The Digital Transformation of The Social Work Sector: Lessons From Fifty Years of Computerization

The digital transformation of the social work sector: Lessons from
fifty years of computerization

André Vitalis
In Vie sociale Volume 28, Issue 4, October 2019, pages 21 to 31
Translated and edited by Cadenza Academic Translations
Translator: Ruth Grant, Editor: Faye Winsor, Senior editor: Mark Mellor
ISSN 0042-5605
ISBN 9782749266299
This document is the English version of:

André Vitalis, «La transformation numérique de l’action sociale : ce que nous enseignent cinquante ans d’informatisation», Vie
sociale 2019/4 (No 28) , p. 21-31
Available online at:

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The digital transformation
of the social work sector:
Lessons from fifty years
of computerization
André Vitalis
I n social and medical social professions tasked with helping the

poorest and most underprivileged, computerization is portrayed
as a step forward, especially for efficiency, even if certain draw-
I
backs and limitations have emerged in practice. As Jacques Ellul

forewarns, all technology is ambivalent, its positive and negative
effects inseparably intertwined.1

If we want to better understand the changes ushered in by the
unfolding digital revolution, it can help to look to the past. In
fact, today’s digital innovations are no more than the next stage of
computerization, a process that began a good fifty years ago. As
this process has advanced, it has given rise to a set of problemat-
ics with implications for numerous sectors, including social and
medical social work.
Moreover, to get a better grasp of changes still to come, we

need to define precisely what we mean by the “digital revolution”:
a phrase that dates back to the late 2000s, when smartphones put
billions of people permanently online.2 The digital revolution is a
fusion of all the problematics that came before. Regarded as the
industrial revolution of our times, it is distinct in that it is fueled
1. Jacques Ellul, The Technological Bluff, trans. Geoffrey Bromiley (Grand Rapids,
MI: W. B. Eerdmans, 1990).
2. André Vitalis, The Uncertain Digital Revolution (London: Wiley-ISTE, 2016).
Vie Sociale n° 28
André Vitalis
not by raw materials but by information—and the world of infor-

mation is very different from the physical world of old.
█▌▌ Problematics of the digital revolution

Since its earliest civilian applications, computer science has
given rise to four primary social problematics: social control,
public safety, communication, and commodification. Throughout
the 1970s and 1980s, as the first population databases were estab-
lished in the US, computerization was viewed as a malevolent
threat to individual liberty that needed to be regulated by law.
Following 9/11, a logic of national security took hold, and tech-
nology became an indispensable weapon in the fight against
terrorism, with no application out of bounds. In the 1980s and
1990s, microcomputers and internet for the masses created a
platform for a new form of instant and global communication.
Finally, since the early 2000s, it has fallen into the hands of pri-
vate monopolies who have turned it into a means of transforming
data (especially personal data) into a highly lucrative commercial
resource.
II
As each of these four problematics has emerged, they have
had varying impacts on the world of professional social work.
█▌▌ Social control
The question of social control gained currency in the 1960s

and 1970s, when the first population databases raised concerns

over their implications for the right to privacy. Of course, gov-
ernments have been keeping records on populations since time
immemorial, but computers made it technically feasible to
manipulate this data in ways that would not have been possi-
ble before. Computers allowed government agencies to store and
cross-reference millions of records and perform all manner of
processing tasks. An individual’s life could be wholly laid bare to
powerful actors with the capacity to monitor and influence them
at every turn.
While the welfare state has helped tackle poverty and injus-
tice, it has sometimes been accused of excessive tracking of ben-
efit recipients, cataloged through a unique identification number.
Computerized records and processes added resonance and force
to this critique. In the mid-1970s, computers became a common
sight in social work settings as part of a drive toward moderni-
zation. It was argued that technology would be a game changer
for the sector, which would soon be enjoying more targeted
Vie Sociale n° 28
The digital transformation of the social work sector
policy-making, lower costs, optimum effectiveness, and objec-

