ABSTRACT
Digital technologies are changing social work practices in profound ways. Today, digital devices are used by social workers in their everyday work; from assessing social benefit applications digitally, writing pre-formatted investigations and using chatrooms in treatment, to holding digital meetings with colleagues and clients. Digital technology is also utilized as a management instrument. Changing management and organizational traditions have paved the way for using digital devices in order to achieve certain objectives, such as checking the quality of delivered services and controlling the work performed by the social workers. For the social worker, not only the way of interviewing the client is changing; using tick-boxes in assessing peoples’ needs and wishes means that work is taking on new meanings. The digital development makes certain parts of social work transparent, but less is known about how the digital client is represented and constructed. In this chapter, people production and commensuration are used as theoretical concepts to analyze and shed light on this aspect of digitalization.
