I was invited to give an intervention on the applicability and challenges of ICT-enabling Minimum Income Systems in my capacity of global expert on Public Sector Digitization and Social Welfare Digitization.
In this blog post I would like to go through my slides and elaborate on the challenges of how digitization can be used to create effective and efficient Minimum Income Support systems. I will also make a few comments around some of the other presentations and the discussion from the day. A number of my comments are to be found on Twitter - either look for my handle @DigitizeSociety or the hash-tag: #MinInComEU.
First of all there is good reason to applause the EU aspirations to help the member states create more efficient Minimum Income Support Systems / Schemes. There is a big challenge on solving the fragmentation of the way Social Security Services (#SSS) and Public Employment Services (#PES) collaborate and share information as well as how they co-ordinate on helping the poorest / most vulnerable of our citizens.
Also great to see that almost all aspects of how to build the future MIS-schemes were covered in the presentation. Naturally there is a need for deeper dive into all the areas - like providing deeper insight to the Member State representatives on how to define the legal base involving tools like reference budgets, how to build maintainable and sustainable policies, how to ensure collaboration between Private, Public Voluntary in actual partnerships, and finally how to digitized as much as possible in order to run the schemes as efficient and effective as possible.
My starting point was to explain to the delegates what the world will look like the next 5-10-20 years - I know very well that this is Mission Impossible, just look at the global transformation that has been undertaken with the introduction of mobile communication and the Internet (which is now ONLY 25 years old) - could we 25 years ago have foreseen how influential and impacting on everybody's life the Internet would have been - I don't think so.
Nevertheless there are some MEGA-trends which are influencing the choices of today. The 4 most important ones are outlined below slide:
It is somewhat easy for Denmark to interconnect all services and requirements in a digital model, as digitalization has been evolving in Public Sector over the last 40 years - the national registers for citizens (CPR), for companies (SE/CVR) and buildings/property (BBR) are almost twice as old as the Internet. And still today they are the foundation of the public sector digitization together with a strong and well-working PKI (NemID).
Secondly the Data & Innovation Driven Society is using ICT to "manipulate" information in real-time - with extremely large data amounts this is know as "Big Data". In combination with innovation new services and new possibilities will be available for the citizens. Without mentioning all the areas that will be possible, one that I personally is looking forward to is the realization of the Augmented Reality - according to rumors the new Iphone OIS will enable enhanced Augmented Reality capabilities. For Public Sector, this will allow case workers in the field to access real time - on-the-spot information and data linking the visual experience with data relevant to the field assignment.
Thirdly there will be a requirement to ensure the workability of the infrastructure and the digital services. The CIIP (Critical Information Infrastructure Protection) Society needs to address key issues like how to ensure 24/7 operation, how to maintain business resilience and how to protect the citizens privacy so that their personal integrity is maintained? The challenge for the Digitized Service Society is that it is quite vulnerable - and that criticality is increasing day-by-day as more and more services and operations gets digitized. Two examples to visualize the impact of why we need to carefully plan and execute the CIIP Society:
- Estonia: April 27th 2007 - this is almost 7 years anniversary - Estonia was digitally disrupted - no Public Service was accessible and the banking system was brought down for more than 3 days. As the consequence the entire society was in a state of emergency. As a consequence NATO prioritized Cyber Warfare as a real threat. More on Wikipedia.
- Danish Milk: Not the most serious of problems, but it can serve as a visualization of the cascade effects that digitized supply-chain break-down can have. On April 9th 2008 a major server break-down at the ordering system at dairy producer Arla's IT-vendor IBM, let to non-delievery of milk to a number of stores in all of Denmark. As you might know, Denmark is among the countries in the world with the highst consumption of milk - and hence no milk availability is a big issue. It took several days before the supply- and ordering chain were re-established and once more the normal - and highly effective - digitized supply-chain were working again. More on the break-down here (in Danish only).
In relation to MIS-schemes I think that there are especially two areas that are critical. First there is the eligibility - can you or can't you receive the benefit - and why/why not. Secondly, the actual payment of the benefits or service delivery. Of course there are a number of prerequisites to being able to cope with these decisions in real-time / digitally. To mention the three requirements that I see as most important: Good Masterdata (so that you know what you need to know around the citizen), good PKI (so that you ensure that it is the right citizen, that gets the right service at the right time) and finally good communication infrastructure (so that you can enable all case workers in the country - and ultimate also the citizens). For deeper insight on the best practices on eGovernment and on how to digitize Public Sector, please review the presentations I gave (1, 2) during a conference last year hosted by the Mauritian Minister of ICT.
