What social workers do to compensate digital default

When humans interact with technology, they are often perceived as the weakness of the systems. The expression ”the human factor” emphasises human’s inability to function flawlessly, in relation to technical systems. However, if we instead talked about the ”human contribution” to technology and assume that human is needed for technology to work, it would instead be visible how we actively find solutions to what technical systems are unable to do.

For isn’t it so that humans is the one crucial factor for technology to work? The focal interest of the study is to make visible the “professional contribution”, in relation to digital tools, in social services. In order to achieve our purpose we investigate social secretary’s use of digital tools in financial aid and child protection.

Our aim is to make visible how social secretaries complement digital tools in order to highlight the professional contribution in relation to technology. With theoretical starting points in research on professions and “street-level bureaucrats”, and an ethnographic methodological approach, the study will shed light on professional practice in detail and highlight the knowledge, as well as tacit knowledge, that guides social secretary’s actions in their work, in relation to digital tools.