Understanding and reducing the negative effects of digitisation on claimants’ access to online social protection services through the design of citizen-controlled digital tools

Abstract

Government service delivery is increasingly shifting online in an effort to increase adoption and efficiency, but citizens have not been central to their design, and strategies to correct difficulties for citizens often address the problem from the perspective of user inadequacies. These matters are particularly pertinent to implementing social protection policies supporting those with higher levels of socio-economic deprivation, who may be in precarious situations, and who are among those most digitally-excluded. This makes it especially important to consider not only the intended beneficial outcomes citizens gain from the public services, but to understand all the negative effects (harms) of doing so likewise, for more responsible innovation. This thesis focuses on the digitisation design choices made implementing the UK’s Welfare Reform Act1 through two Case Studies of large-scale public services: Universal Credit (UC) and Personal Independence Payment (PIP). Interviews and surveys gather data for thematic analysis to explore claimant-articulated digital-related harms incurred by gaining and sustaining access, and how those harms are affected by small changes to the system. With an improved understanding of participants’ own lived digital experiences, two citizen-controlled prototype digital tools which reduce harms were designed and evaluated to generate further knowledge about how harms arise in service ecosystems. This thesis reveals a disjoint between people’s lives and the scope and features of digitised services, with arbitrary barriers and impermeable boundaries, causing harms which exacerbate access problems, in addition to harms caused by the legislation and approach. This identifies a need for digitised service provision to be more porous, acknowledging and supporting citizens’ own wider ecosystems, to endow an improved digital welfare state in which citizens’ interests are prioritised. The contributions of this thesis are empirical insights into harms, an adapted systematic method of harm enumeration, and knowledge for more inclusive design of services for this population.