Screen-level bureaucrats in the age of algorithms. An ethnographic study of algorithmically supported public service workers in the Netherlands Police

IF 1.3 Q2 INFORMATION SCIENCE & LIBRARY SCIENCE
Carlos Soares, S. Grimmelikhuijsen, Albert Meijer
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引用次数: 0

Abstract

Algorithms are rapidly transforming government bureaucracies. The implications of this transformation for the work of public service employees are not yet well understood. So far, the literature has mostly neglected the use of algorithms by these “screen-level bureaucrats”, and this constitutes a major gap in our knowledge about how algorithms affect bureaucracies. To understand the work of screen-level bureaucrats and to explore how they actively engage with algorithmic software to support their assessment of online fraud, we analyzed 45 hours of observations and 12 in-depth interviews at the Netherlands Police. We employ a socio-material perspective to analyze the dynamics between screen-level bureaucrats and algorithms. We conclude that for administrative tasks, algorithms help screen-level bureaucrats to perform their work by providing structured data and allowing them to focus more on assessments which need a nuanced judgement. At the same time, algorithmic advice in a decision-making task is simply ignored by the screen-level bureaucrats as they predominantly rely on their professional judgement in the assessment of online fraud reports. This highlights the need to further investigate how an algorithm should not only provide accurate advice to the screen-level bureaucrats but also convince them to follow it.
算法时代的屏幕级官僚。对荷兰警务人员算法支持的人种学研究
算法正在迅速改变政府机构。这种变革对公务人员工作的影响尚未得到很好的理解。迄今为止,文献大多忽视了这些 "屏幕级官僚 "对算法的使用,这构成了我们对算法如何影响官僚机构的认识上的一大空白。为了了解 "屏幕级官僚 "的工作,并探索他们如何积极使用算法软件来支持其对网络欺诈的评估,我们分析了在荷兰警方进行的 45 个小时的观察和 12 次深入访谈。我们采用社会物质视角分析了屏幕级官僚与算法之间的动态关系。我们的结论是,在行政任务方面,算法通过提供结构化数据,帮助屏幕级官僚完成工作,使他们能够更加专注于需要细微判断的评估。与此同时,决策任务中的算法建议却被幕僚们忽略,因为他们在评估网上欺诈报告时主要依靠自己的专业判断。这凸显了进一步研究算法如何不仅向屏幕级官僚提供准确建议,而且说服他们遵循建议的必要性。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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来源期刊
Information Polity
Information Polity INFORMATION SCIENCE & LIBRARY SCIENCE-
CiteScore
3.30
自引率
10.00%
发文量
42
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