Experiences of Digitalisation in Field of Social Care

I work in the field of social care. I have worked previously in a municipality, where I made decisions on social support. I have also worked in privately owned reception centers for immigrants. There I have done social support decisions, but more recently I work as a councelor.

Digital systems and digital development have been a big part of all my work. They were especially large part of my work while making decisions on benefits, because these decisions were made using an electronic information system. Back then, I spent my whole workday on a computer. Currently, my work varies more, and I also do tasks in the “real world” without the computer. Still, information systems and electronic communications tools (like Teams) are a daily partner, used for searching information, documenting, communicating, and managing tasks. It’s clear that our work culture wouldn’t be the same anymore without all these digital tools that help us.

The Risks of Open Digital Society

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) had some affect on my work when it first came. I believe, however, that the administrative level and IT department of our workplace felt it’s effect the strongest. They were the ones, who had to build their systems around it. I feel like after the GDPR information security has been emphasized more at work. I believe I have attended or completed more information security-related courses ever since the GDPR came.

Personally, I feel like our data should be protected against private companies and marketers, who are mostly interested in making money with it. Therefore, I believe a lot of good that has come with GDPR. However, it has added extra tasks and precautions for any workplace that deals with any identifiable client data. I remember reading that tech innovators are sometimes unsure how to apply GDPR in their innovation. This can be especially true for innovations that utilize artificial intelligence. The European Union has now also published it’s first regulation on artificial intelligence (European Parlament 2023). Still, a downside of data regulation can be, that it hinders the development of new ideas and innovations. Normally, as time goes by, we get used to new things, and are able to create standards around them. However, AI is such a vastly developing thing, it does make you think, how well shall we ever be able to standardise it?

Also, as an obvious downside of information security, it sometimes hinders workflow (psychologically speaking). Asking your clients for consent forms or powers of attorney can make working more complicated and slower. Having to authenticate in the authenticator app, or type in a one-time password sent to your e-mail, may disrupt your flow of work. Dealing with too many digital apps at once, just to get a work task done, can increase the feeling of stress at work. Still, information security is necessary, and as long as we don’t have more fluent tools to take care of it, we just need to adapt to the current state of things.

Asking ChatGPT About My Work

I use ChatGPT in my freetime, and have found it to be even more useful than a Google search; rather than trying to write correct searchwords, I can just type in my question. However, the answers don’t always feel fully reliable. At work I also have used Copilot, which has provided me help with i.e. excels.

I asked ChatGPT about what it is like to work in a Finnish reception center. It provided a lenghty response, that did showcase good general knowledge of the field. The answers were quite general and focused on phenomenas that you might encounter in our work (multiculturalism, language barriors, collaboration with other organizations). Almost all of the information was correct, and the only error (well, half-error) that I found, was the mention that centers are open 24/7 (not every center is).

I also asked, what digital tools do reception centers use. It mentioned, correctly, that we use communication tools such as email and instant messaging and language assistance platforms. Also document management systems like cloud service were mentioned, among many other mentions. One interesting tool was Duolingo, which we supposedly use for language learning.

Interestingly, it told me we use informations systems KOTI and MIGRI, or reporting system RAPORTTI, none of which I have actually heard of. A brief googling didn’t provide me any more information, so I questioned ChatGPT on where did it get these names. I got the following response “I made a mistake in referencing the specific names of some systems, as they may not exactly match the current or official tools used in Finnish reception centers.” It then went on to explain, that these names were examples, but the systems might not be well-known, or even used at all. This was an interestingly confusing response, and it’s not the first time I have received such responses from ChatGPT. It seems to occasionally guess the content for the answers, rather than basing them on facts.

Self-Evaluation

Doing this assignment was very good and useful reflection for me. I’m interested in intuitive digital tools, and I’m hoping onw day I’ll get to work with creating more intuitive tools and information systems for social work. Therefore I found the Future Visions-videos to be especially interesting. The SixthSense technology was actually a new thing to me, but I really liked the speaker’s creative approach to human-computer interaction. Often, when using digital platforms, I find myself thinking that this task wouldn’t have to be so complicated, that it could be performed a lot simplier. The SixthSense technology, as well as the flying drones used in healthcare, were good, intuitive bridges between the computer world and our world.

The video about e-mail security made me think, that I should educate myself more on data security. I use social media, communication tools, search engines and ChatGPT daily, and I also have a smartwatch. So I also procude lots of data for tech companies, Sometimes it makes life easier when you allow your devices access to some of your data. For example, you need to allow your phone to track your location, to get navigation support. But it’s still good to be mindful of all the data you share, and to be more in control of it.

Citations: European Parlament 2023. EU AI Act: first regulation on artificial intelligence. EU AI Act: first regulation on artificial intelligence | Topics | European Parliament. Accessed 1st March 2025.

I commented on the following posts:

DIGI SOCIETY – Sanna’s Site

DIGI SOCIETY – Irina`s site