The Swedish city of Trelleborg has turned to an automated decision-making system to allocate social benefits. The system checks and cross-checks benefit applications across various municipal databases (for example, the tax agency and unit for housing support). Given the system issues decisions automatically, the city has been able to considerably downsize its social benefits department, reducing its number of caseworkers from 11 to just 3 (AlgorithmWatch 2019). The municipality also has reported that the number of people receiving social benefits has substantially decreased since implementing the automated system. While the initiative has received various innovation prizes, applicants and citizens have been left uninformed regarding the automation process (ibid).
