from Chile and Moldova

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BOX 4.5

Development of Interoperable Data for Eligibility Assessment in Social Assistance Programs: Examples from Chile and Moldova

The two examples in this box make two complementary points. First, the case of Chile presents a continuous and gradual improvement in the data systems of social assistance programs and the development of interoperability at all four levels discussed in the text—legal, organizational, semantics, and technical. Second, the case of Moldova presents a leapfrogging reform that changed the data paradigm from paper to digital within a short time and at a relatively low cost.

The evolution of Chile’s information system supporting eligibility determination illustrates the shift in good practices with the digitalization of public services. The first application form, Ficha CAS in the 1980s, was a paper form administered by social workers who collected self-reported data from applicant households. A second version of the Ficha, which was used until 2006, continued to collect self-reported data that were then digitized. The move toward digital data capture and collection gained speed during the 2000s and 2010s, and the number of data sets that fed into the Integrated Social Information System increased as well. The latest version of the Integrated Social Information System, the Registro de Social Hogares (RHS), integrates data from 43 public sector agencies with some selfreported information on informal income, occupation, housing, education, health, and family composition that applicants to social protection programs can supply online or through local municipal offices. The RHS helps determine eligibility for 80 public programs. The RHS is dynamic: most of the administrative data are updated monthly. The development of the RHS and its predecessor was facilitated by the development of a strong data protection framework. The right to privacy of all people is recognized, protected, and guaranteed by the Chilean Constitution (Article 19); a 2018 amendment established the protection of personal data as a constitutional right.a A personal data protection law adopted in 1999—well ahead of the European Union (EU) General Data Protection Regulation, for example—established the purpose limitation principle, the requirement to protect sensitive personal data, the rights of the data subjectsb as well as the right to receive damages. The legal framework is complemented by sector-specific laws and implementation

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BOX 4.5 (continued)

regulations, as well as a law on sensitive data (2011, amended in 2012). The enforcement system relies on civil courts. A draft data protection bill includes the creation of a dedicated data protection agency. On a technical level, the development of RHS was enabled by a whole-ofgovernment approach to move toward digital, which is spelled out in the Digital Transformation Strategy (2019, https://digital.gob.cl /biblioteca/estrategias/estrategia-de-transformacion-digital-del -estado), with its three objectives: to improve public services for citizens and businesses, to engage in evidence-based policy making, and to mainstream the digital transformation across government and the economy (Silva et al. 2018; World Bank 2020f).

Moldova put together an interoperable data system fast and at relatively low cost. The Moldovan Social Assistance Automated Information System (SAAIS) was designed to increase the efficiency of social

Figure B4.5.1 Moldova: SAAIS Business Processes

Monthly update

Receipt of application Review of eligibility

Calculation of social aid payment

Appeals Decision

Source: Sluchynskyy 2019.

Control Payment

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BOX 4.5 (continued)

workers, district managers, and ministry staff (figure B4.5.1). It is used by 1,300 users in more than 950 offices. Development of the SAAIS began in 2011, with a first operational version completed within 18 months at total software costs of $1.3 million. The development benefited from an adequate legal and institutional enabling framework. The development of web services for data exchanges was quick (weeks), costing less than $10,000 each, but the process of finalizing the service agreements between agencies took months. A key feature of the system is automated verification of information provided by the applicants for social assistance against data contained in other administrative databases. When a social worker inputs a citizen’s application, the following data are automatically pulled from other agencies using the system of web services: Population Registry (data on the applicant and members of his/her family), National Transport Registry (vehicles registered in the names of the applicant or family members), Employment Agency (employment status of the applicant and family members and information on unemployment benefits and registered rejections of proposed jobs), National Office of Social Insurance (pensions and benefits provided to the applicant and family members), National Cadastre Registry (land plots and immovable property registered in the name of the applicants and their family members), and Border Guard Service (to establish whether the beneficiary is currently in the country). The system also provides automatic monthly reconciliation with all agencies before the payment lists are prepared. As a result of reconciliation, all statuses are automatically adjusted based on actual data received (Sluchynskyy 2019).

a. The Constitution ensures the following for every person: respect and protection of private life and the honor of the person and their family and the protection of personal data. The treatment and protection of these data will be put into effect in the form and conditions determined by law. b. These include the following: the right of modification, if the personal data are erroneous, inexact, equivocal, or incomplete; the right to block processing when the individual has voluntarily provided his or her personal data but no longer wants it to be processed; the right of cancellation or elimination of expired data; the right to access their data for free; and the right to oppose the use of their data for advertising, market research, or opinion polls.

A program’s data system’s ability to communicate by exchanging data, so the information is understood by the receiving agency and subsequently used for its own business purposes, is called interoperability. Interoperability encompasses different levels of integration: legal (data exchange is allowed), organizational (business processes and governance are aligned to facilitate data exchanges), semantics (data definitions/metadata are compatible),

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and technical (security protocols, transmission protocols, and various standards). In practice, data systems can be interoperable on all these levels or only selected levels.

Interoperability does not develop in a vacuum. Various enablers and safeguards facilitate interoperability and trusted data sharing (World Bank 2020f). One level of these encompasses regulations and institutions that go well beyond those over which any particular social protection program has agency: a policy and regulatory environment that defines and enacts rights over data, robust and resourced institutions capable of enforcing the rules while also offering citizens responsive and effective redress, technical architecture to standardize data sharing within government while giving people more controls and providing transparency of data flows, capabilities inside and alongside government to analyze and make use of data, and an active civil society and informed populace that can effectively use data and keep governments and companies accountable. Another level of enablers comes from more technical investments that enable data sharing and data security: (1) interoperable databases that are accessible to and used across government agencies for sharing data; (2) e-services portals that allow citizens to access government services and individual data portals that allow people to aggregate, store, and share data; and (3) inclusive digital platforms such as digital identification that ensure that all people are participants in the digital economy. All these factors are part of the data ecosystem and influence how extensively an individual social protection program can use external information.

The use of data external to the program comes with benefits but also risks. Among the benefits, interoperability can reduce transaction costs to the applicant, saving the time and hassle of supplying the same information time and again to different government agencies. Administrators can find efficiency gains in data quality and accuracy, reducing duplications and errors and improving transparency, while lowering administrative costs as the developed data system reduces the cost of repetitive data collection. Investment in the data system helps to improve social programs, including targeting, financing, and planning, by providing better coordination in identification of target groups and coordinating social programs. Among the risks, there is potential perpetuation of some inequalities and bias (exclusion) against certain groups and issues related to data privacy and security, which have implications for human rights, if not well attended.

Data Privacy and Data Protection

The transition toward e-Government is influencing the way information is collected, managed, and reported by governments, including