Peer-reviewed article
Caseworkers’ participation in procurement: Infrastructuring Child Welfare Services in Norway
Tangni Cunningham Dahl-Jørgensen, Elena Parmiggiani ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-haiku-4-5-20251001This paper examines how caseworkers in Norwegian child welfare services participated in the procurement process for a new digital case management system. The research focuses on the early design stages and how participatory practices shaped the definition of user needs in the tender documentation. The study uses the concept of 'participatory infrastructuring' to analyze three key practices: scaling up the project, negotiating participation in meetings and documents, and positioning caseworkers as experts. The findings show that tender documentation and organizational networks defined both the boundaries and modalities of participation.
Key points
- Early stages of digital system procurement critically define system boundaries and constraints through tender documents
- Three main participatory infrastructuring practices shaped caseworker involvement: project scaling, participation negotiation, and expert positioning
- Tender documentation and 'knotworks' (organizational networks) created both boundary conditions and participation modalities
- End-user participation in system design is recognized as beneficial but is constrained by rigid procurement processes
- Understanding participation in pre-tender phases is essential for improving procurement outcomes
Limitations
This is a qualitative study of one procurement process in Norway focused on system design participation rather than child welfare outcomes or intervention effectiveness. It provides no empirical evidence about whether the procurement approach or caseworker participation improved actual child welfare services or child well-being.
Abstract
Abstract Procurement is a widely adopted collaborative approach for acquiring new systems in the public sector. It exemplifies a situation in which the early stages of digital system design define the boundaries and constraints of a new system that must be specified in the tender document (i.e., a binding offer). Researchers and government officials have long recognized the benefit of end-user participation in system design. Given the central role of the pre-tender phases in procurement processes, however, there is a need to better understand what affects user participation in such early stages. In this paper, we research a procurement process in municipal Child Welfare Services in Norway. We focus on caseworkers' participation in procuring a future case management system. We build on the concept of participatory infrastructuring to characterize how the meaning of participation was shaped through three overarching participatory infrastructuring practices of decision-making within a rigid procurement process: (i) scaling up the project, (ii) negotiating participation in meetings with potential suppliers and in tender documents, and (iii) positioning caseworkers as subject experts. The analysis of these practices reveals that the definition of user needs in the tender documentation and the creation of knotworks define both the boundary conditions and the modalities of participation. We contribute to the conversation on participatory infrastructuring in Computer-Supported Cooperative Work by discussing how participatory infrastructuring provides a conceptual understanding of participation in the context of municipal systems procurement.