Early detection of debt

Municipality of Almelo

Municipality of Almelo offers help in the fight against poverty. An algorithm in the form of a web application is used for this purpose. The algorithm ensures that a signal about a resident's arrears reaches the municipality. The municipality then offers help.

Last change on 16th of April 2025, at 12:31 (CET) | Publication Standard 1.0

• Publication category: Impactful algorithms
• Impact assessment: DPIA
• Status: In use

General information

Theme

Social Security

Begin date

2020-Q1

Contact information

[e-mail]

Responsible use

Goal and impact

The algorithm helps the municipality of Almelo fight poverty. With the algorithm, the municipality of Almelo receives signals about payment arrears from housing corporations, health insurers, energy or water companies and private landlords. We try to help residents who are at risk of falling into debt situations as early as possible, thus preventing poverty problems from increasing. When the financial problems are still small, advice can sometimes already be a good solution.

Considerations

The municipality of Almelo has to deal with laws and regulations under which the municipality of Almelo actively approaches residents with impending debts and offers help. To carry out this statutory task, the algorithm is deployed so that data on arrears reaches the finance coaches at the right time. If employees had to figure this out manually, it would take a lot of time and several people would have access to the sensitive information. Because the algorithm retrieves the data from a system, only signals on arrears (longer than 30 days) reach the municipality without interim inspection by individuals. Good agreements have been made about the exchange of data: it is done in a secure way, only necessary data is shared and the data is not visible to anyone but the municipality's finance coaches. A resident can ultimately choose whether or not to make use of the help provided by the municipality of Almelo.

Human intervention

The system independently (automatically) makes a number of choices, e.g. to send an email, letter or text message when payment is late between €25 and €2000. After the data matching process, there is a moment of human oversight and a check that that matching is correct. For arrears above €2000, there is always an assessment by a staff member. From the moment the report is forwarded to a social worker, the process is no longer automated.

Risk management

The web application is a registration and information system that can only be logged in by authorised employees using two-factor authentication. For the security of the algorithm, security tests are carried out regularly to check that the system cannot be hacked. The security of the algorithm meets BIO requirements. Only the finance coaches of the Almelo municipality have access to the data. Residents can indicate at any time that they do not want to be listed in the system. Data is then immediately removed. In addition, residents can access the data at any time. The moment the Almelo municipality removes the data from the system, no information about debt arrears remains with the municipality.

Legal basis

By amending the Municipal Debt Relief Act (Wgs), early signalling has been a statutory duty for municipalities since 1 January 2021. This law allows designated creditors to report payment arrears. Exchanging this data ensures that signals of debt problems reach the municipality earlier. As a result, help can be actively offered to prevent increases in debt.

Impact assessment

Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA)

Operations

Data

Name, address, email address, notification of arrears of more than 30 days with a housing association, utility company health insurers and private landlord.

Technical design

The creditor makes a notification in the registration and information system. Once a month, all new notifications are checked by an employee of the municipality. It then checks whether there are multiple debt arrears within one household. After this, the automated process with the algorithm stops. After this, the municipality contacts the resident to offer help.