On data discipline, citizen care records, and rehabilitation work

Abstract

Reporting from an ethnographic study on municipal welfare provision, we focus on care workers’ “data discipline” when engaging in result-documentation within rehabilitation work. We show how the care workers’ own approach to result- documentation is a different kind of “data discipline” than the one called for by municipal management and supplemented by the digital care record. To unfold the analysis we draw on insights from Science and Technology Studies and Computer Supported Cooperative Work. We conclude the paper arguing that “data discipline” is practiced by care workers, they, however, engage in a different kind of data discipline.