In the digital age, governments across the world are building technologically integrated programmes to allow citizens to access welfare payments. While smart and digital technologies hold the potential to streamline administrative processes and reach millions, they can also have adverse effects on those they should be supporting.
Social protection systems around the world are increasingly ‘conditional’, meaning that aspects of state support, usually financial or practical, are dependent on claimants complying with a set of rules or conditions. These processes are increasingly tied to rigid identification systems and determined by algorithmic and Automated Decision Making (ADM) processes. Those who fail to comply with the rules can find themselves automatically cut-off, have their assistance reduced or are subject to sanctions and fines.
As Privacy International has argued, the discrimination inherent in certain conditional welfare systems does not affect everyone equally. There is increasing evidence that welfare systems are driven by racialised and gendered assumptions about people in need that also perpetuate baseless societal tropes to the effect that mothers, people of colour and migrants are undeserving abusers of social protection and welfare.
