THE GOVERNMENT must find ways to take advantage of digitalization to improve social protection systems, Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) Secretary Rexlon T. Gatchalian said on Tuesday.
“For us [in government], I think the challenge is [that people] have already adapted [to the digital transformation] and it’s the government that’s trying to catch up,” he said in the panel discussion at the Asian Development Bank (ADB).
“You can digitalize all you want but if the requirements, the steps, the forms are so tedious, nobody’s going to end up using that platform anyway. So that’s the biggest challenge for us: trying to change the bureaucracy and latching them on to new technology or new digital formats,” he elaborated.
Still, Mr. Gatchalian emphasized that the importance for the DSWD to digitalize its services to eliminate the need of falling in line. “Wouldn’t it be nice if every single Filipino beneficiary of our social amelioration programs are banked in and are financially inclusive?” he said.
Mr. Gatchalian cited the Philippines’ experience during the pandemic, where cash assistance was implemented primarily face-to-face.
“It was a mixed bag of communications. On one side, we’re telling them to stay at home. On the other side, you were telling them to flock to the central payout centers, you will get your social amelioration from the national government. You already see the disconnect,” he said.
“The biggest struggle was… a lot of the social welfare platforms of the government are not digitalized, payouts were done manually,” he recalled. “Not only were you violating the social distance protocols, you are also turning poverty into an emotional coefficient.”
Earlier, the DSWD earlier announced that it is pilot testing a digital food stamp program that will benefit 3,000 families, particularly pregnant and lactating mothers and single parents.
Mr. Gatchalian also cited that beneficiaries from the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) cash transfer program were able to adapt to the situation as they already had existing deposit accounts.
“While the rest of the population was trying to line up and get their social amelioration, you had a small segment of around 4.4 million families nationwide who didn’t have to do that because they were part of that (program),” he said.
“We want to expand that we want to make sure that every single social protection financial assistance program there is in the department should be in a digital format. You should do away with lines, we should do away with physical vouchers,” he added.
The 4Ps is a conditional cash transfer program first launched in 2007 and later institutionalized in 2019.
Mr. Gatchalian noted that apart from being conditional, the cash transfer programs must be needs-based and rights-based.
“In all the programs in the department we try to make sure that there are conditionalities to it, that you do get the benefit for a limited time. You will graduate out of the program. But hopefully when you’re getting the benefit, you’re putting in the conditions as well. So that way it really becomes an investment for the future and for the next generation. We try to break intergenerational poverty,” he stressed.
The 4Ps program requires pregnant women to avail pre- and post-natal care and be attended during childbirth by a trained professional; parents or guardians must attend the family development sessions, and children must receive regular preventive health check-ups and vaccines; among others.
“In our 4Ps program, there’s a sunset of seven years, it’s in the law. Even if we want to extend somebody, if you reached the seven years max or if you have no more children in that school-age bracket, you really graduate out of the program,” he said.
“A person can have more kids and still languish in poverty, that’s true, I do not discount that fact, but the element there is we have to make the seven years work; and us in government we cannot just say we’re going to give up just because someone told us it can’t be done. We’ll have to make that seven years work together with other agencies in government to pull someone out of poverty,” he said.
On the other hand, Santiago Levy, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, also cautioned that conditional cash transfer programs may improve indicators of human capital but translate poorly into higher productivity jobs.
He said that these programs can create “informality traps or lower participation rates,” and noted that graduation from these programs is obstructed “because of high informality in the labor market.”
“A key suggestion is to develop a long-term vision of the desired social protection system to guide policy, even if this vision is implemented gradually. It is essential to avoid improvisation and ad-hoc reactions to political pressures or short-run shocks,” Mr. Levy added.
He also noted the opportunity to take advantage of digitalization for better data analysis on labor market conditions.
“It is also is much easier today to gather data on what is happening on the labor market, not only about payment systems or mechanisms…we need to understand more the drivers of the large informal sectors,” he said.
“Informality is not something that happens completely independent of the labor market, it’s a reflection of the labor market. If we want people to graduate from poverty it is difficult to happen without a better functioning labor market,” he added. — Luisa Maria Jacinta C. Jocson
