DATAGOV Blog

On February 12 and 13, we had the opportunity to present our work at the “Understanding and Reimagining the Digital Welfare State” workshop at Oslo Metropolitan University. Over two days, scholars examined how welfare systems are increasingly shaped by data infrastructure and algorithmic decision-making. What emerged from our discussions and presentations were not singular narratives of dystopia or efficiency, but tensions between care and control, personalization and automation, inclusion and compulsion.

We presented our work-in-progress, “No Opting Out: The Structural Dependency of Digital Welfare Infrastructures.” Our starting point is simple but problematic: As welfare becomes digital-by-default, access to social rights increasingly depends on maintaining a digital identity. Whether through biometric authentication, online portals, or interoperable databases, welfare infrastructures now require citizens to remain digitally visible.

This raises two core questions: Do citizens still have the right to disappear digitally when requiring welfare? Or has access to care become conditional on constant digital legibility to the state?

The discussions were incredibly generative. Several papers helped us sharpen our thinking about compulsion and inequality. One presentation on energy cybersecurity argued that digital welfare depends not only on software and algorithms, but also on electricity grids and digital infrastructures that are themselves vulnerable and increasingly privatized. Another paper on automated welfare in Norway introduced the concept of the “install base”: Digital systems build on pre-existing architectures that constrain what can be changed. Automation does not start from scratch; it scales what is already there.

A recurring theme was structural injustice. Presentations on algorithmic discrimination drew on Iris Marion Young and others to argue that automation does not merely produce individual errors, but scales existing inequalities. When welfare is automated, what exactly is being scaled? Risk categories? Fraud suspicion? Administrative convenience? The question resonated strongly with our own argument about mandatory digital identity and predatory inclusion.

We were particularly struck by discussions of the right (not) to use the Internet. Cases from Belgium and Switzerland show that analog alternatives can be constitutionally protected, though often in fragmented ways. These examples complicate the assumption that digitalization is inevitable. They also provide comparative hooks for our own work across the EU (EU Digital Identity Wallet), India (Aadhaar), and Brazil (Bolsa Família).

The plenary sessions pushed us methodologically. How do we study automated welfare without reproducing its abstractions? Suggestions ranged from design-thinking workshops and participatory methods to collective GDPR access requests and freedom-of-information strategies.

Perhaps the most important takeaway was this: Resistance is not only about opting out. It is also about surviving within the system. From social media tutorials on navigating faulty portals to everyday coping tactics that never make it into policy debates, citizens actively negotiate digital welfare infrastructures.

Oslo made clear that the digital welfare state is not just about technology. It is about the reconfiguration of citizen-state relations, new temporal mandates, shifting accountability, and expanding data dependencies. As welfare becomes conditional on digital visibility, the core political question remains: Who bears the burden of adaptation, and who gets to remain invisible?