The model here is based on the development model 3 steps on the staircase of Social Security. Basis offerings are what the ILO labels the Social Protection Floor - these are universal rights that every citizen has the right to receive. Step 2 is the additional rights achieved either by tax-funded rights (which can be seen as an extension of the social protection floor - which is somewhat the case in the Nordics) and rights obtained through contribution - many additional Social Insurance schemes are based on contribution - like unemployment insurance. The 3rd step is the full contributory where individual based rights are granted, often without Government involvement. Private Pension can be seen as such a contributory element.
The more complex the composition of the social welfare model becomes the greater the challenge of digitizing the elements and to make sure that the system is running as efficient and lean as possible. Hence the claim that the countries with the most complex Welfare-systems also need to have the most mature solutions for Social Service Delivery.
Introduction of MIS-schemes are complex - which also the seminar clearly showed. The amount of work put into the pilot in Greece and the complexity of the Cypress reform of Social Security / Minimum Income Support is impressive. Still it was clear that there is a massive disconnect between those drafting the policies and the actual implementations. This came out quite clear, when Professor Dan Finn, gave his presentation around successful Service Delivery in Social Benefits and Social Security. Many of the facts presented somewhat echoed with my own presentation, especially on the need for benchmarks and performance management.
When I talk about a disconnect it is because there in many Social Welfare projects seems to be a lack of holistic understanding of the "end-to-end" process - which includes actual implementation and execution of the organizational transformation and the ICT-enablement.
Some of the observations that I and my team in our Public Sector Digitization Research Group (PSDRG) have done over the last couple of years with respect to Social Security Digitization are:
- They may attempt to completely replace existing systems in a single phase.
- They may struggle to integrate a social services system with other government components.
- They may have a rigid architecture which effectively creates new siloes, and which makes it difficult to take an holistic approach across all social services programs.
- They adopt rigid software solutions, which may offer certain out-of-the-box functionality, but which are very difficult to configure or extend for a jurisdiction’s or agency’s unique laws, regulations and other requirements.
- They may create a disconnect between the stakeholders involved in the digitization process, by inhibit customer dialog with the product vendors, which can create inefficiencies.
- They may forget that the process is holistic and that holistic inclusion of stakeholders are required to obtain success.
From an ICT-enablement point of view there are a number of challenges when implementing a MIS-system. I focused in my presentation on 4 topics: 1) Complexity of rules, 2) Embracing the weak citizen, 3) Distinction between Objective rules/policies and subjective rules/policies and finally 4) Digital Payment. There are - of course - many other challenges with respect to sound, efficient and effective digitization - as outlined above there are a number of prerequisites that needs to be in place to really maximize effort. Other components that ought to be included is "how to fight EFC - Error, Fraud and Corruption" (those with interest in this subject, please read my white paper here presented at the ISSA Technical Seminar on Contribution Evasion:
#ISSA has opened for contributions at World Forum & Seminars - inc my own White Paper on Error, Fraud and Corruption: http://t.co/4Me0uXI6wK
— C Wernberg-Tougaard (@DigitizeSociety) April 6, 2014
Complexity of rules/policies: One of the things that characterize digitization today is the growing awareness that the old dogma of "uniqueness" is quickly fading away. What Governments do - in process terms - are quite alike all around the globe! But there can be tremendous differences between nations on how the actual Policies are formulated. This is why it makes such good sense separating Processes from Policies.
With respect to MIS-schemes the complexity of the scheme will almost certain require digitization - this as using a tool like Oracle Policy Automation (OPA) makes it possible for citizens to screen their eligibility or to process a claim request - based on the same rules/policies. Furthermore the fact that the policy is stored with all its variations over time, enables effective change of circumstances as well as it allows to do reconciliation based on new information. From an EFC perspective, the sheer fact that the computation of eligibility is M2M (Machine-to-machine), makes it impossible for the case-worker to interrupt the process/determination - ie. a case-worker can not withhold a citizen the right service or benefit, nor can a citizen "persuade" a case-worker to grant a benefit if not eligible.
From an ICT-enablement point of view there are also immense cost-savings by utilizing a methodology where the actual Law literally is constituting the "computer-code" on which the determination is done - without programmers, consultants, implementers etc. It actually means that Governments can put policy changes into effect in hours rather than years.
