Digitalization of administrative processes and inequalities, with Clara Deville

Public policies for the digitalization of public services have notably been implemented with the promise of bringing the State closer to its citizens. However, you explain that, on the contrary, we are witnessing an exacerbation of the distancing of the social State. How can this be explained ?

The digitalization of public services is a long-standing practice that took a new turn during the 2010s. While it had previously been mainly a tool for internal reorganization within administrations, its connection to the fight against non-take-up of social benefits led to integrating digital technologies into procedures for accessing rights. Digital tools then took on a new role, aiming to provide contacts with users that are both simpler and more efficient.

If this digitalization is effective for some applicants, for others — particularly those who are least equipped to adapt to bureaucratic procedures — it creates difficulties in accessing rights.

Thus, the digitalization of administrative procedures does not reduce inequalities; it reproduces them.

To explain these inequalities, it is important to note that the dematerialization of procedures for accessing rights has been accompanied by reorganizations in various sectors of public action: service counters have been closed (notably in rural areas), and receptions are now organized by appointment, preventing any spontaneous expression and resolution of needs or interaction with the State. Additional technical difficulties then arise: individuals must be able to travel to the nearest administration and obtain an appointment in services that are often overloaded.

What connections do you see between the phenomenon of individualization of non-access to rights and the digitalization of access to those rights ?

The process of digitalization reinforces the trend of individualization of public services, which has been developing over several decades, in at least two ways.

The first concerns the way in which non-take-up has been categorized within public policy. This issue emerged around the early 2010s. While it was initially used as a counterpoint to the discourse on social fraud, it gradually lost its critical edge. Framed by public policy, non-take-up progressively becomes an issue of individuals who lack access to information about their rights, who poorly understand eligibility rules, or who feel ashamed to ask for help. Without providing an exhaustive list of causes and without dismissing them, it appears that the public problem of non-take-up places the individual and their capacities to claim their rights at its center. Institutional or legal factors explaining the phenomenon are gradually rendered invisible. Once non-take-up is defined as an individual problem, digitalization — long underway in administrations (notably to organize the work of agents) — becomes a fitting solution. By enabling anyone to access public administration from anywhere and at any time, this solution is intended to simplify information retrieval and procedural steps.

The second connection between digitalization and individualization occurs in practice, in the institutional treatment of rights claims. Dematerialization allows social institutions to delegate an ever greater share of administrative work to applicants themselves. For example, the digitalization of the Revenu de Solidarité Active (RSA) application has led to transferring the task of submitting supporting documents to the applicants, whereas this was previously the responsibility of caseworkers and advisors. Dematerialization thus increases the administrative burden, which explains why it generates inequalities in access. The sociology of service counters has long shown that the ability to complete administrative procedures is socially based. Therefore, the increased complexity of access procedures carries the risk of intensifying difficulties in navigating bureaucratic processes.

What would be the advantages and disadvantages of automating the payment of certain benefits, such as the RSA? Why has this automation not yet taken place?

The automation of social minimum benefits was a hypothesis already considered in the early 2010s as a way to combat non-take-up. It was then envisaged that, since non-take-up was caused by the querability of the benefit—that is, the need to submit an individual application—the solution could be to automatically pay social rights to eligible individuals, taking the former Prime for Employment as a model. This hypothesis was quickly abandoned due to operational complexity (eligibility rules for the RSA, for example, are difficult to model and require data that administrations do not always have), but also for more political reasons.

While the fight against social fraud strongly structures the fight against poverty, the idea of distributing social minimum benefits automatically seemed inappropriate, due to the necessity of controlling beneficiaries and the conditions for granting aid. Moreover, the notion that people living in poverty should be active and enterprising in managing their difficulties led to maintaining the application process as it was. This argument has been reiterated during the ongoing reform aiming to automate RSA payments. This reform, presented as a way to combat non-take-up, is in reality limited to partially automating the calculation of the benefit. The application process remains necessary, as carrying out administrative procedures is perceived as proof of individual will and commitment to escaping poverty.

The design and layout of public reception spaces play an important role, and you mention their transformation alongside the distancing of the social state. To what extent could their evolution into more welcoming, social spaces—places for “being together”—help ease the relationship between applicants and the administration? What role does the design of reception areas play in the struggle for access to rights?

Administrative venues carry a strong symbolic weight, being associated with sites of power where decisions are made. This weight is all the more intense because the people who frequent these places see their living conditions depend on these decisions. Entering a CAF (Caisse d’Allocations Familiales) can therefore be a process fraught with violence, which is amplified by reforms aimed at combating non-take-up. Thus, the urban recentralization of access points to rights adds socio-spatial distances to bureaucratic domination, making the CAF a place associated with spatial practices more bourgeois than those of the beneficiaries. Added to this is the installation of digital devices within the waiting rooms themselves. Indeed, the fight against non-take-up has led to the creation of “self-service spaces,” where computers, printers, and other terminals are placed, dedicated to autonomous practices by applicants. Agencies are no longer designed as welcoming places for people waiting to be helped, but as places where they must actively work to produce their rights. This technicization of agencies makes visiting them even more daunting for those who are less familiar with digital tools.

Public reception spaces embody, in the eyes of applicants, what the State is. Their urbanization and increasing technologization lead to greater social and symbolic distances—separating the most vulnerable claimants from their rights. Added to this is a more practical dimension: the layout of agencies becomes a system of sorting and selection of users, directing the most precarious towards the use of digital tools while reserving face-to-face interactions at the counter for those who have the skills to navigate bureaucratic processes and meet administrative expectations. Obtaining and keeping an appointment, arriving on time with the necessary documents—these are all competencies expected by administrations to manage the waiting line. For those living far away, these requirements become deterrents, making access to an appointment uncertain. As a result, although self-service spaces were intended to accommodate those with the least need for administrative interaction, practice reverses this principle. In reality, it is those most affected by poverty who most frequently use the computers installed in access-to-rights centers.