Leveraging Digital Public Infrastructure for building inclusive social protection systems

This document investigates the potential of Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) to optimize and make social protection systems more portable, focusing on migrants in India. The report outlines an actionable vision for an inclusive social protection system in India. It will be valuable for policy makers, implementers, and researchers working to improve social protection systems in India and other developing countries.

Key Insights

DPI for Inclusive Growth

Public infrastructure, including digital infrastructure, plays a vital role in inclusive development by providing essential services, fostering positive externalities, and promoting competition. Digital ID systems, digital payment systems, and data exchanges can be combined to build end-to-end DPI systems that empower individuals and businesses.

Global examples of DPI deployment for social protection

Several countries have successfully leveraged DPI to improve social protection outcomes. Chile’s Registro Social de Hogares is an advanced, integrated database covering information on 72 percent of the population. Togo distributed over $34 million in emergency cash transfers using its Novissi platform. Kenya has developed a single registry for beneficiaries of social assistance programs. Sierra Leone used its digital payments system to provide mobile-based cash payments to response workers during the Ebola crisis.

India’s Social Protection Landscape: Overview

India operates a wide range of social welfare programs, including promotional, preventive, and protective measures. MGNREGA (employment security) and PDS (food security) are the two pillars of India’s social protection ecosystem. Challenges include thinly spread fiscal resources, fragmented benefits, limited coverage, inclusion/exclusion errors, inadequate social protection for informal workers, and vulnerability of informal migrant workers.

Issues with PDS

• Lack of awareness and uptake of portability benefits: 60.4% of the 827 respondents surveyed were not aware of the portability benefit under the ONORC scheme.
• The challenge of stock management and reconciliation: Under the public distribution scheme, states are allocated food grains on the basis of their AAY and PHH members.
• Siloed data systems leading to exclusion errors in PDS: Under the Public Distribution System, states are expected to regularly update the list to delete ineligible households and include eligible households for providing ration.

Issues with ICDS

• Location of anganwadi centers are not adequate for the demands of a migrant population: The lack of dynamic data on migrants and their movement patterns hampers the potential portability of this scheme.
• Lack of tracking of migrant women and children was leading to nutritional health deficiencies:
• Repeated data entry in ICDS leading to transaction errors: Anganwadi workers at the centers take care of a majority of the frontline services, from providing immunization to recording the necessary administrative data for services offered.

Issues related to the BOCW scheme

• Lack of awareness: One of the main issues the survey surfaced was that 60% (507) construction workers are unaware of the BoCW card or its benefits.
• Complicated registration process: Beyond lack of awareness, beneficiaries were also unaware of the registration process.
• Two-step process: Many migrants saw possessing the BoCW card as an end in itself. However, possessing the card merely makes one eligible for multiple schemes.

Broad DPI-based roadmap for better service delivery

• Design: Building robust data exchanges within the social protection system allows for addressing multiple problems.
• Awareness: Data exchanges such as social registries, beneficiary database platforms that adhere to common data standards and enable a safe, controlled transfer of information between multiple parties, can help solve for awareness and enrollment in schemes by reducing the burden on beneficiaries.
• Enrollment and Registration: Transaction costs for both beneficiaries as well as government officials can be reduced through these systems enabling automatic enrollment for welfare recipients.
• Repeated submission of documentation by beneficiaries: One major burden cited by beneficiaries has been the need to repeatedly submit documents for identity verification or eligibility requirements.
• Grievance Redressal: DPI-based systems can solve for the information asymmetry and the siloed departmental approach to grievance redressal that is currently in place.

Addressing Legal Concerns Around Privacy and Data Security

With the introduction of DPI, a huge amount of data on beneficiaries has been and will be collected and stored. It is therefore important to ensure that there are adequate safeguards such as data protection laws, data sharing policies among government departments and private actors and the capacity to implement the laws and policies. Key principles that need to be addressed by practitioners to ensure data protection for social protection include accountability, data minimization, purpose limitation, ensuring processing of data in a lawful, transparent and fair manner, accuracy, storage limitation and integrity and confidentiality.

Key Statistic: Migration in India

As per the 2011 Census, India had 456 million intra-state and inter-state migrants that year, accounting for 38% of the population. Given the rate of growth in internal migration in the preceding decade – India’s population in the 2001-2011 period grew by 18% while the number of migrants grew by 45% – that number is likely to have grown substantially in the decade since.

Technical challenges

Need for enterprise architecture in the government and managing procurement process. Also, building technical capability within the government

Regulatory challenges

Defining the regulatory institutional mechanism, and addressing legal concerns around privacy and data security

Governance challenges

Ensuring state capacity and capability to implement digital building blocks in social protection and Ensuring inclusivity.

Implications and Conclusions

This report presents a strong case for leveraging DPI to improve social protection systems in India. Key takeaways include the importance of addressing technical, regulatory, and governance challenges to effectively leverage DPI, and the need for a collaborative approach involving government, private sector, and civil society. The report provides valuable insights and recommendations for policymakers, implementers, and researchers working to improve social protection systems in India and other developing countries.