An assessment of the potential impacts of knowledge-driven decision support in social welfare

Governments and agencies worldwide have used social welfare programmes as a means of improving the lives of vulnerable people. In Latin America and the Caribbean, conditional cash transfers (CCTs) have been used to change the dynamics of responsibility between state and beneficiary by instituting conditionalities. In order to maintain the integrity of these programmes, social workers are required to verify and monitor beneficiaries. These additional administrative requirements have resulted in a backlog of tasks and diminished service standards in CCTs. In this paper we examine how a data driven knowledge-based decision support system (DSS) can be used to reduce administrative tasks associated with these programmes. A case study of the PATH CCT programme in Jamaica was used to evaluate the DSS. The findings suggest that significant and measurable benefits can be gained from the use of this decision support system in specific areas of the programme´s administration. These benefits include: reduction in time and resources needed in the verification of applicants and potential cost savings from resource reallocation. The applicability of the DSS to the PATH programme provides a benchmark that can be adopted by other CCTs across the world.