Social welfare is a very important but costly service in the public sector. The goal of our social aid system is to support the recipients as a last “safety net” and supporting them to overcome difficult circumstances in life. The aim is to get out of the system and remain economically independent in the future. In contrast to this social and political goal of social welfare stays the financial technicality that welfare recipients are accumulating financial liabilities towards the state and technically have to pay back their debt when they are financially independent again.
The City of St.Gallen now reflects how to increase the motivation of the people to pay back these debts, without jeopardizing the social goal of keeping people out of the social aid system. At the same time, the scarce human resources should be in a good ratio to the repaid debts. Therefore, St.Gallen’s social service department asks the following questions:
- Which groups of recipients do they need to motivate in order to increase overall paybacks without jeopardizing their financial well-being and optimize the department’s scarce personal resources?
- What motivational options exist to support recipients?
- How can these measures be communicated / transported to the recipients?
This is a real world challenge, that we start tackling in this year. Help us to solving it by creating useful solutions!
- Analysis of the willingness and ability of paybacks from different recipients’ profiles: Who is likely to payback based on the data provided?
- Visualization or application that displays the critical factors of paybacks in an understandable manner and that enables social workers to optimize their own resources
- Measures / motivational scheme that makes use of these insights and practically leads the former recipients to pay back a realistic amount: How would you interact and communicate with recipients in order to implement these measures and practically increase paybacks?
--> These aspects may be combined in a digital application or be worked out seperately
Insert your Pitch Video or Slides here
- Anonymized Dataset of welfare recipients and their characteristics: Handed out to the definitive participants
- Anonymized Dataset of former welfare recipients who are paying back: Handed out to the definitive participants
- Anonymized List of duration and changes of social aid reception: Handed out to the definitive participants
- Statistical population data in machine readable format: http://stada2.sg.ch/
- Social aid statistics on a cantonal level: https://www.sg.ch/ueber-den-kanton-st-gallen/statistik/themen/B13/kommunale-sozialhilfe.html
- Social aid statistics on a national level: https://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfs/de/home/statistiken/soziale-sicherheit/sozialhilfe.html
- Swiss social statistics report 2019: https://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfs/de/home/statistiken/kataloge-datenbanken/grafiken.assetdetail.9026637.html
- Comparison of social assitance numbers between swiss cities (incl. St.Gallten): https://staedteinitiative.ch/de/Info/Kennzahlen_Sozialhilfe/Kennzahlenbericht_aktuell
We orient ourselves at the judging criteria of the START Hack which consists of the following criteria:
- Complexity & Technical Sophistication: Usage of appropriate services and technologies
- Design: Usability of the solution
- Viability: Possibility of realizing the solution
- Feasibility: Maturity Level of the developed solution
- Creativity & Innovation: surprise effect to the jury
- Presentation: Communication of the developed solution
However, St.Gallen needs to add one more criteria - USEFULNESS:
- Since it is a real world challenge, that we are start tackling this year, we need your solution to be useful
- Because of the scarce resources the most important part is the analysis and identification of the profiles. Your solution should therefore definitely contain this part or show what you have tried in the analysis.
If you need to contact us online, please do so only on Discord. Do not use the START Summit platform for case questions and meeting coordination with us!
- Christian Geiger, CDO Stadt St.Gallen: via Discord
- Nicola Wullschleger, Projektmanager Smart City: via Discord @OpenDataStGallen_Nicola
- Daniela Tschudi, Department Manager Social Services: via Nicola
- Michael Höhener & Patrik Pizzigoni, IT-Specialists Social Services (Datastructure Experts): via Nicola
Availability at the booth will be defined at a later stage
To show you the beautiful landscape of eastern Switzerland in an sustainable and still adventurous way, the winning team receives...
