Automating Social Security in the UK: A Study on Incorporating Claimant Voices in the Design of Universal Credit

Governments around the world are adopting algorithmic systems to deliver fundamental social services, from policing to fraud detection to child welfare. While a growing set of research investigates the designs of these systems - their underlying policy goals and effectiveness - there is a gap in the literature on how automation impacts users and how user perspectives could democratically inform these system's technical, legal and administrative design.

This project sets out to achieve a wider understanding of the emergence of automated social services and their effects on claimants through a study of the UK's Universal Credit scheme. The proposed project will examine the automation of social security benefits in the U.K. through two sets of research questions.
(1) What political values and policies drive the technical systems that comprise Universal Credit? By interviewing DWP staff and through document analysis, the project will illuminate Universal Credit's wider political context and be among the first academic studies to map the system's technical dimensions.
(2) How do claimants interact with automated components of Universal Credit and does automation in social security harm certain populations? Through interviews with NGOs that work with claimants and workshops with claimants themselves, I will examine whether and how automated features of Universal Credit may embed certain biases or harms that impact people differentially. The user workshops will explore accountability processes that encourage claimants to offer feedback on the design of the system itself; these events will provide templates for evidence-based consultations with users to shape algorithmic social services.

The research will involve mixed methods, including document analysis, fieldwork, interviews, and user design workshops:

(a) Document analysis will reveal Universal Credit's wider political context and history of development. The project will draw on public documents such as legislation and decrees, departmental reports, websites, guidelines, parliamentary committee reports, and audits, as well as public records requests to gain access to technical specifications of the system, such as vendor contracts and designs of specific automated functions. (b) Interviews will further illuminate the design of UC and its differential impacts on claimants, including approximately 15 interviews with DWP staff, reaching out to project partners on the DWP's UC User Research team, as well as the Universal Credit digital services team and the DWP's Benefits and Pensions Digital Technology Services; and 25 interviews with staff at Scottish NGOs that work with or on behalf of claimants. c) Through placement in a Citizen Advice Bureau local to the Edinburgh region, I will conduct fieldwork one day a week for 12 months to observe how often problems with Universal Credit relate to automated features of the system. d) Finally, I will hold six design workshops, focusing on a sample of digitally excluded claimants in the Scottish context, a group that the DWP's UC User Research team has found particularly difficult to reach for user testing, as well as a comparison group of claimants who are confident in their digital skills.

Automation in UC is a complex topic that spans several knowledge domains and therefore demands an integrated approach, combining multiple perspectives on the politics, designs, and oversight of automated social security. The study particularly addresses a lack of literature on the experiences of claimants as they interact with automated systems. Through public reports, public events and media dissemination, the project will spark discussion on the problems claimants face while using these systems and explore how claimant voices can feed into their future modifications.