National Socio-economic Registry (NSER)
BISP has established National Socio-Economic Registry (NSER) in 2011. NSER is a data repository containing information on the socio-economic status of all the households (HHs) participated in the data collection exercise. Data of 27 million HHs was collected in 2010 for the first time by visiting the doorstep of each and every household in the country. NSER served as a platform for all social protection programmes in the public and private sectors to improve the overall targeting efficiency during the implementation. BISP and other social protection programmes have used this data set for the last ten years.
Ensuring objectivity and transparency in effective beneficiary targeting is pivotal to any Social Safety Program. Socio Economic Registries often have errors at two levels, i.e., design level and implementation level. Another important factor that needs to be considered is the frequency (duration or time) at which a registry is updated. Conventionally social registries are updated at an interval of 3 to 5 years to capture a country's changing socio-economic and demographic trends.
A key feature of Social Registries is whether or not they allow for dynamic inclusion, such that anyone can register into a Social Registry at any time. In other words, dynamic inclusion means that access to registration is open and continuous – usually with an on-demand application window for citizen interface – so that people can register for consideration of potential eligibility for social programs when in need or update their information if their situations change. This principle also becomes important when shock-responsive or adaptive social protection systems are put into practice with the capabilities of responding to emergencies/shocks.
Main stakeholders involved in the execution of the National Roll-out 2018-19
- i- BISP Headquarters and Tehsil Offices
- ii- Implementing Partner Data Collection Firms
- iii- Operations Review Firm
- iv- Ministry of Poverty Alleviation and Social-Safety
- v- NADRA
- vi- Provincial Education Departments
- vii- World Bank
- viii- Asian Development Bank
- ix- Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, United Kingdom
Several monitoring mechanisms were put in place to ensure the quality of the collected data, ensuring both system-level data quality assessment and physical shadowing and backchecking. An independent third party also validated the registry data through spot-checking. In the last phase, the registry's roster data (Name, CNIC, Marital Status, Gender, Status of Differently-abled Persons) are cross-validated with NADRA's records, and any issues observed in transcription or data collection have been rectified. BISP also uses carefully designed exclusion filters (such as vehicle ownership, frequent air travel, etc.) to profile potential program beneficiaries.