Welfare

The first conditional cash transfer program in a higher-income country was trialled in the United States by Mayor Bloomberg in New York City from April 2007 to August 2010. Known as Opportunity NYC-Family Rewards, the privately funded pilot program transferred cash rewards to families who were able

Virginia Eubanks explains what we can draw from understanding the experience of surveillance of marginalised groups: it is a civil rights issue, technologies carry the bias of those who design them, people are resisting and why we need to move away from the privacy rights discourse. https://prospect

In this interview with Virginia Eubanks, the author highlights how electronic benefit transfer cards have become tracking devices and how data exploitation used to restrict access to welfare. https://www.vox.com/2018/2/6/16874782/welfare-big-data-technology-poverty Author: Sean Illing Publication

This article is an overview of some of the research documenting how people in vulnerable positions are the ones most affected by government surveillance. https://stateofopportunity.michiganradio.org/post/technology-opportunity-researcher-says-surveillance-separate-and-unequal Author: Kimberly

For US citizens who can access benefits, many states use electronic benefit transfer (EBT) cards, which function like debit cards, to distribute benefits. As of 2015, at least 37 states issued Temporary Assistance to Needy Families benefits, also known as welfare, through EBT cards. http://www.ncsl

In September 2018 the UK's Information Commissioner found that it was likely that during 2017 a number of migrant rough sleepers were reported to the Home Office enforcement teams by the homelessness charity St. Mungo's. The finding followed a complaint from the Public Interest Law Unit. The charity

In 2018, at least five British local authorities began developing systems intended to use predictive analytics to identify families needing attention from child services on the basis that algorithmic profiling could help them target their scarce resources more efficiently. Data about at least 377

In May 2014 the Polish Ministry of Labor and Social Policy (MLSP) introduced a scoring system to distribute unemployment assistance. Citizens are divided into three categories by their “readiness” to work, the place they live, disabilities and other data. Assignment to a given category determines

In 2016, when Australia was planning to introduce a new welfare system based on data collection, experts from New Zealand, where a similar system was set up in 2012, warned that experience showed that the most vulnerable people were checking out of any relationship with the state. They warned, for