The Ministry of Social Affairs and Public Housing (MSAPH) in Suriname has started its digital transformation in 2021. One of the initiatives is funded from the Basic Needs Trust Fund (BNTF) managed by the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB). BNTF has impacted over 3 million people in poor communities since 1979. Countries receiving grants are Belize, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, Montserrat, St. Lucia, St. Vincent, and Suriname. Sectors and areas receiving funding include education and human resource development, project management, institutional development, and technical services.
MSAPH initiated the digitalization of the provision of all social services, i.e. senior citizen support, financial support for disabled and low-income households, and child support. Lybra Training, Coaching & Consulting N.V. (Lybra) was contracted by the Ministry and CDB to provide technical services. The approach of Lybra is to first optimize processes, involve all stakeholders bottom-up, and then develop the relevant information system. After thoroughly scanning the processes, training the key process stakeholders, and optimizing processes, then only the development of the information started. The resulting information system to record, assess, evaluate, and allocate social services is based on the universal model of the socialprotection.org. The information system of the Ministry is called the Beneficiary Information System (BIS) and enables real time tracking of social services requests, field data collection, reporting and interfacing with other systems.
BIS was developed with the low code platform of Lybra. The deliverables ranged from a process portal, training video tutorials, web maps, and dynamic reports to a lean information system.
BIS was officially delivered and launched in October 2021, starting with the child support social services.
