Technology offers new opportunities to fight poverty
Public service providers can use a new innovative technology to share data responsibly. This is one of the outcomes of a pilot by the Social Insurance Bank (SVB) in which data sharing was used to attempt to identify elderly people entitled to supplementary income support (AIO). The pilot resulted in income support being awarded to 28 financially vulnerable households. It further demonstrated that encrypted data sharing using so-called Multi Party Computation technology can be a secure and effective way to improve public services to citizens. The results of the pilot provide opportunities to further reduce non-use of schemes.
For years, the SVB has been proactively working to ensure that people get what they are entitled to. With regard to the AOW and also the Anw, the percentage of non-use is now zero. This is not yet the case for the Supplementary Income Provision for the Elderly (AIO). The AIO is a scheme that aims to supplement the income of citizens with an AOW to the subsistence level. If the SVB has more data, people who may be eligible for an AIO can be approached proactively and more specifically. This is why the SVB does a lot of outreach and has been arguing for some time, most recently via a Bottleneck Letter, for a broader legal basis to enable data sharing. In the meantime, the SVB is not sitting still and has carried out a pilot in which, by means of Multi Party Computation (MPC), an innovative technique that encrypts data, SVB and UWV data were combined to identify potential AIO claimants. The pilot was made possible by a temporary arrangement from the Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment and was submitted in advance to the Personal Data Authority (AP) for advice.
Positive results
As part of the pilot, 1,000 households were selected last year. These households first received a letter from the SVB and were then contacted by telephone. Next, it was investigated which households met the conditions for an AIO. Ultimately, this led to the allocation of income support to 28 vulnerable households who had hitherto had to make ends meet below the social subsistence minimum. With the extra money, these households have more livelihood security.
The pilot shows that data exchange between government agencies using MPC technology is safe and effective. Currently, government organisations are often not allowed to share data between themselves, which means that citizens do not always get the services they are entitled to. This is why the SVB has long been calling for a wider remit so that data can be shared more easily. This will make it easier for the SVB to provide a more proactive service to citizens, for example by informing them of their entitlement to benefits or providing them with targeted information on matters of interest to them.
Livelihood security
Diana Starmans, member of the Executive Board of the SVB: 'We are delighted that the pilot has resulted in a group of people now receiving extra income support. As a result, they have more money to make ends meet, greater livelihood security and more financial peace of mind. As a proactive and personal service provider, the SVB believes it is important that people get what they are entitled to and that we contribute to solving the poverty issue in the Netherlands. This pilot shows that encrypted data sharing between government organisations is possible in a secure way without the organisations learning anything from each other. And that offers us, but also other service providers, all kinds of opportunities to improve services to citizens even further.'
Follow-up
The report on the pilot has now been shared with Minister for Poverty Policy Carola Schouten. The minister will soon explore with the SVB whether and how the pilot can be followed up. The results of this exploration will be announced in due course.
