The project ‘Emp@thy’ [in Polish: Empatia] which absorbed PLN 49 million (part of funds came from the European Union as part of the Innovative Economy Operational Programme) was to improve effectiveness of the social service and make it easier for citizens to take care of administrative matters.
Experts agree that the communications platform from the so-called social welfare area has a great potential. It is not true that the portal will be useless for the homeless. ”It is clear that this group of people will use the system rarely or not at all. But it will be different with the maintenance fund clients, persons using family allowances or housing benefits” - says Jacek Sutryk, Chair of the Social Services Council.
The central system involving a lot of databases was to enable information flow among social services centres, job centres, the Social Security Office and other institutions. By assumption, the system should immediately provide social workers with the data on their clients’ employment, family benefits, maintenance fund, disability category, etc. Besides, the internet portal should enable citizens to find and verify data as well as take care of administrative matters on a remote basis. If the portal Emp@thy worked as it should, it would be really useful.
However, the results of NIK analyses, media publications and deputies’ inquiries show that the project has not been fully implemented. They also highlighted that social workers use the IT system and the hardware to a small extent or not at all. Also the citizens and entrepreneurs are not willing to take care of administrative matters via the dedicated portal. Why is that the case? Is that the project failure?
Jacek Sutryk emphasises that he is far from rejecting the system as a whole. The ‘Emp@thy’ was implemented as part of a pilot programme only in 200 municipalities. ”Despite all the problems which appeared in that period, I still believe that the portal may make the life of Polish citizens easier and help social workers in their hard work. But we have to eliminate its drawbacks in the first place”.
Firstly, the law has not been changed in a way enabling the use of some of the system functionalities. The changes were passed only in July 2015 and they will enter into force on 1 January 2016. As a consequence, the things that were intended to be simpler and faster - both for citizens and for social services - were not launched. Social workers point out that the functionalities that do not work should visible in the system. Some may have an impression that not many of them actually work.
Secondly, the things that already work there, do not work very well. And not always the project contractors are to blame. In fact, only the PESEL (identification number) database operates flawlessly. Other databases often produce incomplete or unreliable results. This is the case e.g. with the Local Government Electronic Information Platform or the Social Security Office. ”It happens that we identify a client who has benefits paid regularly and for whom we ourselves pay contributions but he or she is not in the ZUS database” - says Małgorzata Wagner from the ”Forum” Association.
Thirdly, the experts argue that the requirement to use the electronic signature or a secure profile e-PUAP (which is a must for people who want to submit an application via the ‘Emp@thy’ portal) may for many users be an impossible obstacle. That is why, simpler methods of verifying people’s identity should be considered, even for the price of increasing the number of invalid applications.
Fourthly, the hardware provided to social workers is of poor quality. Laptops functioning as the so-called terminals were made in 2013, so they are quite old as for hardware. It has impact on the battery the life of which is not more than 5 hours. They are also heavy. This is nearly three more kilos that you have to carry to a meeting with the client (90 percent of social workers are women). Besides, the device functionality is limited to the interviewing possibility. There is no office package or a calculator inside. You cannot check emails there or browse the web. ”It happens that social workers are asked by our clients about the phone number of some psychological counselling centre but they cannot use the internet to find it. This is shocking to our clients”- says Sylwester Tonderys from the Social Workers Trade Union. The terminal does not even allow launching the programme ”Bridge” [in Polish: Pomost] where the interviews are worked on and refined. As a result, the employees who have a computer-terminal has to find another, fully equipped computer when they get back to the office - in order to finish their work. ”This is absurd” - claims Tonderys.
But there are even more reservations. For instance, the terminal has no glossary and so it is quite easy to make a simple mistake when entering the data. Sadly, there is not option to edit or correct the data afterwards. The social workers who - at the point of sending the interview - notice that they made a mistake (incorrect data is rejected automatically), must return to the client and do the whole work from the very beginning.
According to social workers, the terminal service is completely unintuitive. The system installed there does not resemble any other system. Some interviews are so difficult to lead that the employees simply do not want to do that. It is mainly about interviews dealing with maintenance or withdrawal of benefits. Moreover, nobody could explain to them how they should do it. This is what social workers complain most about: the lack of comprehensive training programmes. ”Nobody has thought of such a training programme in which - guided by a professional - all interested parties would participate” - Tonderys was surprised. At the end of the day, nobody knows the system possibilities. The division of tasks and responsibilities is not clear and everybody operates by trial and error.
In most municipalities the terminals were put into the closet. They are waiting there until new provisions come into force and other functionalities of the system are implemented. The terminals are still used by the social services in Łódź. Sylwester Tonderys has noted that the project designers did not think of such a simple thing as a laptop bag. Such details can be very annoying. When it’s raining computers can get wet and simply break down. And who will pay for that? Nobody can answer the question.
”I still believe that the ‘Emp@thy’ could improve the work of social services and make clients’ life easier” - says Jacek Sutryk. ”The intention was great” - added Małgorzata Wagner. ”Social workers, equipped with light and useful computers, with good software and technical support could see that the Emp@thy is a good and useful project” - argues Sylwester Tonderys. As for now, the system is more of a problem to them.
Conclusions from the experts panel will be included in the NIK audit programme.
