41 research outputs found
Key decisions regarding new IT infrastructure:a longitudinal case study in a Danish local government
Digital Lifestyles Between Solidarity, Discipline and Neoliberalism: On the Historical Transformations of the Danish IT Political Field from 1994 to 2016
Governments have increasingly turned to digital technologies as a means of rebuilding their public sectors, allowing them to heighten efficiency, cut expenditure, and deliver new services to citizens. However, rather than merely a technical upgrading of governmental institutions, digital reforms and IT policymaking are deeply political practices concerned with producing and imposing certain normative and ideological visions of the social world. Denmark is often labelled as a leading nation in terms of implementing digital governance, but the political and normative dimensions of digital reforms within the Danish welfare state are yet to be systematically investigated. This paper provides a historical study of Danish IT policies from 1994 to 2016. Relying on archival research of national policies and drawing on Pierre Bourdieu’s work on the state, we explore how the IT political field has emerged through symbolic struggles over time and how these struggles have produced particular forms of “digital lifestyles”. We find that two overall logics have dominated within the Danish IT political field. In 1994-2001, solidarity, equality and local Danish values were highlighting as core components of a digital life, but from 2002, however, economic efficiency, competitiveness and self-governance become the main ideals. In this way, the IT political field has increasingly come to converge with neoliberal discourses concerned with imposing market-like dynamics on the public sector and population. The paper concludes with a reflection on how the concept of digital lifestyles may help us understand these changes, and argues that the current dominant discourse should be challenged
The Case of a Prepaid Danish Cashcard
Payment
transactions
through
the
use
of
physical
coins,
bank
notes
or
credit
cards
have
for
centuries
been
the
standard
formats
of
exchanging
value.
Recently
online
and
mobile
digital
payment
platforms
has
entered
the
stage
as
contenders
to
this
position
and
possibly
could
penetrate
societies
thoroughly
and
replace
current
physical
payment
standards.
This
paper
portrays
how
digital
payment
platforms
evolve
in
socio-‐technical
niches
and
how
various
technological
platforms
aim
for
institutional
attention
in
their
attempt
to
challenge
earlier
platforms
and
standards.
The
paper
applies
a
co-‐evolutionary
multilevel
perspective
to
model
the
interplay
and
processes
between
technology
and
institutions
wherein
digital
payment
platforms
potentially
will
substitute
other
payment
platforms
just
like
the
credit
card
negated
the
cheque.
We
present
a
framework
for
understanding
the
evolution
and
transitions
of
payment
platforms.
We
demonstrate
the
usefulness
of
the
framework
in
a
in-‐depth
single
case
study
of
a
prepaid
cash
card.
The
learning
of
past
experience
with
digital
payment
platforms
is
demonstrated
to
be
the
right
starting
point
for
investigations
into
how
new
solutions
might
succeed
or
fail
in
the
future.
Thus
we
finally
discuss
how
possible
venues
and
routes
of
transitions
appear
in
current
evolution
of
digital
payment
platform
Using discourse as a strategic resource
This paper investigates how discourse can be mobilized as a strategic resource when
introducing a public sector reform program in a local government setting. We explore how
actual day-to-day practices, contexts, and processes relate to the shaping and localizing of
broad strategic discourses. In particular, we emphasize the practices in which national
strategic formulations are legitimized and accepted or abandoned by the actors involved.
Building on a case study conducted over a two-year time span, we show how a local actor
engages with and promotes a national reform program by evoking a discourse with strategic
intentions. First we present how the national reform program is translated into a local
government by the evoking of historically produced and context dependent discourses. Next
we show that locally produced discourses need to be evoked and re-attached to the national
reform program in order to enable new local practices. Our study shows that formal reform
programs and strategies are never stable and firm objects; rather, they are constantly enacted
and changed as part of discursive practices. Thus individuals enter a discursive space from
where to engage strategically with the creation of new local practices