tive evaluation.3 It quickly became apparent that these benefits
sometimes came hand in hand with poorer working conditions
and, above all, excessive surveillance of the most vulnerable in
society.4 The introduction of the GAMIN system in France (an
automated monitoring system for children’s health and social
care) is a particularly enlightening example. Rolled out in offices
across the maternal and infant care system, GAMIN processed
young children’s medical records to profile “at-risk children”
who were to be monitored more closely by the state. Its objec-
tives were to guide specialist teams toward families with priority
needs, to detect potential disabilities as early as possible, and to
create a statistical resource for child health. From the outset, pro-
fessionals complained of an impact on their job satisfaction, the
risk of discrimination, and the potential for a newborn child to
be funneled down a specialist pathway based on the rules of an
automated system. Pediatricians found that it offered no advan-
tages over existing early detection methods. By taking each case
in isolation and lumping in genuine medical risks with social
risks, GAMIN helped naturalize a social structure that failed to
offer every child an equal quality of life. Social workers felt that,
rather than helping people in need, their role had been reduced to
gathering data on the child population—turning them into intel-
III
ligence agents in the service of political power.
In January 1978, the adoption of Law 78–17 on Information

Technologies, Data Files, and Civil Liberties spelled the end
for the GAMIN system and curbed the potential for future data

abuse. This was France’s first data protection law, requiring
organizations to adhere to a certain set of rules relating to trans-
parency, legitimate purpose, and proportionality when handling
personal data. Individuals whose data was to be stored for oper-
ational or statistical purposes were given new rights to access
their information and object to its collection and use. Very sen-
sitive data concerning welfare recipients would thereafter be
subject to special protection, and an independent regulator, the
Commission nationale de l’informatique et des libertés (CNIL)
(French National Commission for Information Technology and
Liberties), was established to ensure full compliance with the
law.
3. Haroun Jamous and Pierre Grémion, L’ordinateur au pouvoir. Essai sur les pro-
jets de rationalisation du gouvernement des hommes (Paris: Le Seuil, 1978).
4. André Vitalis, “Le travail social saisi par la machine,” in Les solidarités: Le lien
social dans tous ses états, ed. Pierre Guillaume (Bordeaux: MSHA, 2001), 271–9.
Vie Sociale n° 28
André Vitalis
However, the effectiveness of these new legal protections

would later be placed in jeopardy. In the early 1990s, in response
to advances in microcomputer and network technology, depart-
ments began using a software package called ANIS (approche
nouvelle de l’information sociale [new approach to social infor-
mation]), heavily criticized for infringing individual liberties.
ANIS was specifically designed for social services data, and
enabled professionals in different fields to access information
based on a highly questionable and intrusive set of categories
that revealed each family’s physical disabilities, mental health
problems, and social integration scores. In 1997, a bill was pro-
posed to allow social work records to be interlinked, something
that had been prohibited up until then. In 2011, it became legal to
link up records across government departments.
The European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR),

which came into force in May 2018, served as a timely reminder
of the need for special protections for social work data, given its
particularly sensitive nature. The GDPR also requires organiza-
tions to appoint a data protection officer and carry out an impact
analysis before introducing any system that could pose a signifi-
cant risk to individual liberties.
IV █▌▌ Public safety
The 9/11 terrorist attacks were the catalyst for a new public
safety problematic. From this point on, the US became a global
surveillance state, convinced that information and communica-
tion technology was its strongest weapon in the fight against ter-

ror. Predictions of a centralized database keeping tabs on every
one of the earth’s 6.5 billion inhabitants failed to materialize, but
in June 2013 Edward Snowden blew the whistle on the scale of
transnational record-keeping going on in the US intelligence ser-
vice.5 In the wake of further attacks, this “security-first” logic
spread to every corner of the globe. In France, the number of
individual police records soared, and around twenty new laws on
security and intelligence were adopted.
While social work has little to do with matters of national

security, the sector felt the indirect effects of this problematic
as its perceived purpose began to shift. Alongside disadvantaged
families, the figure of the young offender in thrall to a violent
Islamist ideology loomed ever larger. In September 2005, a report
by the Institut national de la santé et de la recherche médicale
5. Armand Mattelart and André Vitalis, Le profilage des populations. Du livret
ouvrier au cybercontrôle (Paris: La Découverte, 2014).
Vie Sociale n° 28
(INSERM) (French National Institute of Health and Medical

