Robo‐compliance in Australian employment services

Abstract Since the late 1990s, Australia's employment services have enforced mutual obligation compliance as part of a transition to a disciplinary regime of conditional welfare. In recent years, the digitisation of employment services has extended the disciplinary approach to self‐activation. Notably, self‐activation extends mutual obligation requirements so that online reporting is a condition of benefit eligibility, or a digital obligation, enforced by threats to financial security in the form of automated payment suspensions. Guided by recent developments in the conceptualisation of digital welfare to work programs, case study analysis is used to explore the ways the technologies of self‐activation have changed the location of power in mutual obligation compliance decisions. This shift represents a move from street‐level decision making to Robo‐compliance. The article discusses the significance of this shift in the digital administration of disciplinary social policy in employment services. It highlights the need for further empirical research to explore this shift and how it affects individuals whose social security payments depend on interactions with these technologies.