tandfonline.com – Suing the algorithm: the mundanization of automated decision-making in public services through litigation

ABSTRACT

Automated decision-making using algorithmic systems is increasingly being introduced in the public sector constituting one important pillar in the emergence of the digital welfare state. Promising more efficiency and fairer decisions in public services, repetitive tasks of processing applications and records are, for example, delegated to fairly simple rule-based algorithms. Taking this growing trend of delegating decisions to algorithmic systems in Sweden as a starting point, the article discusses two litigation cases about fully automated decision-making in the Swedish municipality of Trelleborg. Based on analyzing court rulings, exchanges with the Parliamentary Ombudsmen and in-depth interviews, the article shows how different, partly conflicting definitions of what automated decision-making in social services is and does, are negotiated between the municipality, a union for social workers and civil servants and journalists. Describing this negotiation process as mundanization, the article engages with the question how socio-technical imaginaries are established and stabilized.