Research) recommended that children displaying behavioral
problems should be monitored from an early age to reduce their
risk of criminality in adolescence. It advocated that any behavio-
ral incidents should be recorded as early as the preschool stage,
with proactive interventions for “at-risk families.” Its authors
believed that outbursts of anger and disobedience were predictors
of future criminal behavior. INSERM’s recommendations, later
echoed by a parliamentary report, were strongly criticized, and
challenged by the National Ethics Committee. In March 2015,
the fichier des signalements pour la prévention et la radicalisa-
tion à caractère terroriste (FSPRT) (Watchlist for the Prevention
of Terrorist Radicalization) was established by decree. Today, it
holds records on around 20,000 minors. In the struggle against
violent radicalization, an exclusively security-based approach
could only be part of the solution; social and education services
were called upon to do their part. This new kind of social work
was not meant to be a mere adjunct to policing, but to reach a fine-
grained understanding of why and how a young person could end
up drifting into a radical religious ideology. Vulnerable children
were to be guided and supported to prevent them from heading
down a dangerous dead-end path. Every individual and family
on the list would be eligible for this kind of help and protection.
V
█▌▌ Communication
The invention of the microcomputer and, later on, wide-

spread internet access in the mid-1990s would change the face
of computing, transforming it into a new method of communica-

tion. This transformation was the product of the latest research
on information technology in university laboratories, but also
of the Californian counterculture in which many developers
were steeped. In its original form, this counterculture rejected a
bureaucratic and militarized society and technologies that served
as instruments of power, campaigning for new platforms accessi-
ble to the masses that would foster creativity and self-expression.
This was a libertarian vision, where universal access to freely
circulating, borderless information would be a vehicle for human
progress everywhere.6 The great novelty of this new electronic
communications system was that anyone receiving information
could also produce it.
6. Fred Turner, From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stuart Brand, the Whole
Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism (Chicago/London: University
of Chicago Press, 2006).
Vie Sociale n° 28
André Vitalis
The impacts were felt in every sphere of activity, and social

work was no exception. The sector had no choice but to adapt as
new information and digital communication platforms emerged.
After email, it was social networking, online forums, and the
mainstreaming of smartphones that truly ushered in the new com-
munications era, with all its benefits and drawbacks. Now able
to communicate faster and more frequently, professionals could
work in a more coordinated way, but had less time to cultivate
the personal relationships that are at the heart of their vocation.
Services moved increasingly online, allowing social work clients
to gain a better understanding of their rights and the benefits to
which they were entitled. However, this also gave rise to a new
kind of social inequality: a growing divide between internet users
and the rest.
█▌▌ Commodification
Since the 2000s and, particularly, the rise of Google and

Facebook, the internet has been coded and controlled by sprawl-
ing private monopolies—the first companies in the world to
collect user data and sell it to advertisers. Leveraging the inter-
net’s ability to transcend space, they have built up vast stores
of personal information in breach of European data protection
VI laws. Their services are both of a high quality and free of charge,
attracting millions of users who are mostly unaware of how their
information is being harvested, processed, and transformed into
a highly lucrative commercial resource.7  Today, many private
companies have their eye on medical data, and alliances are
being forged between the internet giants and various actors in the

healthcare sector.
France’s very comprehensive data protection laws are a bar-

rier to this kind of commodification, and the use of medical data
is restricted even for purposes in the public interest. Yet, on June
26, 2016, a new law intended to modernize the healthcare system
opened the door to wider access, most significantly by creating the
Système national des données de santé (SNDS) (French National
Health Database). The system is designed to bring healthcare
administration and medical social data together on a single plat-
form, more accessible than ever before, although prior authori-
zation is still required. Any organization conducting research for
the purpose of developing or marketing a commercial medical
product is subject to a more rigorous authorization process. The
director of the SNDS recently stated that commercial and public
7. Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human
Future at the New Frontier of Power (New York: Public Affairs, 2019).
Vie Sociale n° 28
interests were not necessarily incompatible. This database still

holds just a tiny proportion of all health-related data, and numer-
ous startups have come forward with proposals to link it up with
other sources.
█▌▌ A different kind of revolution

