OpenGov Asia (01.12.2020) The pandemic has fundamentally changed lifestyles and thought processes across the world. There is a paradigm shift in the way people now interact with each other. With social distancing becoming the new norm, citizens are increasingly becoming dependent on technology to communicate and interact among themselves. In order to help public sector utilise digital applications and APIs to enhance service delivery and get digital transformation right, OpenGov Asia hosted an OpenGovLive!

US Social Security Administration (November 30th) On September 28, India's president approved a law (the Code on Social Security, 2020) that consolidates and amends nine existing social security laws. Among the law's changes are an extension of benefit eligibility to fixed-term workers under the employer-liability gratuity scheme, a broadening of the definition of wages for contribution calculation purposes, and new protections for informal-sector workers.

blogs.worldbank.org (28.10.2020) Covariate shocks including disasters, economic crises, and pandemics threaten to reverse decades of gains achieved in poverty reduction and shared prosperity in the region. These shocks tend to disproportionately affect the poor and push near poor households into poverty.

worldbank (2020) The Sourcebook synthesizes real-world experiences and lessons learned of social protection delivery systems from around the world, with a particular focus on social and labor benefits and services. It takes a practical approach, seeking to address concrete “how-to” questions, including: How do countries deliver social protection benefits and services? How do they do so effectively and efficiently? How do they ensure dynamic inclusion, especially for the most vulnerable and needy?

swissinfo.ch (25.11.2020) The reform of the occupational pension scheme is intended to secure the pension level, strengthen financing and improve the protection of part-time employees and thus especially women, Interior Minister Alain Berset said at a press conference on Wednesday. He said he hoped it would be the first successful pension reform in the 21st century.

Infobae (24.11.2020) The Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS) presented the second phase of the pilot test for the affiliation of Household Workers, through which the payment process carried out by the employer is simplified and automated . This provides continuity and simplifies the operation of the pilot test, benefiting 2.4 million informal workers who carry out paid activities at home .

Euronews (24.11.2020) How do you get by without a bank account? This is a question asked daily by millions of refugees worldwide who simply don’t have access to standard financial services. Even the digital and online services that many of us take for granted - tools that help us to save, transfer and receive money - are often out of reach for displaced people.

worldbank.org (nov 2020) The unprecedented and ongoing scale-up of social protection responses to the COVID-19 pandemic dwarf the response to the Great Recession. But how are countries financing such scale-up efforts? This note lays out ten stylized findings from a rapid review of social protection financing sources in thirty-one countries, including in terms of composition between external and domestic resources, and specific modalities within each.

NBER (October 2020) This working paper examine trends in employment, earnings, and incomes over the last two decades in the United States, and how the safety net has responded to changing fortunes, including the shutdown of the economy in response to the Covid-19 Pandemic. The U.S. safety net is a patchwork of different programs providing in-kind as well as cash benefits and had many holes prior to the Pandemic. In addition, few of the programs are designed explicitly as automatic stabilizers.

October 2020 . See in particular the Meeting of BRICS Ministers of Labour and Employment