The Promise of Digital Healthcare and Social Services: A Critical Reading of the Socio-Technical Imaginary of Wellbeing Services Counties Strategies
Keywords:
critical data studies, sociotechnical imaginary, welfare services, wellbeing services counties, strategiesAbstract
In the healthcare and social services, efforts have been made to build digital and data-intensive systems and practices that enable as many activities as possible to be transformed into data and made available for knowledge-based management, research, innovation, and business. Anchored in science and technology studies and critical data studies, we ask how wellbeing services counties imagine the future of digital and data-driven solutions in their strategy documents (n = 21). We analyse the strategy documents using the concept of socio-technical imaginary. The concept is based on the idea that imagination is a cultural resource that describes and directs possible futures. Through thematic analysis, we identify two themes: the inevitable future of digital services and cost-effective knowledge-based management. These themes provide a coherent techno-optimistic imaginary on which to build a vision of a digital and data-driven future for wellbeing services counties. We interpret the empirical findings using critical data studies literature.
