12 ms·

Togo made a digital government stimulus system in two weeks

120 points by 1cvmask 5y ago

dotdi 5y ago
https://archive.ph/Qp2hB https://archive.ph/Qp2hB
djbusby 5y ago
Smaller countries are like startups, can move fast and fix things. USA is bogged down legacy provider in this case taking ages to get a small change through the bureaucracy
- masklinn 5y ago
  The biggest impediment to modernising anything is that one of the US two parties is resolutely against anything government-related working better, and the other one is at best wishy-washy about it. EBT doesn’t have to be a disaster, and programs don’t have to be means-tested, they’re designed that way on purpose.
  - Chris2048 5y ago
    > against anything government-related working better I think there's some injected subjectivity/interpretation here: You don't get the concrete option to "make something better", you get the option to "spend money on something" with the aim of making it better. These aren't always the same, and sometimes reform (the implied power to change things that comes with new funding) can make things worse.
tomhunters 5y ago
It would definitely great if the article is not locked on a pay wall.
- cassianoleal 5y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29227187 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29227187
- Aachen 5y ago
  That explains why this revelation couldn't be put in the headline. But yeah like a sibling comment said, someone else posted a mirror 30 minutes before you.
- wtmt 5y ago
  I wondered why I was able to read the article, and then I realized that I have this extension installed on Firefox called Bypass Paywalls. I'd recommend trying that.
galfarragem 5y ago
Major takeaway: "evidence has accumulated that in many circumstances, cash improves the life of poor people more than equivalent spending on aid programs or goods."
- ctdonath 5y ago
  US "poverty line" is at 80th percentile of world incomes.
  - kspacewalk2 5y ago
    Absolute numbers don't matter. Purchasing power matters.
    - rmah 5y ago
      Global PPP uses USD purchasing power in the US as the baseline.
    - retention456 5y ago
      Purchasing power parity (PPP) is accounting for both absolute exchange rates and differential purchasing power across different countries https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/07/09/how-americans-compare-with-the-global-middle-class/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/07/09/how-america...
    - ctdonath 5y ago
      That's accounting for PPP adjustments. Poverty line is a published official statement. Percentile of world incomes, PPP adjusted, are easily found. Find and compare them.
  - Robotbeat 5y ago
    In part because we have used regulations to require you to be rich. In India the cheapest new street legal car is the Tato Nano, around $2500 (maybe small electric cars from China even less). But the cheapest new car in the US is the Chevy Spark at $13-14k. Building codes and zoning regulations mean there’s a minimum price you have to pay for housing in the US that’s around a factor of 10 higher than in much of the world (less than $100/month for a single bedroom apartment in a city in India vs around $1000/month in the US in a city… median is currently around $1200/month). And if you can’t afford that, and try to live in a tent even with the permission of a landowner, you can be arrested because sleeping in a tent is illegal and against code. It’s illegal to be poor. Luckily we at least have some social programs. But we make people jump through hoops to get access to them. A time tax and something that becomes a lot harder or next to impossible if you have literacy problems or aren’t good at forms.
shakna 5y ago
> In Togo, a nation of about 8 million people where the average income is below $2 a day, it took the government less than two weeks to design and launch an all-digital system for delivering monthly payments to about a quarter of the adult population. People such as Bamaze, with no tax or payroll records, were identified as in need, enrolled in the program, and paid without any in-person contact. 10 days from inception to rolled out. There was a slight hiccup with fraud, which was then handled almost instantly. That kind of speed of development is absolutely possible, especially in richer nations. The key difference seems to be not the fraud prevention systems, but the desire to help those in need. > “It’s a strong belief of mine that just because someone is poor doesn’t mean he’s irresponsible—he’s just poor,” she says. “So if you give him money, there’s no way he’s going to waste it. For me, it’s linked with dignity.” That perspective isn't one you'll find popular in the nations that should be able to deploy programs like these, but don't. Their voters don't see them as helping the poor, and don't see the poor as likely to invest any protective income into survival. So the politician follows the culture of looking down on those with less, and perpetuates the cycle. It's a self-inflicted cultural attack on the most vulnerable part of the population. Who could be helped, in the space of weeks.
- Bayart 5y ago
  >The key difference seems to be not the fraud prevention systems, but the desire to help those in need The key difference is the complete lack of regulation and data policies. The potential for malevolence in a country the size of Togo is limited, but I'd rather not have the same processes in my own country.
  - hkt 5y ago
    If size of country is a determinant of public sector efficiency, there's an easy answer to many of the supposed problems of the public sector - secession. Alternatively we could accept the role of outsourcing and the effects of the broken social fabric and the system-wide problems that remain unresolved in the anglosphere countries.
    - radu_floricica 5y ago
wtmt 5y ago
