In Latvia, social data integration has changed public policy planning

Brasília, April 6 – In light of difficulties in monitoring and viewing social data quickly and comprehensively, in 2003, the government of Latvia decided to take on the challenge of integrating its databases under the responsibility of the Ministry of Welfare. Until that point in time, even reporting to the European Union or the World Bank, which funded the initiative, demanded disproportionate efforts on behalf of state officials.

Officials from the ministry’s Unified Information System (LabIS), came to Brazil to share the Latvian experience at the International Seminar on Database Integration and Information Systems for Public Policy Improvement, held on April 5 and 6.

According to Julija Krizinauskaite from the Ministry of Welfare, it was extremely difficult to plan public policy, monitor performance, and manage information in a reasonable timeframe before the integration. Latvia, with two million residents, has been a member of the European Union since 2004.

Currently, LabIS includes data sources from 19 state agencies. Two of them are still in Excel files (CSV format). Paper records were officially eliminated only in 2015, proof of the challenges in integrating databases belonging to agencies with different management systems. Each agency has different contracts that establish what data to send, the format, and the frequency.

As a result of disparities in data quality, special attention was given to cross-linking and merging the information, starting with the primary system of the Social Security Agency, where the data dates back to 1996.

According to officials, Latvia luckily avoided the problem of closed-source software, which saved the country millions of euros in the long term.

“One of the solutions developers offered us – and we would have agreed, as we didn’t know that much of warehouse database structure – assumed that in future we would have to buy additional space, hardware and data collectors, always more and more. If it was not for the opposition of the Social Security Agency, we would have signed for that and we would be stuck with their system,” said Julija Krizinauskaite during the seminar.

LabIS data is currently accessible only to officials of the Social Security Agency and the Ministry, but there are plans to make the information available to municipal governments and other subordinated agencies.

Officials working on the unified system will have an additional challenge to solve this year; the numbering system for citizens’ personal identification numbers, which are the pillar of the entire integration process, will change starting in 2017. Currently, identification numbers contain the year of birth in their digits.

This legal obligation, which aims to preserve privacy, is an example of one of the common imperatives in improving databases all around the world in order to adapt to constantly evolving technology and institutions.

The seminar at which the officials presented was organized by the Brazilian National Secretariat for Citizenship Income (Senarc), belonging to the Ministry of Social Development and Hunger Alleviation (MDS), in partnership with the Brazil Learning Initiative for a World Without Poverty (WWP).