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#Wilmasreview Wilma 🐶 has accepted that there are fences 🚧. A fence doesn't ask, it doesn't make exceptions, and it doesn't care that the neighbor's cat is getting away. So, Wilma dug a hole ... a burdensome workaround. 🕳️ 🧵

When public employees are limited by the digital tools they must use, they try to work around, too. A systematic review by Justine Marienfeldt systematically reviewed the research of how digital tools have changed decision-making at the street level:

➡️ The context can be more important than the tool itself. In service-oriented organizations such as benefits offices, employment services and citizen service centers, digital tools tend to restrict discretion.

5/9 ➡️ Staff does comply and cope. Rule bending, double documentation, rearranging the guided questionnaire to have a real conversation, using private phones, giving extra time to the citizens who need it most. Not sabotage: an attempt to keep human judgement alive in a system that left no room. 🐾

➡️ The roles changed quietly. Caseworkers became helpdesk staff teaching citizens to self-serve, or screen-level bureaucrats handling exceptions, rejections and complaints. Real discretion moved upstream to designers, IT departments, private vendors who barely appear in the studies at all. 🧩