Computerized Social Casework Recording: Autonomy and Control in Australia's Income Support Agency

This paper reports on a case study of the computerization of social work recording. The context is a large and geographically dispersed social work service that forms part of Australia's income support network, Centrelink. The study is part of a larger research project charting the effects of computerized recording on the autonomy—or sense of independence, and freedom of action—of social workers. The paper summarizes interviews with workers who responded to questions about a management information system they use to record their work, and that managers use to monitor and control certain aspects of that work. Interviewees were asked to talk about the development and implementation of the system, and to comment on their expectations and their feelings about the outcomes. Responses indicate a sense of frustration with a system used to monitor but not effectively regulate workloads. While computerization holds out the prospect of making procedures more rational—in the name of the imagined paperless office—it seems to have swamped these workers with new workload burdens that are difficult to escape, and to have standardized elements of judgment and decision making, leaving caseworkers with a substantially different sense of autonomy.