Digital social protection: a design justice perspective

Internal Seminar for Researchers

Co-hosted with Bristol Digital Futures Institute (BDFI)

Abstract: Digital social protection systems are designed to provide benefit transfers to the poor and vulnerable, protecting them against livelihood risks. At the same time, such systems have resulted into detrimental outcomes for users, outcomes that range from exclusion from vital services to outright redirection of social policy in ways that harm recipients. This paper proposes a vision of digital social protection inspired by the notion of design justice, defined as a form of injustice perpetrated through technology design and based on the technical features of information systems. Drawing on qualitative data (2018-2022) on the Public Distribution System, India’s largest social protection scheme recently augmented through digital identification of users, I propose a taxonomy of the legal, structural and informational dimensions through which design injustice is produced. This leads us to contribute to the emerging literature on digital social protection, illuminating the production of design injustice and, on that basis, devising ways for policymakers and system designers to counter it.