New development: Digital social care—the ‘high-tech and low-touch’ transformation in public services

Social care is one of the fundamental services provided by governments worldwide. Nevertheless, austerities, workforce crises and an ageing population are challenging social care provision. One of the ways to improve this situation is to adopt technology-infused services. To date, the digitalization of social care has been mainly focused on organizational benefits from passive technologies, with scant attention to the end-users needs. The authors discuss several opportunities and challenges to move towards active and autonomous digitalization to support public social care. Drawing upon the public service ecosystem, the authors develop a research agenda to advance policy and practice in social services.