Early on

Municipality of Zundert

In Zundert, we fight against poverty. We try to help people at risk of poverty as early as possible to prevent them from getting into serious debt or being evicted.

Last change on 23rd of April 2024, at 10:57 (CET) | Publication Standard 1.0

• Publication category: Impactful algorithms
• Impact assessment: Field not filled in.
• Status: In use

General information

Theme

Social Security

Begin date

Field not filled in.

Contact information

[e-mail]

Responsible use

Goal and impact

In Zundert, we fight against poverty. We try to help people at risk of poverty as early as possible to prevent them from getting into serious debt or being evicted. When problems are still small, advice or a light intervention can be enough. To do that, we need to know who is at risk of getting into debt. That is why we get a notification from health insurers, housing associations, energy suppliers, water companies and some public authorities, among others, if they have a customer who is in arrears with them. That the creditor may pass this data to the municipality, including personal data, is stated in the Municipal Debt Assistance Act. After the notification, the municipality supplements the data with information known to us about the reported person. This is information that is needed to determine whether or not someone is a benefit recipient, a client of WPI (the Werk, Participatie en Inkomen department of the municipality of Amsterdam) and to determine the best care provider to forward the notification to. Supplementing the notification with the information known to the municipality is done automatically, at the press of a button. Someone is always needed to trigger a check for data. The system forwards the notification to a counsellor at the municipality. He or she tries to get in touch with the citizen within 14 days and makes an initial analysis within 28 days. Sometimes there is more at play than arrears. If the citizen accepts help, we make detailed arrangements with him or her. The social worker reports to the central hotline what agreements have been made, so that a creditor knows what the next steps are for the payment arrears.

Considerations

Field not filled in.

Human intervention

The system makes a number of choices independently (automated), for example to send a text message, email or letter in case of arrears lower than 250 euros, or to which postcode area the notification should be forwarded. During the data linking process, there is one moment of human supervision: the linking of the creditors' notification with the data of the Poverty Reduction Department is automated, but human action is required to start the linking. From the moment the notification is forwarded to the social workers in the appropriate district, the process is no longer automated. The social service provider visits the reported citizen if the citizen does not contact them himself.

Risk management

The registration and information system called 'RIS Matching' is provided by the company Inforing, a company that supplies this system to 200 municipalities. They regularly conduct so-called 'pen and hack tests' to check that the system cannot be hacked by third parties. They also ensure that personal data is securely managed and not sold to third parties. Security also lies with Inforing. The security meets the BIO standard.

Citizens can indicate at any time that they do not want to be listed in the system. The data are then immediately removed. In addition, citizens can access the system at any time. This concerns dataset 4, 'linked data' (see: Data). Other rules apply to the data in the data warehouse of the Poverty Reduction Department, namely the Urban Framework for Processing Personal Data and the General Data Protection Regulation. The data warehouse and debt arrears reports are two separate systems and debt arrears reports do not enter the data warehouse. The moment the municipality has to remove the data from the RIS Matching system, no debt arrears information remains with the municipality.

Operations

Data

Creditor notification

Creditors make their notification of arrears in a specially developed registration and information system called 'RIS Matching'. The data in this dataset are all data needed to address the right citizen, find the right care provider and provide advice on which help the citizen would benefit most. Only health insurers have a legal basis (Government Gazette 2015) for supplying the BSN, the other creditors do not supply a BSN.

The creditor can provide the following information with the notification:

Customer number

Early or crisis

Debt amount

Term Amount

Gender

Pre-letters

Prefix

Surname

Street

House number

House letter

House number or suffix

Postcode

City

BSN (in case of health insurance)

Date of birth

Additional information (e.g. which 'label' someone is insured with. The main label is Achmea, but someone may be insured with Zilveren Kruis, Avero, FBTO, for example. Contact details such as telephone number or e-mail address are also listed here if this is known).

A municipal employee links the creditor's notification to the data warehouse. Via the data warehouse, information can be retrieved from various databases so that we can determine which social worker can start working on the report. The list below shows exactly what information is involved. The following information, if known and if it concerns a client of WPI, is linked from the data warehouse to the notification. The information is needed not only to link the right social worker to the notification, but also for the social worker to start the conversation with the customer together with the right customer manager:

Technical design

Architecture of the model

The creditor makes a notification in the registration and information system 'RIS Matching'. Once every fortnight, a municipality employee links all new reports (at the push of a button) to data on the reported person from the Poverty Reduction Department's data warehouse and to data on the various debt assistance programmes available. That link allows the municipality to determine whether it is dealing with the right citizen and which social worker is best placed to contact the citizen. It then checks whether there are multiple debt arrears within one household. Up to this point, the process is automated. Next, there are a few options:

For a single payment arrears of less than 250 euros, a text message, letter or e-mail is automatically sent from RIS Matching (depending on which contact details are available).

External provider

Inforing