Digital Public Employment Services in Action.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Demazière, Didier.

Contributor:

Griffin, Ray.

Leschke, Janine.

Hansen, Magnus Paulsen.

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource (0 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Bristol : Policy Press, 2025.

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

This book offers a comprehensive exploration of the ongoing digital transformation of public employment services (PES) – the most radical remaking of the welfare state in a generation. As PES shift from analogue to fully digitised services, this volume bridges the gap between technology, policy and frontline service provision. It provides a well-rounded analysis of the practical opportunities and challenges posed by digital welfare, reconnecting and reconciling technical possibilities and political ambitions with what is socially necessary as welfare systems undergo radical change.

Contents:

Front Cover

Digital Public Employment Services in Action

Copyright Page

Dedication

Table of Contents

List of figures and tables

Notes on contributors

1 Introduction

A third age of public employment services

Digital firsts

Everything at stake

References

2 From politics to code: the unfolding of EU digital aspirations into practice

Introduction

Digital transformation of public services

Digital transformation of public employment services

Research design

Data collection and analysis

Findings

Statistical profiling: the Probability of Exit algorithm in Ireland as a state apparatus

Public employment services statistical profiling: a problematic approach

Probability of Exit statistical profiling algorithm and its social life

Conclusion

3 Algorithmic profiling of the unemployed

Datafication

Method

Reviewing the archetypical profiling algorithms

Mathematical visions of a person

Generic structure long-term unemployed sorting/profiling algorithms

Inaccuracy

Administrative context

Sociological impacts

Towards some concluding reflections

4 The making of an unemployed population

Extracting data from people: censusing people

Extracting data from people: the Labour Force Survey

Addressing the labour market through census questions

Data extraction and cleaning

Making a population out of data

Discussion

5 Open inquiry into disruptive digital services

Background and context

Digital disruption and government services

Early advances into digital public employment services

Call to action

A HECAT framework for user-.centred disruptive technologies

Design process

Phase 1: Scoping and benchmarking the digital landscape of public employment services.

Sociological investigation

Technological investigation

Identifying challenges

Closed innovation

Limited user engagement

Data availability

Overcoming the challenges

Phase 2: Ideation and discovery

Iterative process

Phase 3: Piloting 1

Expert panels

Phase 4: Iterative refinement

Phase 5: Piloting 2

Results and observations

A framework for next generation user-centred disruptive technologies in public employment services

6 Legal considerations for algorithm development

Proposal for a model for ensuring legality

Legal requirements

AI Act

GDPR

Principles of data protection

Choice of legal basis

Human rights law and administrative law

Impact assessment

Proportionality

Fairness

Data assessment

Transparency

7 Labour market data, job matching and job quality

Online matching platforms and profiling tools do not take into account job quality

Job matching tools

Profiling tools

The output variable of current profiling tools, first drawbacks

The need for a platform that considers job quality

From the current practice to our vision: accounting for multidimensional job quality

Job quality: definitions and social sciences traditions

Multidimensional job quality indices as inspirations

The job quality wishes of unemployed and job quality at re-employment

Job quality in the context of unemployment and job seeking

Wish list of job quality dimensions and data sources for the MyLabourMarket tool

Operationalisation through MyLabourMarket platform

8 Looking for a job: what types of information matter to jobseekers?

The imposition of indisputable matter of course

Negotiating credible knowledge.

Sign-up to shared beliefs

9 Digitising exclusion: the challenges of modern unemployment and public employment service delivery

Methodology

Meeting unemployment through street-level bureaucracy

What policy says versus what is done

Policy making: 'bottom-up' perspective

Mass processing

Management of 'sticky problems'

Personal discretion

Digital impacts on individual discretion

Exclusions at 'street and screen (digital) level'

Street level

Screen (digital) level

10 Co-designing digital services with service users, caseworkers and senior policy makers: the affordance and limitations of expert panels

The political and ethical challenges of co-design

Public employment service digitisation and co-design

Considering scenarios

Analysis: the imagined unemployed in digital services

Reflections on co-designing

11 Digital or human support for the unemployed? Profiling tools and advisers at work in the French public employment services

Statistical profiling in France: a helpful tool for advisers?

Profiling tools within advisers' workplace environments

Two ways advisers use profiling in their day-to-day work

12 Cyborg futures of care and welfare: acceptance and resistance of digital public employment services technologies as competent caregiver

Care and public employment services

Practices of care: on method and data

Assemblages of caring practice

Street-level bureaucrats as competent caregivers

Artificial intelligence, algorithms and profiling tools as competent caregiver

Care receivers

Assemblages of humans and technology

On cyborg futures

References.

13 Exploring omni-channel welfare experiences in unemployment services

Digitalisation of public employment services

Public service omni-channel

Omni-.channel and the Irish case

Realities of the unemployed experience in Ireland

'If it's not broke, don't fix it'

Consistency of experiences

Personalisation of services

Challenges of omni-channel welfare provision in Ireland

Risk of exclusion

Rural service users

Disarray with current services

14 Profiling and subjectification of unemployed people: exploring the case of Slovenian public employment services

Theoretical approach: governing unemployed people through digital technologies

Methods

Management level

The built-in promises of profiling: what can profiling do?

The built-in limitations: what profiling cannot do

Counsellor level

Saving resources

Making citizens anxious or motivated?

Moulding labour market expectations and reality checks

Unemployed people

Getting all kinds of information: the good, the bad, the ugly

Relying on labour market information

Concluding discussion

15 Conclusion

So, what is to be done? A manifesto for digital PES

Starting by unpacking the citizen's experience

Back to first principles with a deep understanding of the welfare state and its institutional context

Beyond automating existing services

From target groups to inclusive personalisation

Embracing interdisciplinary and inclusive research for digital public employment services

Index.

Notes:

This eBook is made available Open Access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

1-4473-7189-5

OCLC:

1517398575