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Short abstract:

Sweden, one of the most digitalised countries in the world, is not where one would go looking for a fax. Nevertheless, it has a central role in the digital infrastructure and datafication of the welfare state. Through the study of the fax, I unpack stories of digital security in the welfare state.

Long abstract:

"The cyberattack forced the hospital to switch to fax," read a front-page article in Dagens Nyheter, in Sweden, on February 11, 2024. Three individuals sent it to me. For the past 6 months, I have been studying the fax, a neglected yet fundamental object of digital infrastructure of the welfare state.

As a socio-technical and socio-legal assemblage at the intersection of dismantling of the copper network and the emergence of the digital welfare state, the fax machine constitutes a crucial part of a critical data infrastructure of the Swedish welfare state. Although there are as many as 4000 faxes in daily use in healthcare only, Sweden is one of the last places one would go looking for a fax. A mega digital infrastructure, SDK, proclaimed to be the ‘fax-killer,’ raises renewed questions about whose accounts of security are mobilized for the digitalization of the welfare state infrastructure.

In this study, I draw on interviews with public administration employees about fax’s role in the digital infrastructure of the welfare state. In combination with textual analysis of digitalization and IT policies, I unpack the multiplicity of stories of security in the digital infrastructure of the welfare state.

How can the fax help us understand how datafied security is imagined in the welfare state? Whose digital security is included in these imaginaries, and who is doing the imagining? Expanding on Power et al’s (2022) conceptualization of shadow care infrastructures, the fax emerges as a shadow (digital) security infrastructure of the datafied welfare state.