Digital innovations in delivering social protection in RURAL areas
Socialportection.org, FAO, International Policy centre for inclusive growth, UNDP, Institute for Applied Economic Research authored a report and a subsequent webinar title “Digital innovations in delivering social protection in rural areas: lessons for public provisioning during the post- pandemic recovery and beyond.”
As a former Social protection Minister from Pakistan and as a member of the World Bank Advisory PEI, I led & executed digitalization for the rural vulnerable at scale with 6 million households plus more. Therefore, I shall critique this report according to my experience of not just Pakistan but what I have witnessed through WB countries.
- For reasons of efficiency, speed, reach, immediate relief, digitalization is critical; be it for national social economic registries, payments methodologies or for monitoring of product delivery.
- Covid was managed better because of digitalization. Those countries who had done digitalization prior to the pandemic benefited tremendously.
- “Digital tools such as social and beneficiary registries, online platforms for benefit application, and mobile money and bank accounts for benefit delivery, among others, can support rural social protection by minimising transportation costs for beneficiaries, as well as the administrative costs of programme implementation.” Spot on. Tried and tested.
- “digitalised social protection may reinforce existing inequalities and deepen exclusion if tools and technologies are not tailored to the needs and capacities of the people they are meant to support” Only if the digitalization is static and not online and constantly being updated. Moral of the story keep updating automatically. Time for static databases is over. Its 2023!
- “Rural dwellers tend to be among those who could be disadvantaged by the introduction of digital tools into social protection systems. The lack of ID ownership or physical addresses, of general and digital literacy, and of connectivity and access to ICTs poses significant barriers for rural populations to reap the benefits of digital social protection and could even contribute to further excluding rural women, elderly people and ethnic minorities.” True only if digital literacy is not accelerated. True only if middle men are not waged a war on! Let me assure you rural beneficiaries are now more aware of the benefits of technology and despite not being literate are embracing it. There are ways and means of bringing them into the literate digital movement. It has been tried and tested in many territories with solutions. In fact digitalization cuts the fraudulent elements who try and cheat the rural vulnerable of their benefits.
- Partnerships with IT ministries of the government, with IT private sector have given solutions to above problems.
- There is one area which I believe has received less attention which I found problematic in my tenure. Nomadic moving IDP CDP populations. Digitalization of those minus duplications is an area technology and administration of various territories is lacking. I have discussed this before as well in an earlier blog.
- Non internet ICTs can be downloaded at regular intervals so there is a way around that.
- Wherever possible biometric options are best for reducing fraud.
- Here is a genuine list of risks the report identifies:
“Multiple exclusions and exacerbation of inequalities (both between rural and urban populations and within rural populations) due to: • Lack of internet connectivity among applicants • Lack of digital literacy of applicants • Lack of access to functioning ICTs among applicants, leading to disparities in information access, especially among those historically marginalised • Vulnerable groups tend to lack ID or other means to identify and locate them.” “Lack of internet connectivity during data collection • Lack of digital literacy of data collectors • Lack of functioning ICTs among data collectors.”—-
All reversible with the right investments. And this is the future. This is what needs fixing. This is where we invested and we got the right results.
- “Challenges locating beneficiaries due to a lack or changes of addresses” “Dependence on frequency with which other databases are updated” the solution was a UNIQUE ID and centralization of household databases.
- “Vulnerable groups tend to lack ID or other necessary identification keys such as tax numbers” Genuine issue with a monetary related solution. When benefits are linked to ID creation the rural poor will voluntarily get their IDs done. It has been tried and tested.
I am proud to say that Pakistan’s SSN, namely BSP had the best technology digital solutions then and they are being constantly sharpened today. Pakistan has lent its expertise to many African countries. Learn from each other. We don’t have time to re-invent the wheel. Which is why I always advocated the league of SSNs! That is the SOTF big idea!