Personalisation is a buzz word in our contemporaries and might be seen as a part of a governing mode of consumption, where citizens increasingly are provided with choice and customization in public services. This in turn, is suggested to make active, responsible choices available for the post-welfare, citizen-consumer and democratize and improve societal life. Information and communication technology (ICT) is a part of this rhetoric and logic, framed as the very producer of this democratizing expansion (see also Selwyn & Brown 2000). A recent example is the Seventh framework programme in EU emphasising personalised, ICT-mediated services for learning, health monitoring etc. which should enable accessible and inclusive ICT. Traditions of artificial intelligence and intelligent tutoring systems are influential here and built-in, automated services or interactivity is signified as active (citizen) participation or learning, which point to the problem of consumer activity being equated with active citizenship (Barry 2000, p. 2, see also Barry 2001). In this paper, these specific features are elaborated on in relation to Swedish flexible distance education in late 1990s and early 2000s. A similar rhetoric is used in changes during this time; of widening and improving educational access and participation through ICT-mediated, individually customized and flexible learning offers. The overall question is how personalisation, alongside ideas of flexibility and individualization, is produced in the specific case of flexible learning, i.e. what kind of governing is involved in the discourse of personalisation.

Official documents and advertisements from higher education and ICT providers have been used as an empirical material. A Foucauldian approach (2003) to the powers of discourse and governing rationality has been used which relates to recent studies of neoliberal governmentality and lifelong learning (i.e. Fejes & Nicoll 2008, Simons & Masschelein 2006) where disciplinary powers of observation and normalization also can take part (Foucault 1977).

Preliminary results show that the elements of this discourse contain personalised addressing, customization and access, self-help services and self-regulated and self-responsible learning relying on or relating to ICT in different ways. These relate to a neoliberal governing and rationality producing a specific learner subjectivity, liberated and empowered, supporting efficient and productive learning. These changes also involve disciplinary powers, where ICT-mediated learning in enclosed spaces make observation and normalization possible (Nicoll 2008). In the final part, these powers are discussed and especially the ambiguities of ICT-mediated personalisation and new modes of surveillance are elaborated on. For example, the implications of so called dataveillance, where personal activities are collected data is collected, organized and in storage for commercial or educational purpose are dealt with which point to possible problems of integrity/privacy and monitoring/surveillance (Simon 2005, Poster 2006).