Long abstract:

The growing influence of Big Tech and digital markets in public sector areas such as health, education and beyond has recently been framed as one of value sphere transgression (ie. Sharon 2021, Taylor 2022). Critique especially points to how advantages within the sphere of digital goods and markets translate into advantages in public spheres, such as health or education destabilizing the dominant values inherent to these societal spheres. This paper sets the framework of sphere transgression in conversation with localized practices of public digital development in Denmark, by drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork over 12 months with a Danish mobile app company as well as a broader mapping of the Danish mobile app market. Local Danish app companies play a crucial role in developing public digital infrastructures. Doing this, they traverse traditional boundaries of public and private sector spheres. As such homing in on the practices of these private companies when building app-infrastructures for public sector actors, gives a vantage point from which to consider the expression and translation of public sector values in digital development. In this paper I show how boundaries between value spheres are flexibly (re-)drawn by public and private actors according to the situational context. I argue that the flexibility of boundary-drawing surrounding values in developing public digital infrastructure is a crucial feature that makes it possible to connect what at times seem irreconcilable spheres. Taking this flexibility seriously requires a shift of thinking from value spheres to what might be better considered value condensations.

Short abstract:

We develop a method to enhance the value embodiment potential of local governments in anticipation of disruptive technologies. This method is applied in practice and evaluated.

Long abstract:

Local government is confronted with new digitization issues. We argue that not (just) the ‘official’ imaginaries created through municipal discourse or articulated design requirements but rather the emergent processes of socio-material entanglement should be studied to identify and influence positive, negative and ‘digital undertow’ values of digitization (Orlikowski, 2023).

In a context of fast-paced new technological opportunities this however creates a dilemma for STS researchers: resilience to disruptive technologies can neither be (adequately) strengthened by strategic imaginaries, nor by socio-material practices as these haven’t occurred yet.

Therefore, we develop a method of organizational inoculation. Our method aims to inoculate local government by exposing it to real-life instances of digital disruption in a gaming situation (the ‘weakened pathogen’) to strengthen its responses (immune system) when these disruptions actually occur.

We focus on local governance in the city of Rotterdam and the potential effects of large language models (LLMs). We apply the method to explore the potential (risks to) public values in concrete instances like the use of LLM’s to generate complaints about city plans which lowers the threshold to submit complaints in a language that ‘bureaucracy takes serious’. In the game we involve authentic agents (ie civil servants whose daily work it is to address complaints and citizens that want to issue such complaints) and use real-life scenarios from other cities to create an authentic simulation. Can LLMs contribute to achieving (more) public value (Bryson et al., 2014) by decisively changing the way public services are provided to local communities?

Short abstract:

This contribution focuses on the merits and limitations of e-government-related educational applications intended to support the substantive individual digital sovereignty of citizens. The analysis focuses on the particularities, power constellations, and responsibilities involved.

Long abstract:

We aim to contribute to a value-oriented development of e-government implementations that support individual digital sovereignty by contrasting citizens' expectations and public administration employees' perspectives on the matter. More specifically, we are interested in whether it is necessary, desirable and practically viable to transcend an educational approach in official public administration offerings and move towards supporting substantive individual digital sovereignty. We base our discussion on an interview study with citizens and an expert workshop with public administration employees that were part of a state-funded research project on the promotion of individual digital sovereignty via educational and prototypical interactive elements (games, quizzes and story-based content) as prospective offerings on, e.g., public administration websites. The discussion will focus on the extent to which educational applications can provide substantive assistance, what is needed beyond the proposed applications, and the responsibilities of public administration or political actors. By identifying demands on digital administrative services both from a citizen and administrative personnel perspective, we will also discuss how these can be met in a fair but also reasonable manner, considering possibly problematic power constellations, responsibility gaps as well as other potential limitations resulting from an overly economized perspective. More precisely, we will reflect on how e-government implementations, such as the “Zuständigkeitsfinder Schleswig-Holstein”, can be further developed as socio-technical interactions. Furthermore, it will be discussed where such technical artifacts are more of a hindrance, and where digitalization appears to be merely promoted for its own sake.

Long abstract:

Public service media provision is being reshaped by existing and emerging AI technologies which have not been designed in line with public media values. In this paper we discuss how traditional public media values are being interpreted, negotiated, operationalised and challenged in relation to AI tools and technologies.

The study of values and their connection to responsible technology development is a core focus of STS research. Drawing on the authors' situated practice and research undertaken at the BBC, the UK’s largest public service broadcaster, this paper reflects on how long-held values of public service media (e.g. accuracy, universality, transparency, diversity) are being called upon, reimagined, and challenged through organisational approaches to AI. We discuss which values and voices are centred and de-centred in relation to AI innovation and examine the possibilities and struggles that emerge from attempts to extend and apply public media values to AI technologies, honing-in on instances of value tensions and contentions.

This paper offers a series of reflections from multiple research and innovation engagements with industry practitioners - through the lens of situated research practice aimed at advancing responsible and value aligned AI. Through reflections on how values are intertwined with emerging AI strategy and entangled in the mundane practices and choices involved in the development, design and deployment of AI tools, we critically consider the role of values in public media technology and innovation cultures.