odi.org (09.07.2021) Before Covid-19, many countries were engaged in the process of strengthening core social protection systems and exploring ways to develop their shock-responsive capacity. However, these system-building efforts were still nascent in many low- and middle-income countries (LICs and MICs) and even in countries with more developed systems, maintaining and extending provision in response to a shock as vast, sudden and severe as Covid-19 represented a significant operational challenge. This paper analyses the operational approaches that selected LIC and MIC governments took to maintain existing cash transfer provision and to deliver additional shock-responsive cash assistance during the pandemic in the year 2020. It combines a rapid literature review with case studies on government cash transfer provision during the crisis in four countries: Nigeria, Peru, Sri Lanka and Togo.

Introduction: A number of predictive models and forecasting exercises have been developed by various organizations, such as research groups, academic institutions, hospitals, and consulting companies, with the main aim to support health systems in with COVID-19 strategic decision making, planning, and health policy formulation that help in the fight against COVID19. Predictive models are helpful for estimating the number of COVID-19 cases and deaths; the resources required, e.g., such as hospital patient beds and ICU beds; and the demand for supplies, such as personal protective equipment (PPE). Because predictive models for COVID-19 must rely on a rapidly changing situation and underlying data, they produce results that may change repeatedly as data areas data is updated and revised. Nevertheless, the predictive models are meaningful and can offer crucial insights to policymakers. It is important that we understand the strengths and weaknesses of predictive models in order to use them judiciously as support and reference tools for COVID-19 planning and action.

The government’s COVID Local Support Grant, first introduced in December 2020, has been extended through to September bringing it in line with the end date for furlough and other COVID-related support. This is beyond the planned ending of restrictions, to help families get back on their feet as the economy recovers and the vaccine rollout continues.
Families struggling with food and utility costs will get further support through Government scheme. Boost worth £160 million to families in England. Scheme will now run until end of September, in line with the end of other COVID-related support.

The grant was introduced in December 2020 to create new programmes of support tailored to people’s needs in their area. The funding is ring-fenced so that 80% is used to support families with bills for food, key utilities and other essentials.

 BBC News (22.07.2021) The rollout of a benefit aimed at tackling child poverty in Scotland could be in jeopardy unless eligible families can be identified, according to a House of Commons committee.

capital.com (29.06.2021) Malaysia announced a MYR150bn ($36bn) economic aid package as the Southeast Asian nation continues to grapple with COVID-19 restrictions. The package has aspects such as direct cash transfers to citizens, assistance to small and medium enterprises and additional healthcare spending. The highlight of the aid package is MYR10bn of direct fiscal spending by the government for cash aid, unemployment assistance and wage subsidies. Specifically, the government will spend MYR4.6bn for direct cash transfers to people. The cash aid will benefit 11 million people and cover households with incomes less than MYR2,500 a month to households with incomes between MYR8,700 and MYR10,959 a month.

ESRI (21.06.2021) COVID-19 had, and continues to have, a strong negative effect on incomes in Ireland due to widespread job losses as the measures put in place to slow the spread of the disease resulted in severe economic restrictions. Despite the existence of unemployment supports, additional income supports were introduced to protect incomes. As public health restrictions lift and the economy recovers, we face the withdrawal of such supports. We examine these supports and the role they played in supporting incomes. By profiling those who benefitted most from the new schemes, we highlight the groups most at risk of significant income losses as they wind down. We consider what gaps in the social welfare system necessitated the introduction of such schemes in the first place, along with potential future policy changes to ensure that the social welfare system can provide adequate income protection and financial incentives to work as we emerge from the COVID-19 crisis.

allAfrica.com - Taxi drivers and boda boda cyclists cross the country whose businesses were affected by the lockdown will benefit from the government Covid cash, Mr James Ebitu, the director of social protection in the Ministry of Gender Labour and Social Development, has said. Other groups in all urban centres such as single mothers and ghetto youths will benefit unlike last year when government gave food to only Kampala Metropolitan Area.

Privacy International (22.06.2021) The global Covid-19 pandemic has acted as a catalyst for technology-intensive initiatives for welfare distribution, coming at a high cost to human rights and inclusion: enforcing automated discrimination, exacerbating existing inequalities and compromising access to essential benefits.

This document provides an overview of social protection measures announced in response to COVID-19 that have made specific reference to persons with disabilities. Rather than seeking to provide an exhaustive survey of measures, it identifies the main characteristics and trends for social protection responses that specifically sought to support persons with disabilities during the crisis. This brief focuses on specific crisis response measures adopted during the COVID-19 pandemic, acknowledging that persons with disabilities also benefited from access to health care and income support provided through pre-existing social protection schemes and programmes. The document provides an update to an initial analysis in May 2020 (UNPRPD, 2020).

A record 80.5 million Americans have health coverage through Medicaid or the Children's Health Insurance Program, largely because states have had to keep people enrolled during the coronavirus pandemic, according to new federal data released Monday.

UNCTAD (16.06.2021) Coronavirus pandemic recovery efforts should provide comprehensive social protection, fight climate change and ensure vaccines reach the poorest people quickly.

