*4S (Society for Social Studies of Science) 2019 Open Panel: #**14. Becoming “Data-Driven”: Burgeoning Data Cultures and Liminality in Civil Service* *September 4-7, 2019 | **New Orleans, USA | Deadline is February 1st, 2019* Premised on the promises of being “data-driven,” nation-states across the globe are building web-based, data-driven systems to manage populations, resources, and risk. Scholarship in postcolonial STS and critical data studies critiques the widespread use of data-driven systems, pointing to the racialized, gendered, and socioeconomic consequences embedded in their production and use, and the troubled histories from which such apparatuses arise (Borocas and Selbst 2016; Browne 2017; Crawford and boyd 2012; Noble 2017; Suchman 2007). This research has productively demonstrated that data technologies are not neutral, but instead are socially, culturally, and politically situated ways of knowing and seeing (Browne 2017; Gitelman 2014; Jasanoff 2017; Thakor 2017). While scholars have studied the recent and often algorithmic proliferation of these data-driven practices (Eubanks 2018; Brayne 2017; Lyon 2014), less attention has been paid to the complex interplay between data-driven domination and the changing norms of everyday administration—the day-to-day work of forging of what Oscar Gandy calls ‘‘actionable intelligence’’ (2012: 125). And, how these systems work outside of the West is largely unattended to. Using these conditions as a starting point, we illuminate the range of practices and perceptions of being “data-driven,” from policy makers in capital cities to mid-management urban police to rural officials. How do government workers develop a sense of “data literacy” in divergent contexts across regions? How do they derive value in data and data-driven techniques? Through empirical analysis, this panel digs beneath macro trends and rhetoric to query the lived experiences of working through these burgeoning data systems. Single paper submissions should be in the form of abstracts of up to 250 words (*submission guidelines below*). We welcome traditional papers as well as experimental responses to the panel’s theme (mixed-media, performance, experimental writing, etc.). *Organizers: * Leah Horgan, University of California, Irvine *horganl@uci.edu <horganl@uci.edu> * Margaret Jack, Cornell University *mcj46@cornell.edu <mcj46@cornell.edu>* Cindy Lin, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor *cindylky@umich.edu <cindylky@umich.edu>* Guideline for Submission: https://www.4s2019.org/call-for-submissions/ List of Accepted Panels: https://www.4s2019.org/accepted-open-panels/ *Leah Horgan* dept of informatics donald bren school of information + computer sciences university of california, irvine