The speed of doing this is astonishing for sure, though the article also states that many people were excluded because they didn't have (or refused to have) the newer voter ID cards (issued after 2018) and also because they had to physically verify the cards due to fraudsters misusing lists obtained from polling stations. Exclusion is a larger issue that negates claims of equality or non-discrimination. Tangentially, and moving a bit off topic, what was surprising to me is that biometrics wasn't mentioned (but I'm sure some influential people, companies and "banks" would soon push for it). In contrast, even though India has large (on paper) programs of direct cash transfers and subsidized food supplies, they're all tied to the exclusionary irrevocable/non-changeable biometric based number (called Aadhaar). That the poorest people would be living and/working in conditions that support destruction or rapid change in biometrics has been completely lost on all bureaucrats and politicians. On paper, alternative identifications are to be legally accepted, but practically nothing moves unless biometric authentication succeeds.
- vsskanth 5y ago
  I think in India iris scans are used in addition to fingerprint as biometric markers. Doesn't cover all cases but more robust than just relying on a finger or an eye.
  - captn3m0 5y ago
    No, Iris scans are used in the Aadhaar ecosystem during enrollment. But for authentication usecases (such as ration disbursement) - it is almost exclusively OTP/fingerprint verification. Iris scans can be used, but are rarely used in practice anywhere except enrollment due to the higher cost of devices, the "creepyness factor", and speed of usage.
roenxi 5y ago
I dunno, is looking to "One of the World’s Poorest Countries" for economic advice really the best start? Even if they've done this well it seems risky to start trying to learn from the "successful" programs of poor states on the theory that maybe the things they are successful at are holding them back. I still haven't seen a definitive article on how the Chinese are running Shenzhen. There are probably useful and general lessons there about how to make people wealthy at an indecent speed.
- guerrilla 5y ago
  You comment only makes sense if you assume that they are poor of their own fault rather than due to a history of severe exploitation and other uncontrollable factors; and if you assume that the strategy can't be considered independently.
  - roenxi 5y ago
    But the alternative you put is to assume that their failures are due to external forces and their success due to policy choices. China also has a history of severe exploitation and other uncontrolled factors. They got wealthy with breathtaking speed. It is unwise to look past that to Togo.
    - beaconstudios 5y ago
      I don't think anyone is claiming that we should only look at Togo and not other nations that have implemented successful policy. On the contrary, governors should look around the globe to find examples of success stories in order to build a corpus from which to learn about the realities of policymaking. Shenzhen seems to be an example of making a small number of extremely wealthy individuals and a large number of sweatshop-tier factory labourers; I wouldn't class that as an example to follow unless you only care about creating millionaires.
    - guerrilla 5y ago
      > But the alternative you put is to assume that their failures are due to external forces and their success due to policy choices. I'm not assuming it, but I think someone should make that argument given that the country was subject to over 300 years of brutal colonialism which included being the literal capital of the slave trade and later neocolonialism. China's a different story because they eradicated foreign ownership and interference before any of its success and still has pretty heavy capital controls and other mechanisms in place including local ownership requirement laws. In any case, there are many other factors that could influence any countries development starting from simple geographic luck. To assume that it is a self-made problem (or isn't) without argument is not useful.
throwuxiytayq 5y ago
I don't care about Bamaze, please stop telling me about Bamaze. Jesus. Journalist writing needs some kind of a reboot.
yalogin 5y ago
In the US there seems to be nothing that people don’t make money on or exploit. No level of human suffering is left alone. Even school shootings are exploited by charlatans to make money and to benefit politically. In such a setting stimulus is the last thing we would get right, because stimulus has always been politicized.
siruncledrew 5y ago
The difference Togo has going for themselves is that they are like a startup country that has to be lean and resourceful because they just don’t have the money or - for lack of a better phrase - bureaucratic structures in place. The article is calling Togo “poor” but that’s from the perspective of the West. Poverty is the norm, not the exception in such countries, which means that everybody is in the same boat trying to use what they have to make it work. I think in the US, there’s much more hesitation to dive into new things with a willingness of accepting potential failure ahead of time and pivoting if needed. Put another way, if Togo tried this and failed, they can just say “well we’re back to where we started, let’s try another way”, whereas if that happened in the US it would be seen as a major fault and carry a lot of political consequences. Put into a tech perspective, a new tech startup might be willing to live with their business logic running cheaply off clever “hacks” that suffice, but if you approached a big company with that solution there would be like 10 levels of managers all critiquing it and running CBAs to assess the risks firsts.
samstave 5y ago
Togo! I did my very first class report in 5th grade in 1986 on Togo! We had to pick a country in Africa to look up and do a report on, I chose Togo, and while sadly the Togo Ministry Of History will not be able to receive a copy of my report, as its been sealed in my archives which are under audit... Every single time I see Togo, I think back on that report and learning about Togo. Looks like I still have more to learn about Togo.

