Pathways toward digitalization in Social Protection and Labor (SPL) service delivery

This paper offers three key contributions to the excising literature. Firstly, it reviews the use of technology across each phase of delivering social protection and labor (SPL) benefits and services. Secondly, it reviews evidence on potential outcomes arising from digitalization initiatives, and identifies factors and conditions that facilitate successful design and implementation. Lastly, the paper outlines a conceptual framework for different digitalizing pathways. This framework distinguishes between: (1) the progressive digitalization of analog core SPL architecture; (2) 'leapfrogging’ innovations, which use novel digital approaches from the outset in contexts where SPL provision is nascent and traditional core architecture does not exist; and (3) the use of supporting technologies that may be helpful in their own right but neither contribute to, nor rely on, to digitalization of core SPL architecture