In the contemporary landscape of public care, digital data has emerged as a fundamental prerequisite, increasingly influencing not only the operational practices of care providers but also the very subjects of those receiving care. 

This study delves into the intricate process of datafication within Swedish public care, focusing on how data is produced, processed, and utilized across various care environments. The research adopts an ethnographic approach, rooted in the theoretical framework of assemblage as articulated by Deleuze and Guattari, to investigate the multifaceted and socio-technical dimensions of datafication. By closely examining the daily, often unnoticed practices related to data and data-driven system, this study uncovers how seemingly minor actions collectively contribute to broader socio-political ramifications within Swedish public care. 

The findings highlight the pivotal role that data plays in shaping the structure and delivery of care, and emphasize the need for a deeper, more nuanced understanding of the broader consequences of datafication in public health and social services. This research thus contributes to the ongoing discourse on the impact of digital technologies on public care systems, offering critical insights into the balance between technological advancement and the human aspects of care.

You sit in a quiet room at your local healthcare clinic. Tests are run, assessments made, and your data is woven into the threads of an electronic health record. Or perhaps you find yourself in the social care office, where the social worker listens intently to your concerns, gently nodding as your words are documented as data, one keystroke at a time. Care is assembled as data is aligned.

Today, digital data has become a prerequisite for public care. Increasingly, more aspects of who we are as care subjects and what public care does in its practices depend on data, which also normalizes its production, use and utilization. This process is called datafication.

This study explores datafication within Swedish public care, focusing on how data emerges and how it affects the subjects of care, as well as the data that is produced, processed, and utilized in public care settings. The research employs an ethnographic approach, rooted in the theoretical framework of assemblage as articulated by Deleuze and Guattari. By examining the practical and socio-technical dimensions of datafication, the study uncovers how small, seemingly inconsequential practices aggregate to influence broader ramifications for care subjects of Swedish public care, and for public welfare in general.

This chapter discusses the implications of datafication, the process by which more and more aspects of life and society are being turned into data. The author argues that data is a material produced by abstracting our life and world, and that as more and more aspects of life and society depend on data-driven processes, we live in an era of datafication. The author also highlights that working with design means enabling, reforming or potentially resisting that process. The author also emphasizes that data as a material in data-driven systems and services should be approached as a socio-material and technical condition that creates and systematizes data, and that asking what data will and should represent, helps designers approach the people represented in data not as objects, but as subjects with an own mind and agency in the becoming of data.

An increased use of data has swept through many policy areas and shaped procedural and substantive policy instruments. Hence, citizens and governments, as both producers and consumers of data, become intertwined in even more complex ways. But the inherent logic of data-driven services and systems sometimes challenges the prerequisites and ideals of liberal democracy. Though a democratically sound data-practice and data-culture is crucial for ensuring a democratic usage of citizens data, discourse tends to overlook these aspects. Drawing on insights from the project Democracy Data, this chapter explores the opportunities and obstacles for establishing democratically oriented public sector data cultures.