Data scores as Governance: Investigating uses of citizen scoring in public services project report

The project ‘Data Scores as Governance’ examines the uses of data analytics in public services in the UK. In particular it is concerned with the advent of data-driven scores that combine data from a variety of sources as a way to categorize citizens, allocate services, and predict behaviour. There is an increasing emphasis on data use in UK government and we have seen a proliferation of data systems in both central and local government in recent years. The ability to collect and analyse increasing amounts of data across social life is said to have provided new opportunities to extract new insights or create new forms of value, often through scientific and more objective decision-making. At the same time, the trend of datafication has been met with significant concerns about the characterisation of data as benign and neutral, and attention has been drawn to possible harms of increased monitoring of populations through data, such as infringements upon privacy, potential for discrimination, and an inability to account for complex lived experiences.