This article addresses a controversy regarding the extent to which an information technology system may marginalize social service workers and their clients. The Indiana Client Eligibility System (ICES) software was designed to maintain, distribute, and streamline that state’s Aid for Families with Dependent Children, Food Stamp, and Medicaid programs while also setting the stage for a welfare-to-workfare policy transition. One Indiana county’s welfare staff and clients are analyzed after adoption of ICES. Observation, interviews, and a perspective informed by Giddens’s 1979 notions of structuration and DeSanctis and Poole’s 1994 Adaptive Structuration Theory reveal ICES’s structural features and “spirit,” its dependence and impact on organizational structure, and its effects on the perceived roles and relationships of caseworkers (i.e., “disenchanted” and “distanced”), supervisors (i.e., “disempowered”), clients (i.e., “disenfranchised”), and clerks (i.e., “disbursing” and “distinctive”). (Author)
- About Homelessness
- Doing Research
- Community Profiles
- Solutions
- Blog
- About Us
The Canadian Observatory on Homelessness is the largest national research institute devoted to homelessness in Canada. The COH is the curator of the Homeless Hub.
Canadian Observatory on Homelessness- Search
About UsCanadian Observatory on Homelessness
The Canadian Observatory on Homelessness is the largest national research institute devoted to homelessness in Canada. The COH is the curator of the Homeless Hub.
x