These various problematics go hand in hand with the ongoing
digital revolution that, in conjunction with artificial intelligence
and big data, is driving a profound transformation in the social
work sector. This transformation is comparable in its scale and
repercussions to earlier industrial revolutions set in motion by
the steam engine and electricity. The digital revolution, however,
is of an entirely different nature. Whereas past industrial revo-
lutions took place in a world where industry required physical
resources, the digital revolution has plunged us into a virtual
world unlike anything that came before. For example, unlike
material goods, information is nonrivalrous; in other words, its
consumption by one individual is without detriment to another’s
consumption of the same information. If I eat an apple, I can no
longer give it to my neighbor, but if I read a newspaper, it can
still be read by someone else. Moreover, information is crucially
dependent on its format, and digital formats have brought about VII
a radical mutation in the media landscape, similar in scope to
the development of writing and the printing press. Writing for-
malized information and imposed order on untamed thought.
The printing press made it possible to disseminate information
to a wide readership. Digital platforms process information, a

uniquely human capacity until now. This is why digitalization
alters the fundamental nature of information, making it easy to
accumulate, instantly shareable, and, crucially, amenable to all
kinds of manipulation.
If we accept that the digital revolution is a new industrial rev-

olution, we must recognize three major departures from the rev-
olutions of the past.
First, whereas the traditional industrial model favors fierce

competition between companies, the digital revolution invites
and fosters monopolies. This situation arises because of a law
governing the economics of information and networks. The util-
ity of a network grows in function of the number of users. The
greater the number of participants, the more utility it offers. In
the platform economy, the winner takes all—as we have seen
with Google and search engines and Facebook and social media.
Once a platform has the upper hand, it is difficult to offer an
Vie Sociale n° 28
André Vitalis
alternative. Without question, market dominance and a lack of

alternatives, particularly when it comes to personal data, are the
main factors driving public bodies to enter into partnerships with
Google and Facebook for a whole host of projects, even though
a recent report by the UK parliament referred to the latter as a
“digital gangster.”8
Second, while previous industrial revolutions transformed

(and often gravely harmed) our physical environment, the digital
revolution has turned our world and identities into data, as com-
panies infiltrate our private lives and probe into our personal hab-
its. The clear boundaries between private and public life, once a
reliable fixture in democratic societies, are being chipped away.
Here, vulnerable populations and social services clients occupy
an ambivalent position. Subject to more state record-keeping
than any other group, their files are packed with highly sensitive
and confidential information, but their lower uptake of digital
and online tools reduces the scope for tracking them around the
internet and monetizing the data trail they leave behind.
The final difference relates to employment and work. In con-

trast to prior industrial revolutions, which expanded the work-
force and created huge numbers of new jobs, the digital revolution
VIII has made it harder to find work while continuing to venerate it.
There was an explosive media response to a 2013 study estimat-
ing that 47 percent of all jobs in the US, and similar percentages
in EU member states, were likely to become automated within
twenty years. Since then, these predictions have been revised
downward, and it is now thought than no more than 10 percent

of jobs are under threat. Then again, the digital revolution has
destroyed more jobs than it has created, and the long-term out-
look is hardly encouraging: According to a recent OECD report,
seven out of eight workers are outperformed by artificial intelli-
gence. In the future, data use will be the primary factor driving
structural changes in public services. Service users will increas-
ingly find themselves interacting with robots, as their identities
are transposed into digital signals. Robots, unlike social workers,
can attend to an unlimited number of users and take advantage
of economies of scale.9 Beyond the effects on employment, we
might wonder what balance will be struck between the profes-
sional and the machine, determining which tasks are to be per-
formed by robots and which reserved for human attention.
8. House of Commons Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee,

“Disinformation and ‘Fake News’: Final Report,” 42, https://publications.parlia-
ment.uk/pa/cm201719/cmselect/cmcumeds/1791/1791.pdf.
9. Daniel Cohen, “Il faut dire que les temps ont changé . . .”: Chronique (fiévreuse)
d’une mutation qui inquiète (Paris: Albin Michel, 2018).
Vie Sociale n° 28
A string of reports and studies on how digital technology

has shaped the world of social services highlights the need for
ethical reflection. Today, we find ethical dilemmas wherever
we look, but they tend to be raised only with respect to isolated
techniques. Meanwhile, the entire dynamic of technical innova-
tion that is remodeling the workplace goes unchallenged. Like
databases, automated profiling, and software packages before
them, so-called “social robots” have sparked a new ethical
debate. How, for example, can we prevent a device designed to
help people from becoming a prop that sustains or even deep-
ens their isolation? Computerization has never been explored in
all of its manifold dimensions, with all the synergies and reper-
cussions it creates. As Mark Hunyadi has observed, “a robotized
techno-world has a momentum of its own, advancing through
a network or systemic logic, one small step at a time, in ways
that nobody really intended and to which all of us unwittingly
contribute every day of our lives.”10
André Vitalis is emeritus professor at Bordeaux Montaigne University.

