Digitalization in Practice

Chapter 3 Digital state APIs: sociotechnical approaches to a small yet important piece of digital infrastructure

Michael Hockenhull

1 Introduction

The practice of the Digital State happens in many places. For instance, the work being done and choices made in ministries and municipalities through mundane topics of data standards, implementation of governance regimes and the offering of public APIs. Attending to the digital state in practice therefore means attending also to technical systems and the specific ways their protocols and functioning are developed. As critical humanist and social science scholars, we cannot simply cede this ground to our computer science colleagues (Marres 2017), but should engage with the so-called “hardcore” ...