The Human Touch Meets Digitalization: On Discretion in Digitized Services

Abstract

This paper investigates how discretion is exercised in today’s increasingly digitalized public services. Discretion exercised by street-level bureaucrats is defined as filling in and fitting the rules to the actual circumstances of a case to ensure fair and individual treatment of citizens under all circumstances. We present two empirical cases that illustrates different uses of discretion. We find that discretion is exercised in three stages: in preparing input to a case handling process, during case handling, and in producing the outcome or a decision. Digitalized support for case handlers’ discretion is suggested and will be different for these stages.