Frontline workers’ role in digital self-service co-production: Channel promoters, digital helpers, or intermediators

Abstract

When public services move online, citizens are expected to serve themselves on digital platforms and enrol in public services through self-service procedures. In this digital encounter, many citizens struggle to live up to the “self” in self-services and seek in-person assistance from public professionals. These professional actors play an essential role in enabling the co-production of self-services for citizens who struggle to be truly self-serving. This article explores the frontline workers’ roles in self-service co-production when interacting with citizens seeking help in the service procedures. Service interactions have been studied in two meeting centres of the Norwegian Labor and Welfare Administration. We have conducted observations of office interactions in general and at digital self-service stations in particular. Interviews with public officials have complemented these observations. We use intermediation and co-production theory as analytical lenses in our data analysis. The findings show that the role of frontline workers can be both flexible and narrow in nature and that they take on the role of intermediaries when acting as a bridge between the analogue world and the digital domain. We also see that the intermediating role frontline workers take will vary and is influenced by organisational, personal, and external circumstances that can enable or restrain the co-production of self-services.