Digital adoption systems and professional practice: A qualitative study of the National Adoption Registry in Romania

The increasing use of digital and algorithmically supported systems in child adoption raises questions about how frontline practice, discretion, and responsibility are reshaped within child protection services. Drawing on 24 semi-structured interviews with experts from public institutions and non-governmental organizations, this qualitative case study examines how Romania’s National Adoption Registry is experienced and navigated in everyday professional practice during its transition into a broader information system. The findings show that while the digital adoption system has improved procedural efficiency and inter-institutional coordination, it has reconfigured professional roles by shifting accountability for data curation, verification, and continuous updating. Practitioners report persistent tensions between transparency and data protection, particularly in relation to children’s public profiles, and highlight that human judgment remains essential in compensating for data quality limitations and policy constraints embedded in the system. This shift relocates the object of professional discretion from the matching outcome itself to the strategic framing of child public profile information, allowing practitioners to use the algorithm as a professional shield by formally attributing results to the system while maintaining control over the inputs that shape them. By conceptualizing the National Adoption Registry as a digital tool embedded in social work practice, the study provides empirical insight into how algorithmic systems are negotiated and reconfigured by frontline practitioners, with implications for fairness, trust, and accountability in digitalized social services.