Who cares about data? Data care arrangements in everyday organisational practice

ABSTRACT

The increasing datafication of social life has led to a growing body of research on data work which focusses on new data practices like self-tracking, new professions like data analysts or new occupational roles. In these new types of data work, people develop strong affective relations to data, and caring for data (quality) is key. This attention to ‘spectacular’ data work however leads to an important oversight: Much of the data work in everyday organisational practice is done by workers ‘somehow’, in addition to and alongside their existing tasks. This article sets out to better understand this mundane data work. It asks: Why and how do people in organisations care for data? Based on two qualitative case studies, we present the concept of data care arrangements. Data care arrangements are configured through the ascription of values to (specific) data sets and the work of generating, maintaining, and repairing data. This data care work is not necessarily homogeneous in organised settings but can become stabilised in data care arrangements. Thus, the notion of data care arrangements underlines that data in everyday organisational practice are not an object of care per se, but that data care is an accomplishment.

KEYWORDS:

• Data care work
• datafication
• social work
• welfare
• education
• data work

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The project "Digital Cases" was funded by the VolkswagenStiftung between 2019 and 2025.

2 The project "DATAFIED" was funded by the Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung between 2018 and 2022.

3 As the study is undertaken anonymously, IMPACT is a pseudonym.

4 The social workers cannot rely on scanning services or secretaries in the office. Additional dedicated organisational roles for data work, such as typists, no longer exist.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung: [grant no 01JD1803A]; Volkswagen Foundation. The authors acknowledge the financial support by the University of Graz for the open access costs.

Notes on contributors

Juliane Jarke

Juliane Jarke is Professor of Digital Societies at the University of Graz. Her research attends to the increasing importance of digital data and algorithmic systems in the public sector, education and for ageing populations. She has a background in computer science, philosophy, and science and technology studies (STS). email: [email protected]

Stefanie Büchner

Stefanie Büchner is Professor for Digital Societies at the Institute of Sociology at the University of Hannover. She leads the Freigeist research group ‘Digital Cases’, which compares datafication and digitisation processes in different types of organisations. Her work focuses on the mutual interactions of organisations, professions, and technology. email: [email protected]