Digital administrative systems are ubiquitous in modern bureaucracies, part of the ‘everyday’ that oftengoes unnoticed and creates the digital undertow. Based on an ethnographic study of a social services officein Sweden, we show how these digital systems can be understood as digital non-places, which appear asfixed and immobile to workers. This appearance masks the inherent precarity and fluidity of space that isoften perceived to characterize digital spaces. By analysing the architecture, experience and social practicesof a bureaucratic digital space, we show how it creates a barren, fixed world, where others are absent orreduced to ‘documentary persons’. Because the space does not allow for placemaking, in terms of physicaltransformation or social engagement, workers cannot transform it into a place, which would provide a senseof belonging. It is this lack of belonging, rather than a lack of meaning, that creates the non-place. Moreover,the barrenness and reduction in personhood provided by the digital non-place may nudge workers towardsa ‘social production of indifference’ in the exercise of public authority. The study highlights how a place-sensitive approach can illuminate our understanding of modern workspaces, and the effects they may haveon workers.