Paul Henman

Targeted!: Population Segmentation, Electronic Surveillance and Governing the Unemployed in Australia

Targeting is increasingly used to manage people. It operates by segmenting populations and providing different levels of opportunities and services to these groups. Each group is subject to different levels of surveillance and scrutiny. This article examines the deployment of targeting in Australian social security. Three case studies of targeting are presented in Australias management of benefit overpayment and fraud, the distribution of employment services and the application of workfare. In conceptualizing surveillance as governance, the analysis examines the rationalities, technologies and practices that make targeting thinkable, practicable and achievable. In the case studies, targeting is variously conceptualized and justified by calculative risk discourses, moral discourses of obligation and notions of welfare dependency Advanced information technologies are also seen as particularly important in giving rise to the capacity to think about and act on population segments.Targeting is increasingly used to manage people. It operates by segmenting populations and providing different levels of opportunities and services to these groups. Each group is subject to different levels of surveillance and scrutiny. This article examines the deployment of targeting in Australian social security. Three case studies of targeting are presented in Australia’s management of benefit overpayment and fraud, the distribution of employment services and the application of workfare. In conceptualizing surveillance as governance, the analysis examines the rationalities, technologies and practices that make targeting thinkable, practicable and achievable. In the case studies, targeting is variously conceptualized and justified by calculative risk discourses, moral discourses of obligation and notions of welfare dependency. Advanced information technologies are also seen as particularly important in giving rise to the capacity to think about and act on population segments.

Information technology and the governance of social security

Recent welfare state developments have emphasized the structure, administration and governance of service delivery. In critically examining these developments, this article advances a governmentality approach to the welfare state that highlights the significance of technology in contributing to the nature and practices of the welfare state. Based on a comparative study of computerization in the social security systems of 13 OECD countries, it demonstrates that information technologies have generally increased the control of staff and claimants by management rather than empowered them.

The Distributional and Financial Impacts of the New Australian Child Support Scheme: A 'Before and Day-after Reform' Comparison of Assessed Liability

Abstract Sweeping changes to the Australian Child Support Scheme were recently introduced, featuring a dramatically different system for the calculation of child support. The reforms were intended to respond to ongoing concerns about equity and changes in social expectations and practices in gender, work and parenting. The extent to which the new Scheme is ‘fairer’ and will improve the wellbeing of children and their families needs to be tested. Drawing on published Government data, this article examines the initial distributional impacts of the new Scheme and discusses key policy and research issues arising from these data. At a general level, non-resident parents (mostly fathers) were more likely than resident parents (mostly mothers) to experience net gains under the new Scheme. Low-income families, and resident parents with part-time or casual employment, appear to be among those most likely to have been hardest hit by the recent reforms, though the government modelling suggests that net losses are likely to be

Computer modeling and the politics of greenhouse gas policy in Australia

20 or less a week in absolute terms. While the paper does not assess behavioural changes resulting from the child support reforms, it is important to keep a watching brief of how the new Scheme is evolving on the ground.

Estimating the Cost of Contact for Non-resident Parents: A Budget Standards Approach

Computer modeling technologies have increasingly become part of the conduct of science, public policy making, and the practice of politics. Their contribution to the world can be understood as intellectual, scientific, forecasting, governmental, truth production, and political technologies. This article focuses on the ways in which computer modeling has reconfigured the world of politics as illustrated in a case study of the use of economic modeling in the politics of Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions policy. From 1997, the Australian government pursued a policy of increased greenhouse gas emissions supported by computer modeling that forecast significant negative economic impacts on the Australian economy if emissions were reduced. These modeling results were publicly contested. The case study illustrates how computer models can be used in politics to construct a partisan point of view. It is argued that despite differences in the political use of computer models, their growing complexity constrains the capacity for the conduct of democratic politics.

