Integrity Versus Ideology in Automated Assessment: The Jobseeker Snapshot

This article analyses the entanglement of political ideology and digitalisation in the Australian approach to online assessment of claims for income security, with a focus on job seeker classification. In the Australian social security system, the Job Seeker Classification Instrument (JSCI) has been used to screen and ‘score’ income security claimants, to estimate the likelihood of their remaining on income security payments 12 months after their initial claim and to direct claimants into different forms of employment services support. After two decades of use, the JSCI was ‘digitalised’ as the Job Seeker Snapshot. A socio-technical analysis of this case of digital conversion illuminates how classification incorporates political-ideological beliefs about the causes of long-term unemployment and of the desirability of intervention. It identifies the implications of ideological interoperability for system integrity, both across and within systems, and underlines the importance of a historical perspective in studies of the digitalisation of welfare systems.