Who cares about data? Data care arrangements in everyday organisational practice

Abstract

The increasing datafication of social life has led to a growing body of research on data work which focusses on new data practices like self-tracking, new professions like data analysts or new occupational roles. In these new types of data work, people develop strong affective relations to data, and caring for data (quality) is key. This attention to ‘spectacular’ data work however leads to an important oversight: Much of the data work in everyday organisational practice is done by workers ‘somehow’, in addition to and alongside their existing tasks. This article sets out to better understand this mundane data work. It asks: Why and how do people in organisations care for data? Based on two qualitative case studies, we present the concept of data care arrangements. Data care arrangements are configured through the ascription of values to (specific) data sets and the work of generating, maintaining, and repairing data. This data care work is not necessarily homogeneous in organised settings but can become stabilised in data care arrangements. Thus, the notion of data care arrangements underlines that data in everyday organisational practice are not an object of care per se, but that data care is an accomplishment.