120 points by 1cvmask 5y ago

https://archive.ph/Qp2hB https://archive.ph/Qp2hB

Smaller countries are like startups, can move fast and fix things. USA is bogged down legacy provider in this case taking ages to get a small change through the bureaucracy

masklinn 5y ago
The biggest impediment to modernising anything is that one of the US two parties is resolutely against anything government-related working better, and the other one is at best wishy-washy about it. EBT doesn’t have to be a disaster, and programs don’t have to be means-tested, they’re designed that way on purpose.
- Chris2048 5y ago
  > against anything government-related working better I think there's some injected subjectivity/interpretation here: You don't get the concrete option to "make something better", you get the option to "spend money on something" with the aim of making it better. These aren't always the same, and sometimes reform (the implied power to change things that comes with new funding) can make things worse.

tomhunters 5y ago

It would definitely great if the article is not locked on a pay wall.

cassianoleal 5y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29227187 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29227187
Aachen 5y ago
That explains why this revelation couldn't be put in the headline. But yeah like a sibling comment said, someone else posted a mirror 30 minutes before you.
wtmt 5y ago
I wondered why I was able to read the article, and then I realized that I have this extension installed on Firefox called Bypass Paywalls. I'd recommend trying that.

galfarragem 5y ago

Major takeaway: "evidence has accumulated that in many circumstances, cash improves the life of poor people more than equivalent spending on aid programs or goods."

ctdonath 5y ago
US "poverty line" is at 80th percentile of world incomes.
- kspacewalk2 5y ago
  Absolute numbers don't matter. Purchasing power matters.
  - rmah 5y ago
    Global PPP uses USD purchasing power in the US as the baseline.
  - retention456 5y ago
    Purchasing power parity (PPP) is accounting for both absolute exchange rates and differential purchasing power across different countries https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/07/09/how-americans-compare-with-the-global-middle-class/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/07/09/how-america...
  - ctdonath 5y ago
    That's accounting for PPP adjustments. Poverty line is a published official statement. Percentile of world incomes, PPP adjusted, are easily found. Find and compare them.
- Robotbeat 5y ago
  In part because we have used regulations to require you to be rich. In India the cheapest new street legal car is the Tato Nano, around $2500 (maybe small electric cars from China even less). But the cheapest new car in the US is the Chevy Spark at $13-14k. Building codes and zoning regulations mean there’s a minimum price you have to pay for housing in the US that’s around a factor of 10 higher than in much of the world (less than $100/month for a single bedroom apartment in a city in India vs around $1000/month in the US in a city… median is currently around $1200/month). And if you can’t afford that, and try to live in a tent even with the permission of a landowner, you can be arrested because sleeping in a tent is illegal and against code. It’s illegal to be poor. Luckily we at least have some social programs. But we make people jump through hoops to get access to them. A time tax and something that becomes a lot harder or next to impossible if you have literacy problems or aren’t good at forms.

shakna 5y ago

> In Togo, a nation of about 8 million people where the average income is below $2 a day, it took the government less than two weeks to design and launch an all-digital system for delivering monthly payments to about a quarter of the adult population. People such as Bamaze, with no tax or payroll records, were identified as in need, enrolled in the program, and paid without any in-person contact. 10 days from inception to rolled out. There was a slight hiccup with fraud, which was then handled almost instantly. That kind of speed of development is absolutely possible, especially in richer nations. The key difference seems to be not the fraud prevention systems, but the desire to help those in need. > “It’s a strong belief of mine that just because someone is poor doesn’t mean he’s irresponsible—he’s just poor,” she says. “So if you give him money, there’s no way he’s going to waste it. For me, it’s linked with dignity.” That perspective isn't one you'll find popular in the nations that should be able to deploy programs like these, but don't. Their voters don't see them as helping the poor, and don't see the poor as likely to invest any protective income into survival. So the politician follows the culture of looking down on those with less, and perpetuates the cycle. It's a self-inflicted cultural attack on the most vulnerable part of the population. Who could be helped, in the space of weeks.

