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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.