| Welcome to our January newsletter! | | | Welcome to our first issue of 2024! Explore how cutting-edge technologies are transforming social protection programmes, addressing crucial issues of data privacy, security, and ethical usage. Plus, delve into the second edition of the Social Protection Digest; tune in to our G20 Social Protection Podcast episode; and join an upcoming webinar as well as the next Hangout Meeting of the Social Protection in Crisis Contexts Online Community. Happy new year! | | | | Social Protection Digest #2—Dive into the second edition of our quarterly digest, a curated selection of professional guides, evidence-based studies, and thought-provoking political and conceptual discussions. Explore publications covering a range of topics, providing evidence and guidance to practitioners, policymakers and researchers. | | | | Understanding our webinar audience | socialprotection.org—Participate in this quick survey and help us host even better webinars by sharing your preferred topics and subjects, and ways to enhance your experience. The survey takes less than 5 minutes to complete and is open until 22 January. Your feedback and collaboration are highly appreciated! | | | | Discover additional recent publications curated by the socialprotection.org team | | | You are also welcome to become a member of the OC | | | | | | Enhancing Social Protection through Digitalisation
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Digital technologies and data analytics have the potential to strengthen social protection programmes, enhancing their effectiveness and efficiency. However, challenges such as data privacy, digital exclusion, misuse of data, and algorithmic bias must be carefully addressed. Can digitalisation make social protection more inclusive and ensure that essential resources reach the most vulnerable? | | | | This blog was especially produced for our January newsletter by Lena Blind and Anita Mittal (GIZ) | | | Talking Interoperability: Dialogue Series | Digital Convergence Initiative (DCI)—By bringing together digital social protection and technology experts from government agencies, software vendors, system integrators, and international organisations, this webinar series aims to promote peer-based learning and problem solving. | | | | Integrated and digital social protection information systems | socialprotection.org, GIZ—Grasp the concepts of integrated and digital social protection information systems, including its three pillars, main components, and potential benefits. The course also addresses design and implementation challenges and risks, and only takes about three hours to complete. | | | Subscribe to our e-Learning list to receive the link to our new course ‘Good Practices for Ensuring Data Protection and Privacy in Social Protection Systems’, scheduled for launch in February. | | Hunger Safety Net Programme (HSNP) | Kenya—This programme delivers regular and emergency cash transfers to support some of the most vulnerable and poor people in the country. Digitalisation is embedded in the benefit delivery mechanism: beneficiaries hold bank accounts that are linked to debit cards operated through biometrics (fingerprint information and an identifying photograph). To collect the benefit, recipients must go to pay-point agencies and insert the smart card into a point-of-sale device that reads the card and scans the recipient’s fingerprint, verifying their identity and authorising the agent to hand over the cash. During HSPN II (2013-2019), 101,800 households were covered under regular cash transfers. An additional 273,006 beneficiaries were eligible for emergency scale-up payments during climate-related disasters, such as droughts and flooding. HSPN III, which started in 2019, aims to provide 32,000 additional households with regular cash transfers. Explore the programme. | | | Episode 22 | Digital Financial Inclusion—Around 80 million women opened bank accounts for the first time during the COVID-19 pandemic to receive government benefits. Could policy design be improved to ensure that digital accounts effectively lead to greater financial inclusion of beneficiaries? Discover in this episode published in January 2023. | | | | Re-thinking Social Protection for the Digital Age | World Government Summit—Learn from the Nobel Laureate in Economics, Professor Esther Duflo (MIT), speaking during the World Government Summit 2023 about whether digital systems can help reduce rising poverty rates worldwide, and how to address the challenges and opportunities created by the digital age in the social protection field. | | | | |
