Kazakhstan has introduced an initiative, the ‘Digital Family Card’ (DFC), in partnership with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
This collaboration, initially unveiled in 2022 and briefly highlighted ahead of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Summit, has remained mostly unacknowledged by the mainstream media.
The DFC is structured to serve as an intermediary between various government sectors, aiming to facilitate support in essential areas including finance, justice, education, medical assistance, and social protection, according to a report from Wine Press News.
It’s funded mainly by the ‘UN COVID-19 Response and Recovery Multi-Partner Trust Fund.’
The initiative intends to automate state support measures, identifying responsible public authorities and proactively offering services through e-government platforms.
In this setup, “citizens do not have to go to each of the public services to apply,” according to the UN.
The DFC operationally sends an SMS notification to potential state support recipients, and upon consent, the agreed support is processed and transferred to their accounts.
The UN has reported that about 980,000 of the 5.9 million families in Kazakhstan are without any official income.
In 2022, targeted social assistance was received by 657,300 individuals from 127,600 families, and another 3 million individuals are considered “vulnerable.”
Previously reliant on paper documentation, the DFC now pledges to deliver assistance promptly and reduce bureaucratic hurdles, thereby addressing the delay issues related to paperwork and benefit allocations.
The government has digitized the records of all families in Kazakhstan, reportedly aiming to evaluate each family’s well-being based on several criteria.
Subsequent to the digitization, “an in-depth analysis of the areas of health, education, social protection, employment, finance, justice, and agriculture for each family was carried out based on government data sources,” the UN explains.
Assessments of family situations are based on a variety of criteria like health care, economic and housing conditions, education, and social situations.
The assessment incorporates “the problems faced by vulnerable families – lack of housing, education, health insurance, unemployed and underemployed, in need of legal aid and others,” as stated by the UN.
With 80 different socioeconomic indicators incorporated into the family vulnerability assessment, the methodology enables the development of “scores for each family in Kazakhstan cities, regions, districts, and villages and to identify the risk zone for each family.”
Bagdat Mussin, Minister of Digital Development, Innovation, and Aerospace Industry of the Republic of Kazakhstan, presented the DFC at the UN headquarters on September 17th, but the unveiling did not receive significant attention.
Mussin emphasized the creation of a “data lake,” consolidating 18 different data points from millions of families, such as health records, pensions, taxes, and real estate registries.
This amalgamation purportedly permits the government to “monitor social and economic conditions, home conditions, healthcare, education, and others,” and promptly refine the DFC.
This initiative has been outlined in a fact sheet released on February 13th, 2023, positioning the Digital Family Card as an instrument for fostering sustainable development and societal well-being, raising concerns about the extent of government monitoring of household conditions.
