29.4. REPAIR Dialogues with Janne Petroons

Doctoral Researcher Janne Petroons (KU Leuven) will deliver an online presentation titled From Code to Context: the promised harmonizing effects of algorithmic decision-making in the digital welfare state on April 29, from 9:00 to 10:00 (EET).

Attend the session via Zoom:

From Code to Context: the promised harmonizing effects of algorithmic decision-making in the digital welfare state

Across welfare states, algorithmic decision-making (ADM) is increasingly introduced to support eligibility assessments. ADM is often presented as a tool to harmonize these decisions. However, in the case of the Belgian REDI algorithm, used to assess eligibility for so-called ‘additional support’, the anticipated harmonizing effects were only partially realised. In this presentation, based on published work and work-in-progress, Janne Petroons covers why that was the case. She draws on data from an online survey, policy guidelines of more than 80 local welfare organisations, and interviews with 40 respondents. Doing so, she illustrates the risks of framing ADM as merely a policy instrument, and proposes a constructivist approach to better understand how such systems interact with organisational contexts in welfare governance.You can find a picture in the attachment.

Janne Petroons is a doctoral researcher in Social Sciences and Law at KU Leuven, Belgium. She is affiliated with ReSPOND, at the Centre for Sociological Research (CeSO) and with the Centre for IT and IP Law (CiTiP). In her research, she focuses on the digital welfare state from a socio-legal perspective.