Objective vs. Subjective Law Digitization: Another major challenge is how to cope with rules as they become subjective rather than objective from a digitization point of view. This is an interesting field of research and operational implementation realization.
A bit later in the presentation I gave a short introduction to the challenges with introducing Subjectivity in Determinations - the basic approach is to assist the case-workers ability to make consistent and "rule-of-law" decisions. I'm a keen believer in holistic Government processes on "Ideas <-> Law <-> Policy <->ICT" as this workflow will provide a huge step forward for Public Sector Digitization. Among the leading countries in the world are Denmark, New Zealand and Netherlands. This "back-office" digitization should also be seen as a way to enable the aspiration between the OGP - Open Government Partnership - as it will introduce tremendous transparency to cause and effect of legal systems and actual policy implementations.Digital Illiteracy: A major concern when drafting MIS-schemes and utilizing ICT, is that the majority of the recipients of benefits are not well-equipped for the digital world. They basically lack the skills to do self-service or self-screening, which is normally a required element in order to obtain efficiency of Public Sector Digitization. Nevertheless this should not discourage Governments to digitize MIS-schemes, as many of the controls and efficiencies are located in the back-office operation. If the poor/home-less are required to do "self-service" they could be offered assistance in a service center - or through a voluntary/NGO organizations, but this will in the digitized world require other and more advanced checks-and-balances to realize.
Digital Payment: Among the areas where innovation is moving quite fast is on payment-enablement and service provisioning. In Spain a "MIS"-payment card has been developed to allow Social Security recipients to pay with a multiplicities of options - with out actually paying out cash to the benefit receivers. Countries in Africa - most notably Kenya - has developed the M-pesa System to create mobile banking services without actually having a bank account. It is clear that both options - mobile banking via simplified SMS and via an actual debt-card for "Minimum Income" should be considered when drafting the holistic frame around MIS.
To exemplify some of the challenges with the 4 key areas, I gave a few examples of successful digitization and inclusion - as well as pointed out some of the above innovations used around the world to solve / overcome the challenges.
Recommendations and key things to remember: My final slide summarized some of the learning that I find it is important that Government officials and policy makers remembers when dealing with digitization and the realization of the Digitized Service Society. There are things that both the EU-commission and the Member States can do. The EU-commission - DG EMPL - should consider to collaborate more intensive with the ICT-vendor's and system integrators through strategic knowledge exchange. This is not done through dialog with EU Industry organizations, as they tend to be lack the deeper knowledge and public sector sub-segment expertize, but rather as a collaborative forum between key experts and advisors in a PPVP-scheme.
1) ICT is part of the solution, but humans are still the most challenging "obstacle" to overcome. Implementing digitized services and methods often impact the way case workers work, and hence inclusion and information around impact is required. Implementing ICT for Minimum Income Support systems is 20% technology and 80% organizational change - and culture change. Therefore one should develop schemes to empower and include case workers in the implementation process.
2) No-one can eat an elephant in one bite. A phased approach is always a good idea. Many programs are too optimistic and too convinced that the combined effort of technology and organizational change can be overcome in one big bite. And too often this is not the case. The best practice advise is to make smaller phases and releases. A good example on a 4-year, multiple phases implementation of Social Welfare transformation is the ICM system implemented by British Columbia (Canada). It also shows good use of open and transparent communication to reduce worries among both by the citizens and the case workers. The program status and progress can be found here, inclusive of an online demonstration of their new privacy-enabled Case Management / Payment System.
3) Ensure that all parties in the implementation is part of the implementation. As a consequence of most Public Sector procurements, the actual software/hardware vendor is outside the team discussing implementation. This can have sever consequences in terms of additional spend and increased risks. I have on a number of projects asked customers to establish a collaborative task-force, combining senior public sector stakeholders - often both the CEO and CIO, as well as senior representatives from the System Integrator and the Software/Hardware stakeholders, to form an "Innovation Advisory Board" that can steer issues and enable direct 3-parties dialog to ensure the best possible implementation going forward.
4) And to enable the required foundation for Policy Automation - which is good master data. Actually I recommend that Governments should establish the "Golden Virtual Record" which at a given time is the best possible set of information that one have to make the most correct determination of eligibility. This is not an easy task. Countries like Denmark and the Netherlands have spend 30-40 years constructing core systems that could enable such a regime - and it will be quite challenging to streamline existing systems to provide the Virtual Golden Record. But taking one bite at the time, the goal might be reached sooner than later.
As always - comments and adds are more than welcome. Thank you for reading to the end.
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