His recent publications include The Uncertain Digital Revolution
(London: Wiley-ISTE, 2016) and, with Armand Mattelart, Le pro-
filage des populations. Du livret ouvrier au cybercontrôle (Paris: La IX
Découverte, 2014).
Translated and edited by Cadenza Academic Translations

Translator: Ruth Grant, Editor: Faye Winsor,
Senior editor: Mark Mellor

Abstract
Looking back over the last fifty years of computerization enables
us to revisit the four major societal problematics that have emerged
as applications have progressed, transforming the social and med-
ical social sector. These problematics coexist, intertwine, and fold
into one another in a digital mutation, the specific characteristics of
which contribute to an evaluation and projection of its own dynam-
ics.
Keywords: computer science, industrial revolution, social con-

trol, public security, communication, commodification, mediol-
ogy, monopolies, labor
10. Mark Hunyadi, La tyrannie des modes de vie. Sur le paradoxe moral de notre
temps (Lormont: Le Bord de l’eau, 2015). Translator’s note: Quotation our trans-
lation from the French.
Vie Sociale n° 28

The Digital Transformation of The Social Work Sector: Lessons From Fifty Years of Computerization

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This document is the English version of:

Available online at:

© ERES | Downloaded on 20/01/2021 from www.cairn-int.info (IP: 89.149.84.1)

Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

I n social and medical social professions tasked with helping the

backs and limitations have emerged in practice. As Jacques Ellul

© ERES | Downloaded on 20/01/2021 from www.cairn-int.info (IP: 89.149.84.1)

Moreover, to get a better grasp of changes still to come, we

not by raw materials but by information—and the world of infor-

█▌▌ Problematics of the digital revolution

█▌▌ Social control

The question of social control gained currency in the 1960s

© ERES | Downloaded on 20/01/2021 from www.cairn-int.info (IP: 89.149.84.1)

policy-making, lower costs, optimum effectiveness, and objec-

In January 1978, the adoption of Law 78–17 on Information

© ERES | Downloaded on 20/01/2021 from www.cairn-int.info (IP: 89.149.84.1)

However, the effectiveness of these new legal protections

The European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR),

© ERES | Downloaded on 20/01/2021 from www.cairn-int.info (IP: 89.149.84.1)

While social work has little to do with matters of national

(INSERM) (French National Institute of Health and Medical

The invention of the microcomputer and, later on, wide-

© ERES | Downloaded on 20/01/2021 from www.cairn-int.info (IP: 89.149.84.1)

The impacts were felt in every sphere of activity, and social

Since the 2000s and, particularly, the rise of Google and

© ERES | Downloaded on 20/01/2021 from www.cairn-int.info (IP: 89.149.84.1)

France’s very comprehensive data protection laws are a bar-

interests were not necessarily incompatible. This database still

█▌▌ A different kind of revolution

© ERES | Downloaded on 20/01/2021 from www.cairn-int.info (IP: 89.149.84.1)

If we accept that the digital revolution is a new industrial rev-

First, whereas the traditional industrial model favors fierce

alternative. Without question, market dominance and a lack of

Second, while previous industrial revolutions transformed

The final difference relates to employment and work. In con-

© ERES | Downloaded on 20/01/2021 from www.cairn-int.info (IP: 89.149.84.1)

8. House of Commons Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee,

A string of reports and studies on how digital technology

André Vitalis is emeritus professor at Bordeaux Montaigne University.

Translated and edited by Cadenza Academic Translations

© ERES | Downloaded on 20/01/2021 from www.cairn-int.info (IP: 89.149.84.1)

Keywords: computer science, industrial revolution, social con-

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