Early on

Municipality of Amsterdam

In Amsterdam, 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 27th of November 2024, at 14:54 (CET) | Publication Standard 1.0

• Publication category: Impactful algorithms
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• Status: In use

General information

Theme

Social Security

Begin date

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Contact information

[e-mail]

Responsible use

Goal and impact

In Amsterdam, 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 receive notifications from health insurers, housing corporations, energy suppliers, water companies and some public authorities, among others, if they have a customer who is in arrears with their payments. This is also called the 'Amsterdam approach to early signalling'. That the creditor may pass this data to the municipality, including personal data, is stated in the Municipal Debt Assistance Act. After the report, 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

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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.

The municipality of Amsterdam, Poverty Reduction Department is responsible for processing the data needed to go through the process.

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 providing the BSN, the other creditors do not provide a BSN.

Data warehouse Poverty Reduction Department

An employee of the municipality links the creditor's report to the data warehouse of the Poverty Reduction Department. Via the data warehouse, information can be retrieved from various databases so that we can determine which social worker can start working with the report. The information is needed not only to link the right social worker to the report, but also for the social worker to start the conversation with the client together with the right client manager.

Determining which department will deal with the notification

The creditor's notification and the data on the citizen from WPI's data warehouse are then linked. A unique code applies to each department. The code has no function other than to determine whether one is a client or not and which department the notification belongs to.

The system can choose from the following codes:

• Special Target Groups
• Integration and Language
• Social Work
• Work and Training Young people
• Work and Participation
• Work and Safety

Linked data

The results of linking datasets 1, 2 and 3 are stored in a separate dataset. This dataset therefore contains for each notification the data reported by the creditor, the data added from the data warehouse of the Poverty Reduction Department and the code of a department.

Creditor feedback

The social worker records in the registration and information system (RIS Vroeg Eropaf) whether contact was made with the citizen and whether appointments were made. Creditors can see in the system what has happened to their report. For example, that the report has been processed. The creditor can then stop the direct debit if necessary. Of course, the citizen may refuse help from the municipality. We also register this in the system. The creditor can then decide to restart the collection process.

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 notifications (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 possibilities: In the case of 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). This automated message refers to the website www.amsterdam.nl/geldproblemen . Here, citizens can find debt assistance in their district. If the debt exceeds EUR 250, the notification is automatically forwarded, based on information about the postcode area, to a social worker in the appropriate district or at a WPI department. The social worker tries to contact the citizen within 14 days. The social worker makes an initial analysis within 28 days. Often there is more at play than arrears. If the citizen accepts help, detailed arrangements are made with him or her. If it is not clear from the data whether the person with debts is known to the Poverty Reduction Department, the case is marked as 'unclear' in the system and forwarded to the Vroeg eropaf team. In the exceptional case that a report does not reach a social worker in the right district, the social worker reports this to the RIS Matching system manager. The latter then transfers the report to the correct care worker.