Administrative Burden in Digital Self-Service: An Empirical Study About Citizens in Need of Financial Assistance

The aim of this paper is to investigate what challenges arise for
vulnerable citizens when welfare service provision is digitalized. We analyze the
challenges citizens experience in the application process using the theoretical
concept of administrative burden., i.e., learning-, compliance-, and psychological costs imposed on the citizen by policy implementation. The financial assistance service provided by the Norwegian Labor and Welfare Administration (NAV) is our empirical example. Our results show that digitalizing financial assistance creates new administrative burdens for vulnerable citizens. While frontline workers offer important help to citizens in the application process, they can also impose additional burdens on the citizen. Our study contributes with empirically grounded insights on the administrative burdens related to digital self-service, which causes citizens to turn to frontline workers for support. We offer a theoretical contribution by linking digitalization and administrative burden.