ISLAMABAD: The Special Assistant to the Prime Minister (SAPM) Dr Sania Nishtar convened a consultative meeting at the Poverty Alleviation and Social Safety Division (PASSD) with all four executing agencies under the stewardship of Ehsaas program to develop a collaborative perspective on standardized beneficiary targeting that is one of the components of One Window Ehsaas, said a press release.
PASSD secretary Mohammad Ali Shahzada, MD Pakistan Baitul Mal Aon Abbas Buppi, and PPAF CEO Qazi Azmat Isa attended the meeting.
Under the Ehsaas framework, the social protection programmes are delivered through respective executing agencies and Ehsaas strategy stipulates that their impact can be maximized through integrated beneficiary service delivery.
To serve the purpose, the creation of One-Window Ehsaas for all social protection operations has been commenced that aims to assist the beneficiaries and reduce duplication and abuse.
Overall, One-Window Ehsaas envisages actions in five areas including creation of physical one-stop-shop centers, Ehsaas e-portal linking all Ehsaas services, Ehsaas Android app, Cognitive API Architecture approach and standardized beneficiary targeting.
The meeting discussed that in order to ensure integrated beneficiary delivery service, a shift needs to be made for all socio-economic targeting to use Proxy Means Test.
Ehsaas is developing a new National Socioeconomic Registry (NSER) for improved beneficiary targeting. Once developed, it will underpin Ehsaas One Window operations with ease which will enable Ehsaas implementing agencies to access data from the survey database in real time and will enable them to ascertain eligibility of potential beneficiaries.
Ehsaas NSER survey is currently in the field with the status of 63 percent completion and is expected to be digitally accomplished by June 2021. Households in the end-to-end digital NSER are classified into five socioeconomic status welfare categories (SES 1-5) corresponding to the quintiles.
With the SES bands, different programs will be able to use the classification that best match their objectives as well as combine it with additional eligibility criteria.—PR
Copyright Business Recorder, 2021