The politics of entitlement and personalisation: Perspectives on a proposed National Disability Long-Term Care and Support Scheme in Australia

Most Western countries have, for some time, provided income support and/or taxation relief to parents with children in their care. The significant amount of research into the costs of children to couple and sole parent households has been important in assessing and developing family support policies. Changing societal expectations about the level of involvement of fathers in child rearing activities has highlighted the need to understand the costs facing usually male non-resident parents in having contact with their children. The budget standards methodology is used in this paper to estimate the costs for non-resident parents exercising regular contact with their children. Costs of contact are found to be high. For contact with one child for 20 per cent of the year, costs of contact represent about 40 per cent of the costs of that same child in an intact couple household with a medium income and more than half of the costs of that child in a household with low income. Household infrastructure and transportation is the reason for high costs. One implication of this finding is that the total cost of children substantially increases when parents separate. The article discusses some policy implications of these findings. This research is of relevance to social security, taxation, family law and child support policies and administration.

Computerizing the welfare state: An international comparison of computerization in social security

Internationally, over the past two decades the theme of personalisation has driven significant reforms within health and social care services. In the Australian context, the principles of ‘entitlement based on need’ and ‘personalisation’ frame the proposed National Disability Long-Term Care and Support Scheme (LTCSS). In this article, we critically examine the interpretations and ambiguities of need and personalisation. We consider the administrative complexities of applying these principles in practice and the uncertainties about the roles of state and the market, and use individual case examples to illustrate areas of potential tension. Whether principles translate to deliver personalised services and avoid harmful trade-offs between access, equity and choice is the true test of social policy.

GOVERNMENTALITIES OF GOV 2.0

Although computer technology is central to the operation of the modern welfare state, there has been little analysis of its role or of the factors shaping the way in which it is used. Using data generated by expert informants from 13 OECD countries, this paper provides an indicative comparison of the aims of computerization in national social security systems over a 15-year period from 1985 to 2000. The paper seeks to identify and explain patterns in the data and outlines and examines four hypotheses. Building on social constructivist accounts of technology, the first three hypotheses attribute variations in the aims of computerization to different welfare state regimes, forms of capitalism, and structures of public administration. The fourth hypothesis, which plays down the importance of social factors, assumes that computerization is adopted as a means of improving operational efficiency and generating expenditure savings. The findings suggest that, in all 13 countries, computerization was adopted in the expectation that it would lead to increased productivity and higher standards of performance, thus providing most support for the fourth hypothesis. However, variations between countries suggest that the sociopolitical values associated with different welfare state regimes have also had some effect in shaping the ways in which computer technology has been used in national social security systems.

E-government and the production of standardized individuality

Web 2.0 technologies, denoted by their formation of social networks and the co-production of web content by users, have rapidly entered social and economic activities. Internationally, governments are racing to identify ways to utilize Web 2.0 in government. In addition to government reports and taskforces, there is a proliferation of business advice and academic papers variously conceptualizing what so-called ‘Gov 2.0’ might look like. Such deliberations seek to mobilize a range of different political and economic agendas, and as such view governments use of Web 2.0 and associated objectives differently. This paper utilizes a Foucaultian-inspired governmentality analysis to identify the main political discourses and rationalities embedded within government reports, as evidenced in Australia, Canada, the European Union, New Zealand, the UK and the United States. The paper concludes by critically analyzing this Gov 2.0 governmentality and suggesting alternative governmentalities that might be mobilized.

The bane and benefits of computers in Australia's Department of Social Security

The history and evolution of governing and the state is inextricably entwined with the history and evolution of what we might retrospectively call ‘information and communications technologies’ (ICTs). From the invention of writing in ancient Sumeria, to the deployment of surveys, paper files and filing cabinets in Victorian bureaucracies, to globally available interactive internet websites, ICTs provide the information infrastructure that both supports and precipitates government innovation. They have a role, along with military, transportation and economic technologies, in the history of those regimes of practices that constitute the state (Mann, 1986–8). The trajectory of ICTs is also enmeshed with processes of standardization, from the codification of Morse Code in the 1840s, to the progressive standardization of time, to the recent battle between HDVD and Blu-ray over a standard format for high-definition digital video.