Bayart 5y ago
>The key difference seems to be not the fraud prevention systems, but the desire to help those in need The key difference is the complete lack of regulation and data policies. The potential for malevolence in a country the size of Togo is limited, but I'd rather not have the same processes in my own country.
- hkt 5y ago
  If size of country is a determinant of public sector efficiency, there's an easy answer to many of the supposed problems of the public sector - secession. Alternatively we could accept the role of outsourcing and the effects of the broken social fabric and the system-wide problems that remain unresolved in the anglosphere countries.
  - radu_floricica 5y ago

wtmt 5y ago

The speed of doing this is astonishing for sure, though the article also states that many people were excluded because they didn't have (or refused to have) the newer voter ID cards (issued after 2018) and also because they had to physically verify the cards due to fraudsters misusing lists obtained from polling stations. Exclusion is a larger issue that negates claims of equality or non-discrimination. Tangentially, and moving a bit off topic, what was surprising to me is that biometrics wasn't mentioned (but I'm sure some influential people, companies and "banks" would soon push for it). In contrast, even though India has large (on paper) programs of direct cash transfers and subsidized food supplies, they're all tied to the exclusionary irrevocable/non-changeable biometric based number (called Aadhaar). That the poorest people would be living and/working in conditions that support destruction or rapid change in biometrics has been completely lost on all bureaucrats and politicians. On paper, alternative identifications are to be legally accepted, but practically nothing moves unless biometric authentication succeeds.

vsskanth 5y ago
I think in India iris scans are used in addition to fingerprint as biometric markers. Doesn't cover all cases but more robust than just relying on a finger or an eye.
- captn3m0 5y ago
  No, Iris scans are used in the Aadhaar ecosystem during enrollment. But for authentication usecases (such as ration disbursement) - it is almost exclusively OTP/fingerprint verification. Iris scans can be used, but are rarely used in practice anywhere except enrollment due to the higher cost of devices, the "creepyness factor", and speed of usage.

roenxi 5y ago

I dunno, is looking to "One of the World’s Poorest Countries" for economic advice really the best start? Even if they've done this well it seems risky to start trying to learn from the "successful" programs of poor states on the theory that maybe the things they are successful at are holding them back. I still haven't seen a definitive article on how the Chinese are running Shenzhen. There are probably useful and general lessons there about how to make people wealthy at an indecent speed.

guerrilla 5y ago
You comment only makes sense if you assume that they are poor of their own fault rather than due to a history of severe exploitation and other uncontrollable factors; and if you assume that the strategy can't be considered independently.
- roenxi 5y ago
  But the alternative you put is to assume that their failures are due to external forces and their success due to policy choices. China also has a history of severe exploitation and other uncontrolled factors. They got wealthy with breathtaking speed. It is unwise to look past that to Togo.
  - beaconstudios 5y ago
    I don't think anyone is claiming that we should only look at Togo and not other nations that have implemented successful policy. On the contrary, governors should look around the globe to find examples of success stories in order to build a corpus from which to learn about the realities of policymaking. Shenzhen seems to be an example of making a small number of extremely wealthy individuals and a large number of sweatshop-tier factory labourers; I wouldn't class that as an example to follow unless you only care about creating millionaires.
  - guerrilla 5y ago
    > But the alternative you put is to assume that their failures are due to external forces and their success due to policy choices. I'm not assuming it, but I think someone should make that argument given that the country was subject to over 300 years of brutal colonialism which included being the literal capital of the slave trade and later neocolonialism. China's a different story because they eradicated foreign ownership and interference before any of its success and still has pretty heavy capital controls and other mechanisms in place including local ownership requirement laws. In any case, there are many other factors that could influence any countries development starting from simple geographic luck. To assume that it is a self-made problem (or isn't) without argument is not useful.

throwuxiytayq 5y ago

I don't care about Bamaze, please stop telling me about Bamaze. Jesus. Journalist writing needs some kind of a reboot.

yalogin 5y ago

In the US there seems to be nothing that people don’t make money on or exploit. No level of human suffering is left alone. Even school shootings are exploited by charlatans to make money and to benefit politically. In such a setting stimulus is the last thing we would get right, because stimulus has always been politicized.

siruncledrew 5y ago

The difference Togo has going for themselves is that they are like a startup country that has to be lean and resourceful because they just don’t have the money or - for lack of a better phrase - bureaucratic structures in place. The article is calling Togo “poor” but that’s from the perspective of the West. Poverty is the norm, not the exception in such countries, which means that everybody is in the same boat trying to use what they have to make it work. I think in the US, there’s much more hesitation to dive into new things with a willingness of accepting potential failure ahead of time and pivoting if needed. Put another way, if Togo tried this and failed, they can just say “well we’re back to where we started, let’s try another way”, whereas if that happened in the US it would be seen as a major fault and carry a lot of political consequences. Put into a tech perspective, a new tech startup might be willing to live with their business logic running cheaply off clever “hacks” that suffice, but if you approached a big company with that solution there would be like 10 levels of managers all critiquing it and running CBAs to assess the risks firsts.

samstave 5y ago

Togo! I did my very first class report in 5th grade in 1986 on Togo! We had to pick a country in Africa to look up and do a report on, I chose Togo, and while sadly the Togo Ministry Of History will not be able to receive a copy of my report, as its been sealed in my archives which are under audit... Every single time I see Togo, I think back on that report and learning about Togo. Looks like I still have more to learn about Togo.