2026 - Edition 101 | July 14

A new stage of cooperation will use data to identify families with potential demand for social assistance services and support public policy planning

Olá Leitor,

Ensuring that social assistance services reach the people who need it most is one of the main challenges of public management. For this, it is not enough to know the profile of those who are already served: it is also necessary to identify those who have not yet accessed the protection network but have characteristics that indicate the need for follow-up.

It is with this objective that the Institute for Mobility and Social Development (IMDS) and the Municipal Secretariat of Social Assistance of Vitória (SEMAS) continue the partnership signed through the Technical Cooperation Agreement (TCA), recently renewed for another year. The continuity of the cooperation will allow for the deepening of the use of evidence to qualify the planning and provision of Basic Social Protection (BSP) services in the municipality.

This new stage is based on knowledge produced throughout the project. Among the recent submissions is the conclusion of Product 2, which characterized the sociodemographic profile of the people being served by BSP in Vitória. The study analyzed who the users of the services are, comparing people registered and not registered in CadÚnico, in addition to examining differences between services, units and territories. The analyses offer subsidies to assess whether services are reaching the most vulnerable population as a priority and to identify opportunities to improve the targeting of the policy.

The results of this product form the basis for the new stage of the partnership. If, so far, the focus has been on understanding those who already access PSB services, the next challenge will be to identify people and families who have a profile in need of assistance, but who are not included in the social assistance network. By estimating this potential demand, the project will contribute to qualifying the targeting of public policy and expanding its reach to the population in situation of greater vulnerability.

Meta 3 of the project will be dedicated to estimating the potential demand for BSP services. To this end, the IMDS team will cross-reference different databases, with emphasis on CadÚnico, to define eligibility criteria for each service and analyze the degree of adequacy between the public currently being served and the priority public of the policy. From these analyses, predictive models will be developed capable of estimating how many and which people and families have a profile compatible with the different services offered by the social assistance network.

The evidence produced may very well support SEMAS in planning the provision of services in a more efficient allocation of resources, and in the improvement of active search and targeting strategies. In this way, the municipality will be able to expand its capacity to identify families in vulnerable situations even before they spontaneously seek the service network.

The experience demonstrates how integrated use of data can strengthen the management of social assistance. More than portraying current reality, the analyses developed in the partnership between IMDS and SEMAS seek to anticipate needs, guide decisions and expand the reach of public policy for families who most need protection.

See you in the next "IMDS Letter"!

Paulo Tafner
CEO