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Paper short abstract

This paper explores the authors' two-year experience of complaining their way to changing how the University of Amsterdam's digital identity system handles surnames. Through this process, a loophole emerged, revealing how workarounds both expose and paper over identity infrastructure inequalities.

Paper long abstract

Universities, as most large companies, use Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems to organize their workers’ data and integrate these with a wide range of Human Resource systems. At the University of Amsterdam (UvA), the last names of scholars are represented in public-facing systems exactly as they appear in their passport. This technically-enforced standard, however, denies options to queer and immigrant workers with different naming conventions.

This paper reflects on the empirical process of complaining our way to a workaround. After two years of bureaucratic back-and-forth, UvA’s HR staff identified and formalized a loophole: People who wished to change their last names could input their “display” surname as a “partner name”. We recount this empirical experience to investigate how a built-in standard is kludged to accommodate “atypical” last names. We ask: How does such a loophole make identity infrastructures visible? Who does not benefit from this newly-standardized loophole? We argue that this loophole simultaneously exposes and papers over the inequalities and injustices caused by identity systems.

The paper therefore contributes to debates about whether bureaucratic loopholes are forms of resistance or placation in digital identity systems (Wilcox et al., 2023); as well as how the visibility of loopholes can both harm and benefit different groups (Pollock, 2005). It also addresses a literature gap regarding the inner workings of ERPs: Considering that companies are locked into these systems, and that said systems define data flows and standards (Posner, 2018), how do different actors address and challenge ERP shortcomings?