The Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) features social protection prominently in five (1,3,5,8 and 10) of its seventeen global goals. Social protection programs are executed to assist poor and vulnerable individuals and families cope during emergencies and shocks, enhance productivity, invest in health and education of children and in protection the aging populace. When well designed and implemented, these programs can boost human capital and productivity, reduce inequalities, build resilience, promote inclusive economic development and break intergenerational cycles of poverty. During the Pandemic, Social Protection Programs proved to be the most flexible and strategic measure to deal with the virus despite the socio-economic status of a country.
The COVID-19 pandemic awakened the urgency of social protection programmes. In Addition to workers falling ill, some worked less hours and some lost their jobs.Those who had no jobs prior to the pandemic faced prolonged hardship. Policymakers were in haste to implement crisis management responses. Expansion of existing social assistance programs was the most common public policy measure globally. Countries grappled to contain the virus, they implemented measures such as closure of borders, implemented curfews and quarantines, cut down working hours and imposed restrictions on commodities such as medical products. The above-mentioned measures imperilled economic sectors risking the widening of social inequality and increasing poverty. To minimise the impact of the pandemic on the livelihood of its citizens, countries executed different Social Protection Programs (SPP) as emergency crisis response. As of April 2020, 151 countries planned ,adopted or introduced 684 social protection measures. Cash and in-kind transfers programs were the most widely used protection measure especially in low-income countries due to ease of implementation and ability to enhance resilience to direct impacts of the pandemic. Even though countries with already existing concrete social protection foundation were able to respond more rapidly and effectively to the impacts of COVID-19, the crisis exposed gaps in the provision of social services in many countries.Therefore due to the abrupt and unprecedented impacts of COVID-19, countries had to design new social protection programs to cope.
With these programs ,the bigger questions to be addressed especially by low-income populations (who are disproportionately affected by the crisis and whose bigger population are in informal employment) was: how to identify the individuals who most needs this support?
Most low-income countries have social registries that are information systems that support potential inclusion of vulnerable populations to already existing social programs. These information systems rely on data from various sources. In Kenya, for instance social programs include: the Old age Grant,Disability Benefit, Orphans and Vulnerable Children’s Cash Transfer, Hunger Safety Net Programme etc. As of May 2016, the social registry had information on 883,000 household (approximately 3.7 million individuals out of a population 44 million). This was approximately 8% of the population. Other social registries include Rwanda’s Umudehe’s registry, India’s BPL (Below Poverty List), Vietnam’s Poor List and Indonesia’s Social Protection Registry. A 2021 working paper, opines that current social registries are highly inaccurate and inefficient because of among other reasons: in-built design errors, low coverage, the poor quality of surveys, the provision of false information by households and the infrequency of social registry surveys. COVID-19 and its subsequent economic crisis has exposed the lack of capacity of the current registries to identify vulnerable populations.COVID-19 has also created a huge population of "new poor”.
The scope of COVID-19 social assistance programs in terms of spending and a share of population receiving assistance from these programs is unprecedented. Countries came up with ways to target vulnerable groups especially those in the non-formal sector and "missing middle” (such as migrant workers).In developing a short-term,rapid and effective measures to mitigate impacts of the pandemic, countries had to quickly determine eligibility of new transfers especially with large population not existing in current database and in the context of minimum physical contact, make safe secure payments. This often included innovations to adapt their current registries and some had to start from scratch in creating ways to assess needs and eligibility.
Countries that expanded current registries had to cross-check with other government administrative databases using a unique identifier such as a national ID to reduce inclusion errors. This sped up the process and minimised the need for direct contact with citizens. Nonetheless ,this method relied on the accuracy and interoperability of the databases being used. For instance, to determine eligibility, Turkey utilized 28 government registries that ranged from one poverty and auto registries to tax and social insurance registries, expanding recipient households from 4 to 12 million. Using Social registries has its own limitations. Most social registries are not updated therefore forcing supplementation by other methods. In Ecuador,geographic targeting using census data added 100,000 households to those eligible. Secondly ,there has been deficiencies in the synchrony of social registries and databases used for cross checking purposes.Thirdly, since many civil registries can’t collect reliable data on deaths, a problem of "ghost beneficiaries” has been created.
Countries lacking social registries accepted applications. Namibia received one million applications in a forthnite and declared 60% of these eligible. The shortcoming of applications was that the amount of data being collect led to technical difficulties and digitally challenged people had trouble accessing the internet and navigating mobile phones. The expeditious pace of enrollment inevitably led to inclusion and exclusion error. Finally data aggression and data sharing involved calls into question the issue of data privacy and personal data regulations.
The pandemic exposed the supreme merit of possessing data (especially real-time data) on individuals and households. Governments trying to provide financial relief to its citizens faced infrastructural bottlenecks and availability of data. Not only does good data permit rapid registration of new beneficiaries,but also facilitates digital payments.
The crisis delineated how social protection systems are fragmentented and patchy in practice and highlighted the need for a comprehensive, coherent and universal systems: a single social information system,that tackle errors of inclusion and exclusion, integrates data into increase levels of interoperability, optimize the construction of targeting instruments, incorporate new information and communications technology and develop the institutional framework associated with social protection systems at the different territorial levels.This will require data that is inclusive,current and relevant.
Social Protection has 3 pillars:social assistance,social insurance and labor marketing policies. The single social information system should administratively, operationally and institutionally link programs within the respective pillars. Social information systems should contain data that: makes it possible to determine the characteristics of potential beneficiaries and to select applicants (social registries); provides background information on beneficiaries or user; contains geographic and location information on users and potential users for the delivery of entitlements;includes contact and bank data to facilitate the cash transfer payment process and contains administrative data associated with the income and expenditure levels of the population.
At operational level, merits of integration include: oversight of multiple schemes and reporting to policymakers; improves budget planning and ability to model and test policy changes; decreases burden on potential applicants to establish a ‘common entry point’ for social protection; avoidance of duplication of effort (and cost saving); better manages error and fraud and monitor multiple payments; further digitalise service delivery potentially reaching out to citizens in new ways (e.g. mobile phones); enables transition of beneficiaries between schemes as their circumstances change and establishment of more effective emergency responses. At policy level, it Increases transparency and accountability as program can be more easily shared and compared, the ‘image’ of the social protection system and knowledge on issues around poverty and vulnerability will be increased.
Integrated social protection interventions are imperative to strengthen socio-economic outputs and tackle multidimensional deprivations, consequently leading to advancements in health,nutrition and education. The post COVID-19 period presents an opportunity to abandon "individual ” programs and invest in "systems” that consolidate a range of social assistance programs and social insurance components. An opportunity to shift from ‘benefits’ towards right-based ‘entitlement’.