Data Work at the Coalface: Documentation Practices and Mitigation Tactics Among Frontline Workers

In this paper we explore the role of data work in the digital age—that is the situated practices workers engage in to produce data. Existing studies point out that data affects organizational life tremendously, but we know little about how frontline workers mitigate data work requirements when it interferes with professional matters of concern. Against this backdrop, we report from a four-year qualitative study of the implementation of a digital healthcare platform in a Danish local government organization requiring new documentation practices and massive data work among frontline workers. Our analysis reveals a tension between the new requirements for digital documentation and frontline workers values and norms, and we identified three mitigation tactics—rematerializing, tinkering and verbalizing—that helped frontline workers ease perceived disadvantages of the documentation requirements but also challenged the objectives of creating a data driven organization. We contribute
to the emerging literature on data work by showing the role of frontline workers as data producers and how different regimes of knowing may provoke mitigation strategies among frontline workers to balance requirements of the data driven organization with professional values and norms.