Autumn is upon us and as most other people living in Scandinavia, we are crossing our fingers that the sunny days will last well into October. However, come rain or shine, the Center for Digital Welfare keeps at it!

The fall semester started with a couple of farewells and a hello. As mentioned in the previous newsletter, we said goodbye to Brit Ross Winthereik in late august with a wonderful reception full of speeches, songs and shared memories. As both its founder and first HoC, Brit has played an essential role at the CDW: No doubt the center would never have come to exist and flourish without Brit, and we will do our best to honor her work and carry on the digital welfare research agenda. In addition, the lead of our Sustainable Digitalization working group James Maguire decided to step down in early September, and we want to take the opportunity to thank James for his efforts with the group! Around the same time, on 1 September the IT-University of Copenhagen welcomed it’s new Vice-Chancellor Per Bruun Brockhoff, and the CDW is looking forward to get to know our new leader and see where he will take the ITU. A warm welcome to Per!

As usual, a new semester means full steam ahead, and all engines are up and running at the CDW – here are a few highlights of what we have in store for the coming two months: In just two weeks, we host the first of two talks in the Distinguished Speakers Series, when Associate Professor Peter Danholt gives a keynote called “The Intrusion of the Digital?”; later in October the Digital Citizenship working group ventures out on a whole-day expedition to the Center for Digital Psychiatry in Odense to discuss digital diffractions in psychiatric care, and; finally the two-day conference related to the Welfare after Digitalization project takes place in late November, including a public panel debate on digital responsibility and ditto booklet launch (if you want to learn more about these public events, reach out to us at cdw@itu.dk). More events are listed further below under "Coming Up!".

Now, turning to the content of this newsletter: Scroll down to read about our recent activities, learn more about Jörn Christiansson’s research on improving public digital services, and explore the most recent publications from the CDW researchers.

Enjoy the read!
 
Sincerely,
Kitt

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On 20 August, Giacomo Poderi, Joanna Saad-Sulonen and others organized and chaired a workshop at the PDC 2022 titled “Relationality, commoning, and designing” | On 26 August, Anne-Sofie Lauttrup Sørensen attended the panel Transition Narratives at the Petrocultures Conference in Stavanger, Norway presenting the paper: "Generation carbon? CO₂ as generational identity among young Norwegians" | On 30 August, the Digital Citizenship working group met up for a discussion on AI’s role in public domains, listening to DTU Assistant Professor Hugo Andrés López presenting his newest research on digital compliance. | On 8-9 September, Barbara Nino Carreras and Sisse Finken online-attended the 15th IFIP TC9 International Human Choice and Computers Conference, where Barbara presented their co-authored paper ”Autonomy Alliances and Data Care Practices”. | On 9 September, the Digital Democratic Spaces working group met up at KHORA VR to learn more about how VR and AR is increasingly taken up as part of welfare services in Denmark.  | On 28 September, Thorben Simonsen gave a talk on healing architecture at Råhuset’s That’s Interesting | On 30 September, at RUC's Democracy & Digital Citizenship Conference Series, Christopher Gad gave a presentation titled "Competing versions of trust in the making of democracy", while Irina Papazu presented co-authored work on ’the inclusion office’.

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The CAPE project (Civic Agency in Public E-service innovation) run by Associate Professor Jörn Christiansson is currently exploring answers to this question in collaboration with Ballerup Library. The push towards a ‘digital society’, and digital citizen-government interaction becoming the only option, is strong in the Nordic countries. In fact, this push has now created a ’digital divide’, leading to social exclusion of the digitally vulnerable that lack skills for using digital public services, and in Denmark an estimated 17-22% of the population are digitally challenged.

In the Nordic countries, IT helpdesks staffed by volunteers have emerged to support citizens in using digital services, and often these IT helpdesks operate from public libraries. In 2021 and 2022, the CAPE project conducted a parallel study of library IT helpdesks in Denmark and Finland, observing their operations and interviewed visitors and volunteer helpers. The conclusion was that the services are appreciated, but also fragile since it is based on volunteering, and the helpers are not accountable for their advice, making the IT helpdesks a ‘quasi-public’ service.

However, the volunteer helpers have accumulated substantial knowledge about the needs of the elderly and digitally vulnerable. To tap into this hidden resource, the next step in the CAPE project has been to investigate how to set up a dialogue between the IT helpdesk volunteers and public sector service developers.

During spring 2022, the CAPE-researchers launched a series of workshops, where UX designers from Digitaliseringsstyrelsen (the Danish Agency for Digital Government) collaborate with IT helpdesk volunteers to build a mutual understanding of how the design of the newly launched MitID app is received by the elderly. The results are positive, and during the fall this collaboration continues by exploring how IT helpdesk volunteers can systematically document problems experienced by the digitally vulnerable, as input to further design of MitID and other services.

If you want to learn more about the CAPE project, please reach out to Associate Professor Jörn Christiansson via jrme@itu.dk

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On 10 October, Giacomo Poderi, Jonas Fritsch and Joanna Saad-Sulonen will present their forthcoming paper titled “The Problem(s) of Caring for the Commons” at the NordiCHI2022, under the section Care and Contestation. | On 13 October, Associate Professor Peter Danholt kicks off this semester’s CDW Distinguished Speakers Series with a keynote titled “The Intrusion of the Digital?” | On 27 October, the Digital Citizenship working group ventures out on an expedition to the Center for Digital Psychiatry to discuss digital diffractions in psychiatric care. | On 11 November, Professor Paul Dourish joins us for the CDW Distinguished Speakers Series with a keynote titled “Ethics Is Not the Point (Although It’s Not a Bad Place to Start)” – information on this event will be posted on mid-October on Twitter and LinkedIn. | On 28-29 November, the research project Welfare After Digitalization hosts a two-day conference at the ITU.

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Carreras, Barbara Nino, and Sisse Finken. “Autonomy Alliances and Data Care Practices,” 47–57. Springer, 2022. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-15688-5_5
 
Galis, Vasilis, Martin Bak Jørgensen and Marie Sandberg (eds). The Migration Mobile
Border Dissidence, Sociotechnical Resistance, and the Construction of Irregularized Migrants, 272 pages, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. ISBN 978-1-5381-6516-4

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We are working on improving the accessibility of our newsletter. If you run into any issues while browsing the newsletter, or you have suggestions to make it more enjoyable, reach out to Kitt Plinia Nielsen at kitn@itu.dk

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Jörn Christiansson | Kitt Plinia Nielsen

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