Welfare after Digitalization

The project ‘Welfare after Digitalization’ (WaD) examines the many and varied consequences of public sector digitization in Denmark. 

The WaD-project focuses on four different welfare areas: Law enforcement, primary education, healthcare, and local government. The assumption is that an analysis of the complex relationships between the institutional values, digital affordances and politics of these welfare sectors will help uncover new insights about how both citizens and professionals think about and experience welfare provision. The analyses will contribute to a deeper understanding of the nature of public sector digitalisation, its consequences across different sectors, while also pointing to welfare areas in particular need of attention in the coming years.

WaD seeks to continue building a strong Danish research front on the numerous topics related to digitalization-in-practice, citizenship, platform economies, governance and accountability in STS, anthropology, communication and organization studies. Through different means of contrasting and comparing across sectors, WaD will be the first major research project to undertake a comprehensive study of welfare in practice, and of its consequences for citizens’ relations to welfare institutions in a digitalized state.