Embracing Chaos Again: Tracing Boundary Negotiating Artifacts in Knowledge Workers’ Data Practices for Collaborative Public Health Crisis Response

As knowledge workers, university personnel's data partnerships with government entities represent an emerging mode of collaboration for public health crisis response. However, little is known about how such collaborations unfold in non-routine, complex settings. This paper investigates a data partnership between a university research team and a state health department during the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing on 15 interviews with university personnel, we analyzed their data practices using boundary negotiating artifacts (BNA) theory, identifying five key challenges and related artifacts. We found that the absence or breakdown of artifacts pushed university personnel toward ad hoc workarounds, while power dynamics complicated artifact creation and use. Consequently, collaboration relied more on broader sociotechnical arrangements than on artifacts themselves. These insights both enrich BNA theory's defining features of non-routine, complex collaborations and point to design opportunities for supporting knowledge workers engaged in crisis-driven data partnerships, which are often politically charged.