Innovative solutions in coordination of social security systems in the area of family benefits introduced by Lesser Poland Voivodeship

On 1 January 2018, the voivodes (provincial governors) in the whole country took over from the marshals the task of coordinating Family Allowance and Benefit for bringing up children (so-called 500 Plus), i.e. determining in the case of a family where one of the spouses works in a country of the European Union, Switzerland, Iceland, Norway or Liechtenstein which of the countries should pay the due benefits. This task was carried out by marshals with long delays. Delegation of the task to the voivodes is to guarantee better management and efficient execution of payments for the beneficiaries. The situation in Malopolska was the worst. Applications not realized by the Marshal of the Malopolska Region (68,309 applications) came mainly from both benefit periods – 2016/2017 and 2017/2018 (but the oldest ones even concerned the years 2004-2006) – which constituted 25% of all unrealized applications in the whole country. The team of 65 employees carrying out the task, taken over by the Malopolska Provincial Office, had the low length of service, the majority of people employed to put the documentation in order, did not conduct any or conducted only limited proceedings, the knowledge of regulations in the team was very limited and the morale of the team was very low. An additional difficulty related to employees is the fact that they work in three teams in Krakow, Tarnow and Nowy S_cz. Until the Malopolska Voivode took over the task, they performed different tasks in each location and in a different way, subject to limited coordination. The taken over documentation with numerous deficiencies indicated a hurry in making order before it was transferred to the voivode and an inefficient documentation management system leading to chaos and disorganization of work – as a consequence, this mess resulted in proceedings being conducted on the basis of incomplete case files. Already at the end of 2017, it was clear at the stage of obtaining information on how the task was being carried out in preparation for its takeover that it needed to be organized in a completely different way. This opinion was confirmed in the first days of January 2018 in the process of obtaining more and more information from employees.