Displacement as Regulation: New Regulatory Technologies and Front-Line Decision-Making in Ontario Works
Abstract
This paper explores how new regulatory technologies and front-line decision-makers reshape one another. Drawing on a recent qualitative study of caseworker decision-making in the Ontario Works program, it demonstrates the dialectical relationship between new case management software and caseworkers. While new technologies may attempt to deskill and decentre front-line decision-makers, transforming them into data entry clerks, caseworkers learn how to expertly translate and input client data to produce decisions that more closely match their interpretation of clients’ needs and welfare laws. The ways in which workers “manipulate the system” to produce a particular decision, though common knowledge among their colleagues, are black boxed to program managers, auditors, and benefits recipients.
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Questions common to the LIA and web-based panel samples were used to calibrate the web-based panel to the LIA sample, producing weights designed to reduce potential biases owing to the web-based panel sample being nonrandom.
“In the AVA-AI study, questions common to the LIA and web-based panel samples were used to calibrate the web-based panel to the LIA sample, producing weights designed to reduce potential biases owing to the web-based panel sample being nonrandom; the LIA served as a reference survey [35].”
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- Authors
- Raso, J.
- Affiliations
- University of Toronto (CA)
- Corresponding author
- Raso, Jennifer
- ORCID
- Raso, Jennifer
- Venue
- Canadian Journal of Law and Society / Revue Canadienne Droit et Société
- Publisher
- Cambridge University Press (CUP)
- Published
- 2017-04
- Volume
- 32
- Issue
- 01
- Pages
- 75-95
- ISSN
- 0829-3201 (ISSN-L)
- 1911-0227
- OpenAlex
- W2724795617
- Cited by
- 41
- References
- 36
- Citations by year
- 2026: 6 · 2025: 2 · 2024: 5 · 2023: 9 · 2022: 6 · 2021: 5 · 2020: 4 · 2019: 4
- FWCI
- 16.55
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Canadian Journal of Law and Society / Revue Canadienne Droit et Société (publishedVersion)
- Project Muse (Johns Hopkins University) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Industrial relations › Legal and Labor Studies
- Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Social Policy and Reform Studies
- Social Sciences › Safety Research › Ethics and Social Impacts of AI
- Keywords
- Ontario Works, welfare casework, regulatory technology, case management software, black-box decision-making, frontline workers, welfare law
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