Early on

Municipality of Midden-Drenthe

In Midden-Drenthe, 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 19th of January 2026, at 15:05 (CET) | Publication Standard 1.0

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

General information

Theme

Social Security

Begin date

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Contact information

[e-mail]

Responsible use

Goal and impact

In Midden-Drenthe, 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 may 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 IWO (the Income, Work and Education Department of the municipality of Midden-Drenthe) and to determine to which care provider the notification can best be forwarded. Supplementing the notification with the information known to the municipality is done automatically, after pressing a button. Someone is always needed to activate a data check.

Considerations

Under the Municipal Debt Assistance Act (Wgs), early signalling is a legal duty for municipalities to actively approach residents with impending debt/poverty problems and offer help. Housing landlords, water companies, energy suppliers and/or health insurers alert the municipality if they see their customers not paying their bills. They do not need their customer's permission to do so first. The companies and agencies signal if their own efforts do not resolve arrears, for example by making personal contact and offering a payment arrangement. These alert notifications are automatically forwarded to the municipality. Alternatively, creditors could manually submit the warning notification to the municipality, but this ultimately has the same outcome.

Data sharing is done in a secure manner: only necessary data is shared and the data is not visible to anyone other than designated staff. A resident can ultimately choose whether or not to use the municipal assistance offer.

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 'RIS Matching' and the direction system 'RIS Vroeg Eropaf' - both web applications - are provided by XXLLNC. They regularly carry out security tests to check that the system cannot be hacked. The (legal and other) requirements regarding data protection (AVG) and information security are met.

Legal basis

Municipal Debt Relief Act (Wgs): since 1 January 2021, early signalling is a statutory duty for municipalities.

Elaboration on impact assessments

Registered pre-IAMA time; ethical leaflet yet to be implemented.

Impact assessment

Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA)

Operations

Data

Name, address, e-mail address, possible presence of resident minor children, signalling of a payment arrears of more than 30 days with a housing association, utility company or health insurers, as well as amount and duration of such payment arrears.

Technical design

The creditor makes a notification in the registration and information system RIS Matching. 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. Then, using the RIS Vroeg Eropaf control system, the municipality contacts the resident in a manner appropriate to the level of arrears to offer help.

External provider

Xxllnc