Seeking to realize savings of up to $2.4 billion, the Brazilian government has launched a raft of data-driven technological measures to combat fraud, particularly in its national social security system.
These new anti-fraud initiatives aimed at introducing transparency throughout the system will be pursued in concert with a total overhaul of the Brazilian pension system which has been swamped with benefit fraud.
Angelica Mari of Brazil Tech filed this report published in ZDNet:
“The most effective way to tackle fraud and irregularity, is by using technology, with systems that can cross-reference information using data from all systems available in the federal government,” said INSS president, Renato Rodrigues Vieira.
According to Vieira, ensuring more interoperability across government systems means that granting benefits will become a much more stringent and efficient process going forward.
“When [citizens] are no longer required to produce any new documents to INSS agencies, the process will surely be much more strict, cleaner and faster because all the information required for decision making will already be available in our digital database,” he added.
Changes in legislation passed this year so far introduce a number of requirements that claimants need to comply with in order to apply for benefits, including additional documentation to prove eligibility. In addition, databases intended to hold data about claimants receiving benefits under special situations, such as rural workers, will be introduced and linked to the central social security repository as a means to support requests from next year.
According to Vieira, the technology work underway will become even more critical an prominent as further changes in the national pension system are introduced. “Our system as it stands is not fair and I believe that with [the overall reforms], we can equalize the system,” Vieira said.
