This document outlines critical considerations for building integrated and digital social protection information systems. It provides guidance on the benefits of such systems, essential building blocks, and key design choices. This resource is particularly useful for policymakers, program managers, and IT professionals involved in developing and implementing social protection programs.
Key Insights
Outcome: Inclusion
A digital and integrated information system can enhance the responsiveness and inclusiveness of interventions, dynamically adjusting to individual lifecycle shocks, large crises, and beneficiary transitions between schemes.
Outcome: Coordination and Linkages
The system supports the planning and implementation of comprehensive social protection systems by improving coordination across social assistance programs, between social assistance and social insurance, and with broader social and economic policies.
Outcome: Equity
Digital systems support investment based on objective, comprehensive, and comparable information to address uneven and unequal provision of social protection across social groups and administrative jurisdictions.
Key Components: ICT Infrastructure
This includes the resources and services required for the operation and management of the IT environment, hardware, telecommunications systems, and considerations for broadband and mobile phone penetration.
Key Components: Registry/Database
This is the data repository and system to organize, store and retrieve large amounts of data easily.
Key Components: Software
This is the tailored applications that help manage, link, and process the data.
Key Components: ‘Brainware’
This refers to the human resources needed to manage the social protection information system.
Three Pillars
- Pillar 1: Programme operations and functions.
- Pillar 2: Integrated operations and functions across the social protection sector.
- Pillar 3: Broader registries and information systems, playing a role in enhancing sectoral outcomes.
Note on Information Flows
It is important to stress that the information flows between elements of the social protection system are as important as each piece on its own.
Key Statistics & Data
- Percentage of the population covered within the information system can vary from less than 5% to almost 100% (depending on the policies and programme design choices).
Methodology
The paper draws on recent experiences in countries that have been developing integrated social protection information systems, alongside literature review and analysis of existing frameworks.
Implications and Conclusions
The development of an integrated social protection information system is as much a political process as it is a technical one. Visionary government leadership, coupled with consultation across stakeholders, is crucial for success.
Key Points
- Developing a digital and integrated information system is a crucial step in building a national social protection system, enabling efficient information flow and management.
- Digitizing social protection programs reduces errors, simplifies processes, and transforms data into information.
- Integrating functions along the social protection delivery chain and interoperability with other government systems helps reap economies of scope and scale and allows focus on systemic outcomes.
- A digital and integrated social protection information system should focus on responsiveness and dynamic inclusion, coordination and linkages, equity, and efficiency and effectiveness.
- Key building blocks include ICT infrastructure, registries/databases, software, 'brainware' (human resources), and institutional setting.
- A social protection information system can be viewed as an 'ecosystem' involving three main pillars: program-specific operations, integrated operations, and broader registries/information systems.
- Critical design choices include prioritizing functions and data flows to meet user needs, outreach and intake strategies, population coverage, data verification and validation, and data utilization for monitoring, evaluation, and policy making.