, and we discuss the work done to substitute more fragile elements (humans) with more solid elements (robots). Throughout the material, humans are portrayed as a source of mistakes, slow case processing and problematic subjective bias that may result delays or unfair treatment. The article points out how the substitution of humans with robots create new frailties in networks, for instance when employees have to compensate for mistakes made in automatically generated decisions, when they have to help citizens help themselves on digital self-service platforms, or when they have to redefine their tasks.