Project Syndicate (16.06.2021) During the COVID-19 pandemic, governments worldwide have taken advantage of technological solutions to streamline social-protection schemes. But, for all its benefits, a digital approach to welfare programs implies an obvious risk: exclusion of those on the wrong side of the digital divide.

bbc.com (18.06.2021) The US Supreme Court has rejected a Trump-backed challenge by Republican-led states to former President Barack Obama's healthcare overhaul. Despite the court's conservative tilt, its nine justices ruled by 7-2 that the challengers did not have legal standing to sue. It is the third time since 2010 that the Affordable Care Act (ACA), known as Obamacare, has survived a challenge. The law gave millions of low-income Americans access to medical insurance.

weforum.org (18.06.2021) Parental leave is a good thing, according to 90% of men who take it. Each month of paternity leave can increase a mother’s earnings by 6.7%. Billions of dollars in economic output is lost every year because women shoulder the burden of childcare.

social-protection.org (2021) The brief presents the Mozambican practice of preparing and publishing an annual National Statistical Bulletin on Social Protection. This practice demonstrates how this country has successfully developed a tool that harmonizes national data and underpins informed social protection decision-making, based on concrete and comprehensive data. In addition to contributing to defining more efficient policies for extending social protection coverage, the tool also allows the measurement of the progress made towards the SDG target 1.3, which concerns social protection floors.

europa.eu (04.06.2021) The Employment, Social Policy, Health and Consumer Affairs Council (EPSCO) has adopted the Commission proposal on establishing a European Child Guarantee. The objective of the European Child Guarantee is to prevent and combat social exclusion by guaranteeing the access of children in need – persons under the age of 18 years who are at risk of poverty or social exclusion – to a set of key services: early childhood education and care, education, healthcare, nutrition and housing.

CEPS (14.06.2021) Digitalisation is not only changing the nature of jobs, workplaces and skills development, but also the way work is allocated. Digital labour platforms (DLPs) are driving innovation in the allocation of work. Check out the latest landscape, trends, and impact on working conditions. The report aims to improve the available data on platform work in the EU. To achieve this, it: – identifies trends in the development of the EU digital labour platform economy in the last 5 years; – provides an overview of the latest platform landscape in the EU27; – assesses the working conditions of people working through platforms across different business models.

The Labor Department determined it doesn’t have the legal authority to stop states from opting out of federal unemployment programs early, according to an agency official. The programs have offered unemployment benefits to millions of people since the early days of the Covid pandemic. The American Rescue Plan extended them to Sept. 6. Twenty-five states, all led by Republican governors, are withdrawing early. The earliest are doing so effective Saturday, June 12.

European Commission (14.06.2021) On 14 June 2021, the Council of the EU endorsed the key conclusions of the 2021 reports on long-term care and on pension adequacy, that illustrate the situation of older people in the EU. The two reports analyse the situation of older people in the EU, looking into whether Europeans can maintain decent living standards in retirement, how many older people need support in their daily activities and whether they can access and afford the help they need. 

Free Malaysia Today (FMT) (08.06.2021) Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin says the government is looking to bolster the country’s social safety net programme with a definitive database. Muhyiddin said that he chaired a Malaysian Social Protection Council (MySPC) meeting via video conferencing today, during which the issue of strengthening the national social safety net was discussed. He added it included expanding the protection schemes under the Social Security Organisation (Socso) to groups that were not covered previously. “I also emphasised the need for a social protection database across agencies which covers elements of employment, social insurance and social assistance. “This database can be the sole reference for the country’s social protection programmes,” he said on his Facebook page. He added that such a database would make for a “new, more effective approach” in providing comprehensive social protection coverage, especially for vulnerable groups.

Reuters - Brazil’s government plans to extend an emergency cash transfer program to relieve poor families during the coronavirus pandemic for another two months, a government official with knowledge of the matter told Reuters on Monday. The 250 reais-per-month handout, to be financed with an extraordinary credit of 12 billion reais ($2.38 billion), will be paid in August and September, continuing a program started last year and revived for four months in April, the source said. ($1 = 5.04 reais)

bdnews24.com (03.06.2021) Bangladesh has expanded its social safety net programmes by increasing the budgetary allocation by 12.5 percent in the fiscal year 2021-22 as part of the efforts to alleviate the plight of lower-income and vulnerable groups which have been hit hardest by the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

31.03.2021 (caixa.gov.br)

The Emergency Assistance 2021 is paid to recipients of Emergency Aid 2020. The benefit amount varies according to the composition of the family: If the family consists of only one person, the benefit is R$ 150.00 per month; If the family consists of more than one person, the benefit is R$ 250.00 per month; If the family is headed by a woman without a spouse or partner, with at least one person under the age of eighteen, they will receive R$ 375 monthly. Up to four installments will be made available, as long as the family continues to meet the Aid selection criteria.

Big data analytics has gained wide attention from both academia and industry as the demand for understanding trends in massive datasets increases. Recent developments in sensor networks, cyber-physical systems, and the ubiquity of the Internet of Things (IoT) have increased the collection of data (including health care, social media, smart cities, agriculture, finance, education, and more) to an enormous scale. However, the data collected from sensors, social media, financial records, etc. is inherently uncertain due to noise, incompleteness, and inconsistency. The analysis of such massive amounts of data requires advanced analytical techniques for efficiently reviewing and/or predicting future courses of action with high precision and advanced decision-making strategies. As the amount, variety, and speed of data increases, so too does the uncertainty inherent within, leading to a lack of confidence in the resulting analytics process and decisions made thereof. In comparison to traditional data techniques and platforms, artificial intelligence techniques (including machine learning, natural language processing, and computational intelligence) provide more accurate, faster, and scalable results in big data analytics. Previous research and surveys conducted on big data analytics tend to focus on one or two techniques or specific application domains. However, little work has been done in the field of uncertainty when applied to big data analytics as well as in the artificial intelligence techniques applied to the datasets. This article reviews previous work in big data analytics and presents a discussion of open challenges and future directions for recognizing and mitigating uncertainty in this domain.