Technology is a useful servant. Let’s harness it for social protection, social distancing and community testing
The government is hard-pressed in giving an answer to the raging coronavirus pandemic with every resource, instrument, policy and strategy it can get its hands on.
An integral lesson from COVID-19 we can not afford to forget, at least for some time, is that social protection is as important a musical instrument as social distancing that countries must deploy to fight the virus.
The virus is destined to stay around, alive and spreading, until vaccines and treatments are found.
Until then, if not even later, social protection is a two-in-one instrument -- it protects both lives and livelihoods.
It protects lives by obviating the need for seeking work beyond your home when harsh measures to contain the virus spread are set up.
It protects livelihoods by supporting millions of hardworking people who've lost self and wage employment with little or no savings to draw from. It can help fight hunger, a non-contagious but believe it or not deadly human deprivation.
The government has made a decision to expand the existing Old Age and Widow allowance programmes, implemented by social welfare ministry, by Tk 815 crore.
It has additionally announced a crisis cash transfer programme for households impoverished by coronavirus with a provision of Tk 760 crore. Who in government will implement this programme is yet to be decided.
It is also providing free food to the indegent and selling rice beneath the Open Market Sale (OMS) programme at a highly subsidised price of Tk 10 per kg. The government has further promised housing assistance for homeless people.
How to deliver social protection quickly and effectively are old questions -- and coronavirus has added a new dimension.
How do you deliver social protection safely when the country is in lockdown and there is a need to protect the poor and the vulnerable population from contracting COVID-19?
Richard Chirchir, director and senior management information specialist for development pathways, in a recent blog titled "7 ways technology can help the social protection response" provides some useful ideas.
Quick, efficient and safe delivery of social protection can be done by leveraging existing technology solutions and never have to build these systems from scratch.
What is critical at this difficult time is to make certain that assistance is sent to intended beneficiaries on a timely basis.
Technology can play an essential role in augmenting delivery in several ways, depending on the contextual constraints and opportunities.
A key consideration in the design is the parameters which information have to be collected to join up the beneficiaries and deliver the assistance.
This is not enough time to create restrictive poverty-targeted schemes.
Essential information parameters such as for example ID numbers, names, addresses, mobile numbers and transaction profile could be collected instead of additional monitoring information such as for example assets, household composition and socio-economic details.
The accumulated historical transactional database of the mobile financial service (MFS) contains an abundance of information, which, if used smartly, can identify the needy from transaction records.
This database is already from the payment company systems that are regulated by the Bangladesh Bank (BB). Therefore, financial regulatory supervision could be assured.
This will facilitate direct cash transfers from the federal government accounts, via the banks, to the accounts of the beneficiaries.
Cashless payment delivery through mobile money accounts should be encouraged in order to avoid risks of crowding and the spreading of the virus through the handling of cash.
Bangladesh has the capacity to device multiple bank delivery mechanisms under which benefits could be withdrawn from different commercial banks through the MFS system. These banks will have the appropriate amount of cash through BB's Bangladesh Electronic Funds Transfer Network (BFTN).
Most Bangladeshis have national identification (NID), access of adults to cellular phone devices is near to 90 per cent, and the MFS system comes with an established capacity in the application of technology.
People who have access to smartphones can open their accounts quickly given that they have the NID.
Those who don't possess smartphones can head to among the 60,000 digital KYC centres of the MFS operators across the county with their NIDs, where they would be able to quickly open the MFS accounts.
If the correct authority instructs to open accounts, the needy people can do so without much hassle.
Carrying out a BB notice on April 6 so that it is a requirement for staff in export-oriented industries to have MFS or bank-account, MFS account openings surged from 20,000 each day to 90,000. bKash, Rocket and Nagad have together added 2.6 million new accounts in April.
Liquidity constraints at the agent level pose a challenge which can be handled. Before coronavirus, there is no evidence of liquidity constraint at the MFS agent point.
MFS agents are independent entrepreneurs who offer MFS services in exchange for commissions. However, under coronavirus restrictions, banks are understandably open for not a lot of hours.
The electronic fund flow channels such as BFTN are also operating for limited hours.
Without their full engagement, MFS providers are facing extreme challenges in cash management and in keeping the agents active.
MFS agents' activities have declined 20 to 30 % because of these disruptions, which will go away as so when the banking hours return to normalcy.
Meanwhile, some regulatory tweaking can generate additional ease in the MFS system.
For instance, extending the daily and monthly fund transfer limits from bank accounts and cards to MFS accounts could ease the liquidity constraint somewhat. Currently, these limits are Tk 30,000 daily and Tk 2,00,000 monthly.
Increasing the limits will increase digital liquidity in the MFS system, thus reducing dependency on the physical agent point.
This sort of adjustments makes it possible for customers who've bank accounts to bring additional money from their banks to MFS accounts to cover their groceries, bills, domestic helps' monthly salaries and so forth.
They are verified customers who usually do not pose any extra risk. This reform will, therefore, help to make the country's payment systems adjust to physical distancing.
Digital solutions can even be used to control food-based social assistance.
Monitoring the delivery of food at the last-mile is definitely a challenge.
Reach of mobile connectivity and innovation in ICT have enabled real-time data interchange until the last level of service delivery using low data consumption applications in cellular devices.
Low-cost mobile technologies can be developed to permit the delivery of food entitlements at the doorstep of the beneficiary. These require using business models analogous to types that e-commerce entrepreneurs use to provide their orders.
Why do people need to fall into line densely in public areas to achieve the food rations in digital Bangladesh?
There is absolutely no time to re-invent when the prevailing wheels are good to drive. Typically, new information systems would take months if not years to develop and implement.
However, if requirements are simple, then functional information systems could be developed from existing data in just a matter of weeks.
I have without doubt our IT, MFS and e-commerce professionals can quickly come up with interoperable systems allowing information exchange and real-time monitoring of last-mile delivery if given a chance.
This would rely upon collaborations with technology providers and the responsible public agencies like the ministries of social welfare, disaster management and relief, and finance and the BB.
Different countries are pursuing completely different strategies in testing for COVID-19.
The World Health Organisation supports a policy of widespread testing. When the healthcare system is overloaded, you do not want a whole lot of non-sick people arriving at health facilities and risking contagion.
The digital health community is trying a slew of new tools aiming to monitor the spread of the condition and facilitate better treatment.
The database used for the social protection programmes can be utilised to draw random samples of staff to accomplish aggressive testing, once reliable tests and kits can be found.
Notwithstanding the limits of scientific understanding of COVID-19 immunity, tests at the city level will be critical in the weeks and months ahead for disease surveillance, therapeutics and return-to-work screenings.
COVID-19 has taken to the forefront the synergy between social protection and public health.
Lockdown and social protection buy time for building the health system readiness to unlock the procedure of reopening the economy.
Let us remake the Bangladesh surprise through a strong and coordinated effort in social protection, health and digital platforms for delivering social assistance, facilitating physical distancing and conducting community testing in urban and rural areas.
The success of COVID-19 digital initiatives could be significantly increased by establishing feedback systems in coordination with the prevailing governance systems in the institutions within and outside the government.
The writer can be an economist
